The Spider and Existentialism

I do my best thinking in the shower.  We hear that all the time but this morning was different for me.

There was a spider.

Spiders aren’t like lady bugs.  I have to admit, spiders freak me out.  After I read my first round of Buddhism books, I learned the karma thing and I have been reluctant to kill anything since.  But spiders…

I need to keep my eye on them at all times.  They are out to get you.  You can’t trust them, especially in the shower.  The second you turn away in the shower, the spider will somehow know it and pole vault over to murder me while I am trying to have my best thinking.

So, this morning, I traded thinking for watching the spider.

I played with it.  Not in the way a child plays with a toy, but in the way where I experimented with the shower head.  This didn’t seem to affect the spider which was perched on the HOT knob.  My second attempt to “play” (AKA knock the spider off the knob), was taking my head and letting the water drip off my hair onto the spider.  AHA!  It worked.  There went the spider which I could tell now got up there by the use of the famous ladder trick, known in the spider world as a web.

This spider was resilient.  Down it went about a foot or so when it came to a stop and started ascending the ladder to the HOT knob.  Again.

Round 3.

I again, bowed my head and water came tumbling off onto the spider knocking it off the knob again.  This time I got the best of the spider.  It rolled up into a little ball when its ascent took it to the floor tiles near the drain.

“C’mon Spider”, I said, now addressing the arachnid by name.  ”Is that all you got”?

The spider stayed in the ball and my mood changed.

I turned off the shower thinking that, although I had not unleashed my arsenal, other spiders had done better in the ring and that this spider was a lightweight.  I wasn’t going to give it mouth-to-mouth or anything, but I did think of the hair dryer.  Then I thought of the stench of baked spider and decided to call off the 911.

As I dried off I thought of Muhammad Ali in his later years when he employed the ‘ol Rope-a-Dope.  That made me feel better and I went about my day since I think Ali learned his defensive maneuver from spiders.  Or Nina Meyers.

A few minutes ago, several hours after my shower, I went back upstairs to check to see if the spider was still there.  I could see that our cleaning lady had cleaned the shower stall so I will never know if it was a TKO or a flat out fatal knock out.

We will never know…