I watch those survival shows on television religiously. Not because I want to, but because I can never manage to get control of the remote.
After watching so many survival shows, I had assumed that I might have learned something about survival in an inhospitable environment… like my shower. However, for some reason, I’ve never seen one of those shows filmed in a shower… where a big, fat, hairy, lethal-looking spider lived. So, I wasn’t prepared with the proper knowledge or tools to survive that experience.
I was feeling pretty fine when I stepped into my shower and the first steamy blast of water hit me in the face. I had my eyes closed, of course, because hot water on cold eyes might make my eyeballs shatter.
It wasn’t long before I turned around and let the water saturate my hair. Then, I opened my eyes and froze as I spied that spider perched in the top corner of my shower.
It didn’t move, though, so I thought maybe it was sleeping. If I was quick and quiet, I just might make it out of there alive. Then, I would simply inform my husband, the resident monster killer, to go in there and “take care of it.”
I reached for the shampoo with both eyes on my nemesis.
You know that part in the movies where the big strong guy makes a sudden move toward the wimpy guy and the wimpy guy runs away? The strong guy never even touches the wimpy guy, but he accomplishes his goal of getting rid of the wimpy guy anyway.
Well, picture a big, fat, hairy spider making that move and a big, fat, naked woman not having anywhere to run. The only weapon in my hand was the bottle of shampoo which I immediately put to use, squirting a big glob of shampoo toward the spider. Unfortunately, shampoo doesn’t lend itself to squirting in an upward direction, so I merely managed to get it all over my hands and the floor of the shower, which made things considerably more slippery.
The spider only moved once so I thought that maybe it was the spider equivalent of rolling over in his sleep. Or maybe spiders get Restless Leg Syndrome. That made me feel just the tiniest bit sorry for him, having eight legs and all.
I watched him closely as I shampooed my hair and I couldn’t bring myself to close my eyes when I rinsed. That is why my vision was rather blurry when he moved again and I couldn’t find a proper weapon. As my feet fought to gain purchase on the slippery floor, my shampoo-coated hands grabbed a long-handled loofah and I wielded it like a samurai in the general direction of the spider. The loofah connected with four bottles of shampoo, a jumbo pump bottle of body wash and my razor. All of which came crashing down into the same tub my feet were still trying to occupy. The razor missed me, but the body wash zeroed in on my big toe and made excruciatingly painful contact.
I was now wet, naked, and blind, trying desperately not to hop on my one good foot in the slippery tub, gritting my teeth in pain, and holding my long-handled loofah. The spider was frustratingly… fine. It was just as well, though. You can’t get spider guts out of a loofah and I paid ten bucks for that thing. Not to mention the many Bed, Bath & Beyond expeditions it took to find one.
I squinted up at that spider. “Okay, you win, you little monster.” I got out of the shower, toweled dry, and limped to the kitchen to finish rinsing my hair over the sink.
When my husband came home, he saw me nursing my sore foot and asked, “What happened to you?”
I looked at him with blood-shot eyes that had seen a remarkable amount of shampoo and said, “There’s a monster in the shower you need to take care of. Look for an eight-legged one who’s got Restless Leg Syndrome and is grinning like a Cheshire cat.”
Laura Snyder is a nationally syndicated columnist, author & speaker. You can reach Laura at lsnyder@lauraonlife.comlife.com.