None of God's Creatures absolutely consider'd
are in their own Nature Contemptible;
The meanest Fly, the poorest Insect
has its Use and Virtue.
With the possible exception of MEN.
Can I get a whut-whut, Ladies?
-Mary Astell
Well, folks, it finally happened.
I was in my loft, typing away on my laptop. Clackity-clack-clack. I took a sip of coffee. Gar-GULP. Then, more typing. Clickity-clackity. Then, another, bigger sip of coffee. Garggggagar-GULP. Then, I got a stomach cramp. AWOOOOOGA!!!!
Then, I looked up and witnessed, to my dismay, the first spider I’d seen since moving to the cabin two months ago. And boy, was it big. If I remember correctly, it was about the size of an NBA center. Imagine Shaq with 8 legs.
Now, I’m sure a lot of people look at me and think, that’s a masculine dude. I hear it everywhere I go. Grocery stores. The post office. Brunch with my mom.
But the fact is, I’m scared of spiders. In fact, I’m scared of a lot of bugs, especially the creepy crawly kind.
I once almost fell down a flight of stairs dodging a silverfish. I once moved apartments because I’d seen one too many millipedes (three.) I once came home and saw a cockroach so big that I literally said out loud, to no one, “I can’t do this anymore.” (I’m not sure what I meant by “this.” Life, I guess? Would I have been the first person to kill myself because of a bug? Maybe!)
I won’t even go into the time I had bedbugs, a New York rite of passage as iconic as folding your first slice or getting punched by Alec Baldwin.
So you may be asking, “Matt, if you’re so scared of bugs, why did you move to a cabin in the wilderness?”
Because after several decades of running from bugs, sometimes literally, I’ve realized that bugs are an inevitability of life. In fact, according to an interview I heard on NPR, there are 200 million insects for every human.
Bugs aren’t going anywhere. An exterminator once told me that cockroaches have been around since the Dinosaurs. I’ll be lucky if I’m around for The Dinosaurs reboot.
Not only are spiders unavoidable. They’re actually helpful, since they kill pests like termites. That’s right, if you own a home, spiders are actually maintaining your property... for FREE.
So, the next time you see a spider, don’t crush it with the nearest Bed Bath & Beyond coupon. Instead, say thank you. Or give it eight high-fives. Or tell it how much you loved it in Kazaam.
ANTIQUE OF THE WIQUE
There’s a lot of antique stores in upstate New York. You’ll find a new discovery here every week!
This week’s antique is……..
The Jew In American Sports by Harold U. Ribalow.
Excited to dig into this one. Been a while since I read fiction.