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Monday, April 2, 2012

The Spider Cruise


Mrs. Chatterbox is the bravest person I’ve ever known.


Let me explain. First, it’s important to know that she’s terrified of spiders. And with good reason. At the age of ten she was an Army brat growing up in Berlin. Her family lived in a house at the edge of a small forest, and one evening her older brother was playing with the hose and forgot to turn it off. That evening the basement, which was directly below her bedroom, flooded.


Sometime during the night she felt something crawling on her. She pulled the chain on the light bulb dangling overhead. When the light blinked on she saw that her bed was black with spiders. They were on her pillow, her arms and legs, on the chain and light bulb. I’m told she screamed for ten minutes before any sound came out of her mouth.


Flash forward twenty years. Mrs. C. and I are married with a ten month old baby. Her boss offers us his luxury vacation house on Flathead Lake in Montana for a few days and we gladly accept. We were even given permission to use his forty foot motorboat, which cost more than our house. When we arrived, the boat was in storage in the adjoining boathouse, where it had remained, unused, that entire summer. I knew nothing about boats but figured they drove like cars. It had been a long drive from Portland so we settled into the beautiful cabin at the water’s edge. The next day we were anxious for adventure. We packed a picnic lunch, strapped baby CJ into the car seat I removed from our old Fairmont station wagon, and boarded the boat.


If you haven’t seen Flathead Lake, it’s huge; you can barely see to the other side. And it’s shallow in places with rocks sticking up that can rip out the bottom of a boat. So I was being extremely careful, steering the boat around sharp rocks and feeling totally connected with my seafaring ancestors. We were twenty minutes from shore when Mrs. C. started screaming.


I couldn’t see her from where I was steering the boat so I powered down the engine and dashed over to check out the commotion. CJ was strapped into his car seat, crying, but otherwise he looked fine. But Mrs. C: I can only say I’d never seen that look on her face. She had a shoe in each hand. I was about to say something, but then I saw them—spiders, big and brown, nasty looking with orange stripes, hundreds of them, probably more. Mrs. C was too busy to speak; she was whacking spiders with the shoes and stomping on them with her bare feet when they came anywhere near little CJ. Squished spiders circled her in what looked like a relentless offensive to reach the baby. My wife was pounding and stomping so hard she looked like she was performing a ritualistic dance.


The message she shot me with her frantic eyes finally registered; I couldn’t help kill the spiders—they were everywhere— but I could race that boat back to the dock as quickly as humanly possible. And that’s what I did, even though my unfamiliarity with the lake and its projecting rocks slowed us down. I’ll never forget the pounding sound of my wife’s shoes and feet in the back of the boat.


It seemed an eternity, but we were back in the harbor in fifteen minutes. Mrs. C. had already convinced me she was the bravest woman alive, but I was about to learn she was also one of the smartest. My stomach had been in my mouth as I piloted the boat home, and now that we were approaching the dock I started to relax. The Spider Cruise to Hell was coming to an end.


I couldn’t have imagined that in a matter of minutes something would happen capable

of preventing little CJ from seeing his first birthday.


The rest on Wednesday: Docking With Disaster

29 comments:

  1. Yikes, what a terrifying story! Guess if you borrow someone's boat, spray some pesticide around first.

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  2. wow! what an eventful short trip! I'll be back Wednesday to see what happened!

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  3. My goose bumps have goose bumps! You need to get her a superhero cape. I might have just gone over the side, baby with me, and swam back to shore.

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  4. Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! Yuck!!!!

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  5. My skin is crawling! Can't wait for the next part!

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  6. I'm not especially bothered by spiders, but that many probably would have even creeped me out. K would have been walking on water trying to escape. Haha!

    S

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  7. That is terrifying. I am not fond of spiders but Mrs. Chatterbox has real reason to be totally freaked out by them. I applaud her for having the ability to try to kill them. I think I would have been frozen...well except for the screaming part...that would have been happening.

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  8. I hate spiders, but I hate snakes worse. She is indeed brave.

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  9. Yep, I would have fumigated the boat the day before then vacuumed up the dead the morning of the cruise. I know all about boats in a boathouse/slip that are never used. I also know that taking the boat out of the boathouse is far easier than putting it back in too. Far, far easier.

    Have a terrific day. :)

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  10. Wow, that even creeped me out. You are cruel to make us wait until Wednesday to hear the denouement.

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  11. I agree you're cruel ... but will be back on Wednesday for the rest of the story.

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  12. Yes, back on wednesday for sure. A skin crawling tale you tell. I survived a bad spider bite while on assignment in the bush in the Dominican Republic, so I am particularly unnerved by your story.

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  13. Now I have to read the rest!

    I was laughing out loud until the very end. The image of Mrs. C's bed black with spiders was terrifying, but the image of her smacking spiders right and left with her shoes and bare feet was pretty funny. She IS a brave woman!

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  14. Hi Stephen,
    The ONLY thing that kept me reading your blog post is your superior writing skills, I HATE spiders just like your brave wife. How she did what she did is amazing. What a spectacular, stellar mother she is. Brave, seriously.
    You're totally right in your comments about my black & white drawing, the perspective of the road was wrong, but by the time I noticed it was too late, so to everyone else i'm claiming..'ummm, yup, the road goes up hill!!)hehehe.
    Best,
    Jenn

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  15. As a confirmed arachophile, even i would have been terrified. Gads.

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  16. Oh, my. I'm not afraid of a spider, but I would be having a similar panic in the face of so many.

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  17. Please offer my sincerest apologies to Mrs. Chatterbox, for I laughed out loud at the "...performing a ritualistic dance."

    One should not laugh at spiders with orange stripes.

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  18. EWW!!.. so gross! Well done Mrs C.

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  19. What an amazing story! Poor Mrs. Chatterbox. For that that to happen twice in a lifetime with so many! OH, poor thing with her dance!

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  20. OMG! Spiders give me the willies!! Creepy crawly skin right now. Waiting for the next part of the story!!!

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  21. Oh yuck. That's an invasion of spiders. Poor Mrs. Chatterbox. She is indeed a brave one. Looking forward to part two.. it sounds so ominous.

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  22. Lord God Almighty!How dare you make me wait? Mrs. C was so brave, trying to protect the Baby C. I would have jumped overboard, preferring to drown.

    Love,
    Janie

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  23. i would have done the same for my baby.
    :) i do hate spiders.

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  24. That's one piece of nightmare inducing narrative, Stephen! I was planning to take a little nap -- think I'll put it off a little while longer...

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  25. I tried to leave a comment yesterday but my phone wouldn't allow me to. It's getting above itself, that phone. I think I said I was very impressed by Mrs. Chatterbox. When I think of my own phobia (small dead animals) I can't bear the idea of having them anywhere near me. Luckily they're not likely to come creeping out of dark corners, at least I hope not - that really WOULD be horrible!

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  26. See? No one believes me when I say that Spiders are AWARE...and CRAFTY...

    Man, they're out to get Mrs. C, I'm afraid. Karma from a previous life? Sheesh- she needs a priest- or an exterminator.
    YUCK
    Tracy

    P.S.- I hope you appreciate what an extraordinary woman you married??

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  27. Poor Mrs. C. I have never been surrounded my any "buggy or spidery" such creatures and never want to test myself like that. Waiting for part 2.

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  28. This is quite a compelling story! I agree with Hilary!!

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  29. So what kind of spider were they? Can you post a picture? I'm curious.

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