ENLIGHTENMENT

This is the most recent story to come to the forefont, relative to the activities of my children when they were teenagers, living at home. I am absolutely amazed sometimes when I hear what was going on right under my nose, and I never knew.

The story to which I was treated has to do with spiders. It seems my daughter had quite an aversion to them, and despite our best efforts, a variety of spiders in various shapes, appeared from time to time in the bathroom she shared with her younger brother. The spiders came in small to large sizes, with thick furry to filament thin legs, some short, some long, some even with very, very long appendages.

It seems on those occasions of their appearance, never more than one at a time, when she would be up early, go into the bathroom, and find one of the creatures in the corner of her shower, she was thwarted from performing any additional personal care until the spider was made aware he/she did not belong there.

Now, there was no way my daughter was going to explain the situation to the spider. Her solution, she reported, was to awaken her brother to come to the rescue. According to her, he grumbled, groused, and groaned, but dutifully crawled out of bed in his sleep sweats, had the necessary interaction with the spider, which ultimately vacated its spot in the corner of the shower, either willingly, or unwillingly. I prefer not to think about the disposition of the unwilling.

As to where they came from, why they kept coming periodically, I can only speculate about an explanation. I think, there must have been some sort of spider communication network. I'm sure the word spread among the arachnoids about the interesting experience they would have if they could somehow manage to get into our house, but more specifically into that one particular bathroom. I rather imagine the event was billed as an extreme sport, only for spiders. One of those real-life once-in-a-lifetime exciting, dangerous, risky-to-the-point of being life-threatening, experiences that could change your life forever. What self-respecting spider would pass up an opportunity like that? None of which I know. Well, come to think of it, I don't really know too many.

I can just picture those spiders lined up outside, wherever that spot was that they managed to come through into the house. I wonder if an entrepreneur spider sold admission tickets, if you could buy them in advance, make reservations, receive all the perks that make any special event an attraction? Did this event have equal appeal to both males and females, or was this just a macho-type activity? I think it's unlikely that I will ever have the answers to those questions.

I do have one answer though. After his sister, who had to leave for work at a really early A.M. hour, had left the house, I think it was those spider mornings when my son did not easily "rise and shine," as the saying goes. On those mornings he would hardly open his eyes, instead clinging to his bed as though he could not bear to be parted from it, all the while protesting about his need for sleep.