(You can listen to this piece on S3E1 of the podcast)
In my bathroom is a spider. Crouched up in the far corner of the shower on the ceiling is where she likes to hang. I say “she” because sometimes she sashays across the ceiling rather than skuttles when I go to take a shower.
These days my back and my butt are cleaner than my front because I’ve got to keep an eye on her. As I suds up we stare each other down. She has more eyes, but mine are bigger, so I’d say the staring contest is fair. She’s highly competitive. Certainly I’m not chopped liver—I keep my eyes focused as I rinse and suds, but she’s a true winner herself.
I suppose if she were a Cocker Spaniel I could have trained her to do trick and win dog shows. If she were a gerbil, I could have taught her to solve mazes and she’d have her own YouTube channer. If she was a cat I could have… no, you can’t really train cats, but still, people would have gone goo-goo eyed over her candid shots on IG anyway.
But she has none of these prospects because she’s a spider. A brownish, dime-sized inhabitant of my bathroom who refuses to leave even though I’ve asked her several times. Nicely. In English. In Spanish. In my limited Portuguese. I even had a translator app teach me to say it in Hungarian. She seemed to respond that time. Even sashayed across the ceiling to the bathroom door, around the corner, down the hallway and all the way until she reached the front door. Gosh, I was so excited as I opened the door for her to leave. But just as I watched her march past the threshold, in came another, identical spider with her. I tried to shoo them out, but they were determined to stay. Boy, do I need to work on my Hungarian.
