Saturday, July 22, 2006

The spider and the driving lesson

















So I decided to give my 15 year old daughter her very first driving lesson. It was early Saturday morning and we went to the high school, where the parking lot was deserted. It was a great place to practice such feats as go, stop, turn right, turn left. My daughter was thrilled to be behind the wheel and making great progress in her parking lot navigations when suddenly she stood on the brakes and screamed. I'd glanced away from the road to watch her feet for a moment since she had a bad habit of using both and her scream made me look up in horror, expecting to see headlights, a semi bearing down on us, and of course, certain death. Instead I saw something worse.

The biggest spider I'd ever seen what racing across the windshield. On the outside, thank you God. The pictures above are from the internet and they do not do this beast justice. It was huge and it was fat and it was hairy. It had fangs and an attitude. For the next 10--count them 10--minutes the hairy beast ran crazed over the car, the roof, the doors, everywhere, defying gravity and wind velocity. I turned on the wipers, hopin to fling him off and guess what? He hopped on and held on and when the wipers were turned off, he merrily pranced away.

Finally, we could circle the parking lot no more, but we couldn't leave it either because my daughter is not yet street legal for driving and we were prisoner of the car. I jumped out, screaming of course, and searched for the spider. Where do you think he went? Clever devil crawled under the door's cracks and was racing inside as soon as the door opened. I am telling you, this was the cujo of spiders. I had a piece of paper in my hand and determined to save my daughter from being eaten alive, I flicked the spider off the door and onto the pavement. He hit the ground running and so did I. I slammed the door shut, screamed for daughter to move over and raced to the other side where I launched myself in and hit the gas.

You'll be happy to know we escaped, but we are both scarred for life now.

2 comments:

Heather Harper said...

Aack!

Pictures of spiders scare me.

I'm a weenie.

I don't even want to think of my kids growing up and learning how to drive. That is even scarier.

Calista Fox, Author said...

ROTFLMAO! That is one hell of a story, Erin! If you were a fisherman/woman... wow, the tales would be phenomenal! My massive fear of spiders and scorpions mirrors yours, so I was terrified right along with you!