Yeah so... spiders. I don't like them crawling directly on me or my babies, but I am not afraid of or grossed out by them. If I see one I don't recognize, I capture it, look it up online so in the future I'll know if it's friendly or not and then flush it. If I see one I already know is friendly, it has a pretty decent chance of life depending on my mood.
Well... I was having a friendly sort of afternoon and saw a great big fluffy happy happy spider taking a little walk across our wall. I went over, took a good look, told him to be on his way and told the kids "Okay... let him be, but he can live," thinking they would enjoy watching him crawl around the wall for awhile. I mean... It's not like they can watch Thomas the Train *all* day.
But that does not capture the imagination of a BOY. Nope. His response was "or... we can SQUASH IT!" So I consented and he ran, cut me off and tumbled into the dining room ahead of me shouting "I will! I will!! Can I kill it Mom! I get to squash it! Please can *I* kill it!? I know how! I know how!!!" grabbed a napkin and stood there quivering in anticipation of me allowing him to assert himself as a man and kill the spider.
Upon receiving my "yes, yo...(u may)" he was off. I've never seen a kid run SO fast!... until he tripped over the leg of a chair. I've never seen a kid fly so far. Or land so hard. On tile. He screamed, and being Clark, he screamed at me "I DIDN'T WANT THAT CHAIR THERE!" But the splat he made was enough that even with the scathing references to my horrible chair to running toward spider space planning, I went rushing to his side and scooped him up to comfort him. I sat there rocking him for a minute and while he was screaming "oh! It's still hurting! It's STILL HURTING!" I got a huge scary scenario in my mind of his leg being broken and having to throw everybody into the car and go to the ER.
Apparently, he had plenty going through his head too. He bolted up mid-scream-sentence, stood and wobbled for a second on the hurty leg and said "I gotta get the spider before he goes away! Wanna see how I squash him!?"
He squashed him. He showed me how one of spidy's legs even came off! He flushed him. And then he took me over and showed me how he "even didn't get any spider guts on the wall! So can I kill *all* the spiders, mom?!!!" Who needs Tylenol when you have a spider in need of death, eh? :)
And, I have to say, his spider killing skills are impressive! I didn't know shining armour came in his size... but there you have it! My cute little knight is ready to gallop off and rescue any spider-frightened damsels in distress. Just move your chairs before he gets there, please.
