Yesterday afternoon my youngest daughter (7) caught a small spider in an empty orange juice can. She thought it was pretty neat - until bedtime last night when my son knocked over the can in her bedroom. Then all Hades broke lose. All of a sudden she was scared to go to bed. “There is a spider loose in my room!” she wailed. Being somewhat perplexed, I said "But you weren’t scared of it when you caught it. She blubbered “But then it was in the can. Now it’s LOOSE! I’m not going in there”. Oviously, logic was not the correct approach. I almost told her that there were always hundreds of spiders in the house and they are not only harmless, but beneficial. That probably would have sent her screaming from the house. Truth is just not an option sometimes. So I did what any good, brave, tired daddy who just wants the kids to go to bed would do. I went to the bathroom and balled up some tissue paper. I then sent daughter down the hall a safe distance. I entered her room, waited about 2 minutes, picked up the first piece of fuzz I could find, wrapped it carefully in the tissue so that a couple of “legs” were visible, and yelled “GOT HIM!”. I walked quickly down the hall and flashed her a quick view of the “legs” on my way to the trash. “It’s OK now, sweetie. You’re safe” I said. Not exactly a lie, but not the whole truth either. She looked up at me with that cute little face and said “Thank you, Daddy”. Within minutes she was asleep.
One child alseep, one spider saved. Not a bad night’s work. Tell me your stories.
Missus Coder doesn’t like spiders, either. Never has. We can be sitting in a (relatively) dark room, and she’ll suddenly turn and point at a tiny dark blot on the far wall, way up near the ceiling. I think she can hear them stomping across the ceiling. “It’s a SPIDER”, she says, in a tone of voice usually reserved for plague-bearing rats, tax collectors, and telemarketers. (Not that we have many telemarketers in our house any more - thank goodness for the "Do Not Call List. Maybe we need a "Do Not Tax list, too. I’d sign up for that one) Then her tone changes, and the room temp. drops about 10 degrees. “Kill it”, she demands.
Did I ever mention that I’m about 5’ 8" tall? Call that 172 cm. for those that are metricated… I can’t reach way up on the wall. I have to knock the spider down, and hope that I find it on the floor. Or hope that she believes I found it on the floor, any way.
If she ever sees the estimate that there are hundreds of spiders in our house, I’ll never get any sleep…
This is what my darling 2nd grade daughter wrote for some school paper recently. It’s entitled “What They Do”.
“I know what my parents do when I’m at school. First my mom goes to the movies and buys an extra large sour gummy worm pack. When she gets home she gets my dad from work so they can party (:eek:). When they rent a hippo they play checkers on its head. They invite all the parents they know to the clean-up party. Then they get me from school and thats why I come home to a clean house.”
(I added the Eek smily, otherwise everthing is as she wrote it.)
He he- I wonder what the second grade teacher thinks of me Now?