I have to set this up by explaining that, since I got my first pair of spectacles at age 9, I've been bound to these frickin' things (in increasing lens thicknesses) during every waking hour. My goal for 2010 is to give contacts another shot, since they've never quite measured up vision-wise but would spare me from the constant paranoia of worrying whether someone (or some kid) is going to whack me in the face and leave me dizzy and disoriented for the next month.
But I digress.
Suffice it to say that with my glasses on, I see about 20/15. Without them, I see about 20/1000. So it will be no surprise that, upon noticing a blurry black mark on my bathroom wall early this morning, I had to lean in VERY close to discern that it was, indeed, a spider, who was very much alive and none too happy with being squinted at and subsequently cursed at.
I don't know why I had to verify what it was. That spot isn't normally there, and what else could it be, really? A piece of fuzz? Hardly. A wandering blob of mold? Please, I keep a relatively clean house. I guess I wanted to confirm that it wasn't anything worse than a spider, something that would require not simply hopping backward but fleeing immediately from the vicinity. Naked.
Did I forget to mention this was just before I stepped into the shower?
So there I was, knowing it was there but unable to do a thing about it, because the countdown clock for my bus arrival was ticking away, and I couldn't see well enough to hit it with anything. I decided to turn a blind eye (pun intended) and brush my teeth, hoping that it would simply disappear. I operated on the same principle that guided me safely through public bathing experiences in Japan: if I can't see it, it's not there. If this tenet can apply to other people's cash and prizes, I can apply it to wayward insects as well.
When I turned around two mintues later (thanks, Sonicare), the spot was gone. "Hurray!" I shouted. Actually, I shouted another profanity, but this is all about the pursuit of cleanliness, so let's keep it nice. Confident that the bug had taken advantage of its reprieve and scuttled away into a dark corner, I pulled back my shower curtain ... and found it clinging to the wall, now even closer to my exposed skin than before.
And then, to make things worse, it sprang off the wall and disappeared. Where? How the hell should I know! I can't even find my razor blade on the tub floor if it pops off mid-shower. There was no way I was groping blindly for this little shithead, who just took a swan dive off the tile like Harrison Ford in "The Fugitive." For all I knew he was now bobbing around just waiting for me, and let's face it, eight legs can probably tread water indefinitely.
At this point I think I yelled something akin to "What!? You did NOT just [expletive deleted] do that! Ahhhh! You did NOT just do that! Now you're in the tub? Ahhhhh!" In case you haven't noticed, I'm very witty and articulate at 7:30 a.m. when facing down brazen creepy crawlies.
