Back story: The spider

The waiting area at the Eyemart in Beavercreek consists of a dozen chairs placed around a coffee table upon which are a half-dozen magazines and a white cardboard box, just a little too small to hold a bowling ball, with the words “Comment Box” written on it. In the top of the box is a slot through which customers can insert their comments. I wondered at the strange wording as I sat there waiting for Amy and her two kids to get new glasses. Wouldn’t “suggestion box” have been more appropriate? I thought. I also noticed that there were no cards on which to write comments, as if they didn’t really want to know.

Sitting there, kicking myself for having forgotten my e-reader, I resorted to amusing myself by watching the people come and go in the large open space, especially in the waiting area. At one point, a young female employee who had been sitting behind the service counter came over to the table and rearranged the items on the table and picked up all the discarded pieces of paper. Under the circumstances, this counted for entertainment.

I had been there about an hour when a stranger in one of the other seats finally spoke to me. He was a young man who had accompanied his wife to get glasses. I missed what he said when he first spoke, partly because I hadn’t expected it and partly because he seemed to be whispering, as if not to disturb someone.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” I said when I finally realized that he was trying to get my attention.

“There’s a spider over there,” he said a little bit louder this time, pointing.

I thought that was an odd way to open a conversation, but I had been party to a number of weird conversations with strangers while waiting for Amy to shop herself out at the mall. In one such conversation at the outlet mall in Jeffersonville, a man visiting from Alabama explained the process of noodling catfish. Noodling involves swimming underwater to where six-foot long catfish are hiding under a ledge formed by the shore of a river and rubbing their bellies until they become hypnotized and float to the surface. But that’s another story.

I looked over at the guy’s wife who was squiggling in her seat, apparently freaked out by the spider. Then I looked to where the guy was pointing. It took me a few seconds to spot the miniscule arachnid. It was on top of the comment box close to one of the corners. It was nowhere near his wife. I didn’t know how to respond, so I said something stupid like, “Oh, look at that. He’s so tiny.” I guess the man had been amused by the fact that the young woman had straightened the box and never even noticed it.

For the next fifteen minutes the three of us were totally engaged with watching the spider as it moved from the box onto the table top where it explored everything on the surface before returning to the exact spot where it had started. The more I watched, the more I became convinced that this was a very special little spider, more intelligent than your average eight-legged creature. If I got close enough, I could see its mouth moving, as if it was constantly tasting the air. Sometimes it would move slowly and at others it would dart from place to place, covering ground so quickly it didn’t seem possible for something so small. Part of my fascination with the little bugger, no doubt, came from the fact that I had just read a story by David Sedaris about a spider he had once kept as a pet.

After awhile, the spider climbed down from its perch and started to explore again. I was curious if it would follow the same pattern as before. But this time, it found a spot it liked on one of the magazines and settled down. This was just a couple feet from the guy’s wife, who was still having trouble with the idea of a spider wandering freely about the waiting area of the Eyemart.

“If it comes down on the floor, I’ll step on it,” the guy reassured her.

“Oh, don’t do that,” I said. “He’s a cute little fella.”

“He is cute,” the man agreed.

I figured we had settled it. We were not going to kill the spider, which by now I was thinking about somehow taking home with me to be my pet.

The spider must have been there on the magazine for a good five minutes when Amy and her daughter came back to wait while the technicians did their work of grinding lenses and putting them into frames. As she passed by the end of the table, Amy’s daughter reached down and started to pick up the very magazine where our little spider was lounging. Simultaneously, the three of us rose out of our seats and almost shouted, “No!” I went on to explain that our concern was not for her, but for the bug.

“Eeew,” she said as she recoiled from the magazine. She and Amy took seats and our little friend was safe once again.

Shortly, the young woman was called to the counter and her husband left with her. That left just Amy, her daughter and me sitting around the table. I got up and walked over to where the magazine had been moved so that the part of it with the spider was hanging off the table and very gently slid it back to safety.

“There you go, little fella,” I said leaning in close to the spider so that my face was only a few inches away.

Before I even got a chance to regain my seat, Amy got up and grabbed the magazine. She shook it until the spider fell onto the floor and raised her foot in preparation to stomp on it. What happened next was in slow motion, like the time when the judge I worked for in New York, a woman of 72 years of age, stepped on a plastic fork someone had dropped on the courthouse floor and slipped and went down. The whole incident seemed to last several minutes, but I was powerless to stop it from happening.

“No!” I yelled.

Everyone in the store stopped what they were doing and looked in our direction as Amy’s foot came down hard, crushing the little guy.

“I wanted to take him home,” I moaned.

“I know,” she said.