Hurray! Good weather is finally here! Short sleeves and windows rolled down! Beaches and boats! Backyards, burgers and brats! Green grass and blue skies! Sunshine and love all around!
...annnnd I'm good. Let's roll winter as soon as possible. Mr. Frost, do your worst. Ice and snow, please.
Don't get me wrong, I love it when it starts getting nice out. I have it on good authority that in the summertime, when the weather is high, you can stretch right up and touch the sky, and I guess that's a good thing. I love nice weather.
Specifically, I love it for about three weeks. That's how much magic time I usually get every spring before two things start happening: (1) The air fills with pollen, turning me into an allergy-riddled cartoon character for most of the spring, and (2) the air and ground quickly fill with all manner of creepy-crawlies who have the decency to die off and/or bury themselves all winter long.
Antihistamines usually keep my allergies in check during the summer, but in the springtime, all bets are off. I'm a sniffling, sneezing wreck of a human being, which is super fun considering we now live in an era where sneezing in public makes everyone around you assume that you're a plague rat. I have horrible hay fever, but the worst allergy I have is to bees. The last time I got stung, I was teeny-tiny, but I puffed up like the Michelin Man. There's a fair chance I've since outgrown the allergy, but I'm in no hurry to find out. I suppose I could get tested and carry around an epi-pen in case of emergency, but my long-time strategy instead seems to be acting like a ninny and fleeing in terror any time anything remotely bee-sized or bee-shaped comes near me.
Last weekend, I was excited to soak up the good weather. I walked outside, felt the warmth of the sun, took in a deep breath of fresh air... and swallowed about a half dozen gnats. What happened to my few fleeting weeks of bug-free spring bliss? This past Monday, I realized they were gone. It was a beautiful morning, and I was optimistic about the work week. I headed to my car with a coffee in one hand and a bagel in the other. It only took one breath to feel it: that little tickle in my nose that meant an allergy fit was seconds away.
Sure enough, as I stepped into the garage and pushed the button to open the overhead door, I started rapid-fire sneezing uncontrollably. That's when things got real.
No sooner had I pushed the button to open the garage door when, out of absolute and complete nowhere, a spider roughly the size of Cthulhu base-jumped from parts unknown and fell directly onto the back of my right hand. Why this happened, I have no idea? Was the spider suicidal? Did my sneezing terrify it? Was it a big fan of my column and desperately wanted a selfie? We may never know the answers.
I had no idea what kind of spider it was, nor did I ask. If I had to guess, I'd say it was most definitely a brown-widow-recluse-antula that feeds on a diet of human suffering. When I was recounting the story to one of my friends, she asked if it had a distinctive violin marking on its back. I didn't check, as I was a little preoccupied trying not to have an aneurysm.
Keep in mind that one hand was holding coffee, the other clutching a bagel, and I was still sneezing uncontrollably. Before I could even react to the horrifying reality of a giant spider falling onto my hand out of nowhere, it scampered up my arm and BEHIND MY BACK and that's where things get blurry.
The next second went by quickly. I yeeted the bagel cream-cheese side down onto the front windshield of my car. I dropped the coffee square onto my foot, where it pretty much exploded and sprayed coffee all over the garage, my white car, and the light tan khakis I was excited were back in season. Unburdened of both coffee AND bagel, my hands were then free to claw at my shirts, desperately ripping the fabric from my body like the lamest Hulk movie ever made, until I stood in the garage half-naked and still sneezing.
Was I screaming, you might ask? No, don't be absurd. Screaming requires some sort of cognitive function. A synapse in my brain would've needed to make that conscious decision and conveyed the order to my mouth, lungs, and larynx. There was no time for such frivolity. Instead, the noise that came out of my mouth was entirely outside of the control of my brain. It was guttural, it was primal, it was pure instinct. It also sounded a lot like "wfuugaaaahfrarkel." It's also a noise not recommended to make while sneezing, which caused me to bite my tongue so hard it started to swell.
I spun around like a dog chasing its tail, desperately yelling, "Ith it off me? ITH IT OFF ME?" That's when I saw my new spider-friend hustling away from the coffee-soaked laundry pile that until recently had been half the clothes on my body. Also, don't forget the whole time this was occurring, my garage door was opening triumphantly as if it were the opening curtain rising on my bravely experimental one-man thinkpiece, "Shane and the Amazing Coffee-Colored Dreamcoat Full of Spiders." I can only hope and pray no neighbor saw me. They already think I'm a little weird, and I'm pretty sure people have been institutionalized for less dramatic performances than my public salute to arachnophobia.
So we're less than one week into good weather and I've already had multiple 30-sneeze salutes to the morning AND been mugged by a spider. This doesn't bode well for the summer season. Please send help to come kill the spider. Also, make sure the help you send doesn't touch my garage door, because it's now covered in enough Raid to kill a small cow. Happy spring, everyone. I'll wave to you from the air conditioning.
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