I have been commissioned by Mr. Marvin A. Spyder to write his blog entries. My identity is unimportant as I'm essentially a ghost writer for the spider in question and will not, as a rule, enter into the story he has asked me to tell.
Nevertheless, before I begin with his story, I would like to begin with a preface, as a means of orienting the reader as well as of putting my present situation into some sort of context. I also consider this exercise a warm-up, as I'm not sure exactly how to narrate this tale, though Mr. Spyder assures me that I'll do fine. I will let the reader decide for him- or herself.
Let me preface this preface by saying that this act is not a matter of my taking any artistic license other than that authorized by the arachnid in question. He is, to put it in his own words, "totally okay with it."
Before I agreed to write this blog, I asked Mr. Spyder...
"Please call me Marvin if you're going to write this at all."
"OK, Marvin. I'm still feeling my way through this."
"That's fine. But just get on with it. Don't think. Write. The readers will be fine with it. Or they won't. But first we get the story out there, then we'll worry about publishing."
"Um, Marvin, actually we are publishing, if you want to get technical."
"Then tell them it's a work in progress. They'll get the idea. People are smarter than you think."
(Please excuse the apparent interruption, but I thought it easier to type our conversation as it was being played out rather than explain it all in narrative after the fact. I will henceforth refer to Mr. Spyder as Marvin, as he has requested. This is mostly because he has a strong aversion to titles, airs, or other affectations, but is also because he's paying me, so I'll do as he requests. He's not a tyrant at all, though. He's a really down to earth guy, or spider, or whatever. Sorry for digression. I believe I was in the middle of a sentence.)
So, before I agreed to write this blog, I asked Marvin if he would allow me to write this introduction. He not only agreed, he said that it was a necessary part of the story.
(Also, thanks to his rather timely interruption, I feel we've really broken the ice here, so now I am at liberty to express myself a little more colloquially. Sorry for all the artifice at the beginning. As I said, I really didn't know how to begin. Now that the creative juices are flowing, I guess we'll get right into the story.)
So the story begins like this:
One day - a Saturday morning, if I'm not mistaken, or maybe a Sunday - I was cleaning the house. Not the typical cleaning you usually do - vacuuming, mopping floors, Windex-ing the bathroom mirror - but "hidden dirt" cleaning. I was dusting all the shelves, moving furniture, cleaning behind the toilet bowl, and dusting the corners and the lampshades for cobwebs. If this is the sort of cleaning you usually do, congratulations. I, however, am a twenty-something bachelor, I live alone, and this sort of cleaning happens once or twice a year. Otherwise, I keep a clean house.
Anyway, I happened to be cleaning the night table by my bed. The lamp was dusty and somewhat cobwebby. So I gave it a good dusting off, and as I was doing so I saw something drop from the lamp to the floor behind the table. I lifted the night table and there it was: a fuzzy spider with long legs and what I thought was a rather belligerent expression.
Now I have never been a fan of spiders, so I did what any grown man would do.
I screamed. Then I set the table down as delicately as I could, given the circumstances.
I crept stealthily over to the broom I had left leaning against the bedroom door and returned just as silently back to my position by the bed. I moved the broom delicately between the night table and the wall. I took a long, slow, deep breath. Exhaled. And started stabbing wildly at the spot on the floor where the spider had fallen.
After a countless number of spastic thrusts with the broom, I dropped it altogether. It fell to the floor behind the table and stood upright, motionless, half propped against the wall. I stepped back and started to get down on my hands and knees to take a closer look. Thinking again, I quickly stood upright. What if it was waiting under the table, poised to climb up my nostril the first chance it got? Changing my strategy, I lifted the table - slowly, delicately - and moved it aside. Then I reached for the broom handle. Ever so lightly, I lifted and pulled the broom away from the wall.
The spider was nowhere to be seen. It had either escaped or been crushed to a pulp.
I was hoping for the latter, but I feared the former.
A cursory inspection of the broom showed no signs of spider cadavers or other remains, but just to be safe, I walked down the hall, through the living room and the den, arriving at the back door that opened onto the porch, and all the while holding the broom at arm's length.
I opened the door, stuck out the broom, and shook vigorously. A dusty fallout drifted down from the bristles, accompanied by occasional clumps made of cat hair and whatever other detritus had accumulated under the furniture. They landed in a rough ellipse on the wooden slats of the back porch.
And one of them moved.
I raised the broom above my head, poised for attack. And the little bugger slipped through a crack between the wooden boards.
As my anger had gotten the better of my irrational fear, now I was out for blood, or whatever else filled that little carcass. I dropped to my knees and peered between the cracks.
Gone. Little bastard. But at least it was out of the house.
"I thought you said at the beginning that you weren't going to enter into the story."
"Well I can't very well tell this part of the story without entering into it, can I?"
"I suppose not. But then where does that leave the rest of the story?"
"Do you think we could discuss this later? I'd like to post the preface."
"Fine. But this isn't the end of the conversation. Just so we're clear."
"I promise not to get too involved in the story."
"Right. We'll see."
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