Days of Spencer

March 20 - Can I Get a Witness?

2007-03-29T20:00:00.000-07:00

Wow. The miracles that happen to me never cease. Today, a frail elderly woman named Janet came to my door. She had had a fistful of pamphlets with names like "Awake!" and "the Watchtower" in one hand, and a small portfolio in the other.
She came to me to tell me about The Bible. She came to tell me about Jehovah.
I had been playing various Atari games for nearly two hours already, so my eyes were getting a bit fuzzy. Due to my level of restlessness, I decided it was high time I was saved.
Janet and I actually talked for quite a bit. I talked about my belief in a prime mover, but my problems with Jesus and the Bible being subjects of God. She immediately led me through countless passages of Acts, and Genesis, and the four Gospels, and told me of the consequences of blasphemy.
I have to admit it, though. I respect Jehovah's Witnesses and Atheists more than most Christians, because (for the most part) they have actually read the Book of books , not just blindly followed God. I think it stems from a good neighbor of mine, Lorrine Hood, who was also a witness and spent a great deal of time reading the Bible while she baby-sat me during morning hours. Mom would have to go to school (she was a teacher) no later than seven in the morning. I didn't have to be at school until nine.
Anyway, I invited Janet into my house, we sat on the couch, and we talked for a great wile about God, the Bible, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the history of man (and spider).

March 19 - A Cheer

2007-03-29T19:48:00.000-07:00

SPENCER! SPENCER!
Cute arachnid
Eats Crickets, ants and Katydids.
SPENCER! SPENCER!
He's our pet.
There's no cricket faster yet.
SPENCER! SPENCER!
Spoils of our excess.
SPENCER! SPENCER!
I digress.

March 18 - Comparisons

2007-03-29T19:46:00.000-07:00

Michelle.
She has glistengold eyes, brown and hazel. Her voice is soft and tinted with some backwoods, but still soft and lilting.
Spencer.
He had eight legs, eight eyes, two fangs, and rose-brown hair. I could pet him on the head, but he doesn't seem too fond of being a surrogate puppy.
As we pondered our impending purchase, no one had really been brave enough to hold the spider except the guy who fetched the spider and Aly.
Aly let the tarantula crawl up her arm until it reached her shoulder. Her face stretched away from the big bug as she looked to the sales clerk for assistance. The clerk carefully pulled the spider from his roost upon her shoulder and rested him in his hand.
As we stood there watching the tarantula sitting there watching us, Michelle played with the idea of letting a big hairy insect crawl on her arm. As soon as she agreed, the other salesclerk sat him in her open hand. She quickly withdrew the offer and suddenly, I wondered if she had a curiosity for the spider or me (wishful thinking, I guess). She decided not to touch the spider. Me neither.
The other clerk (Rick) tucked Spencer into his little "carry-out" box, which had three holes on either side. All five of us peered into the holes at the spider and then I looked up at Michelle. She returned the glance, even smiling a little.
After paying, I picked up Spencer while Hair picked up the Aquarium and all of its accessories. Aly took care of the cricket cup.
After we left the store, the ever-observant Hair realized my real take in this new pet. Spiders get all the cool girls.

March 17 - Blarney

2007-03-29T19:37:00.000-07:00

Spencer had taken a liking to the sandstone. It was his little perch where he could soak up lamplight and wait for stray crickets to fall like Chicken Little's sky and land in his square foot of desert, where he could snatch them up in his fangs and fill his appetite.
Speaking of spiders and meals:
Our furry friend seems to have become somewhat accustomed to his new surroundings. For the first two days, he moved very little without some form of being antagonized, whether it was a squirt with the misting bottle, a cricket on the head, or a puff of hot breath in his face.
One unlucky cricket stumbled into Spencer's spinnerets. Reacting to being goosed, Spencer quickly jumped several inches in the air (SPROING!), turned around, and immediately sank his fangs into the perpetrator.
For no other reason than bringing up conversation about a date, it was time to head to Jack's to see Michelle so I grabbed a bunch of laundry and dumped them off at the Laundromat, then went in to Jack's. Rick (the first to touch the spider) was at the front counter. Before I said a word, he gestured to the back of the store, near the dog cages.
Michelle was there, filling dog and cat bowls with food.
"Hey, how's your spider?" she asked.
"Oh, he's fine. What are you doing after work?"
"Nothing, really."
"Would you like to go out for dinner?"
"I don't get off for another hour."
"Oh, that's okay."
"Sure, I'd love to."
"You like Chinese?"
"I love it."
"China Dragon?"
"Yeah, but there's one problem."
"What is that?"
"I have a boyfriend."
The conversation reached a stopping point. Then I carelessly invited him along, too. She laughed and said, "Well, maybe it's better if we don't go out."
The more I look back at that moment, the more I think the conversation should have gone like this:
"Hey, how's your spider?" she asked.
"Oh, he's fine. What are you doing after work?"
"I have a boyfriend."
"You like Chinese?"
"I have a boyfriend."
"China Dragon?"
"I have a boyfriend."
"Well, maybe some other time?"
"I have a boyfriend."
"Alright, you have a nice day then."
"I have a boyfriend."
But it didn't go like that at all. In fact, I found it quite miserable.
I quickly put my tail between my legs , stopped at China Dragon and took my Moo Goo Gai Pan and my sorry self home. Good ole Spencer was still on his perch, waiting to launch into yet another cricket in the middle of the night so I could delight in the sounds of a cricket's life literally grinding to a halt while I tried to sleep. It was okay, though. I knew he wouldn't ever reject me for a dinner date.
I sat in front of the television, beside the spider, and enjoyed dinner. Alone.

March 16 - Time to Name the Pet

2007-03-29T19:36:00.000-07:00

Hair came home from work to find Aly and me watching "The Simpsons." He brought home a pizza, so we opened it and began eating. Within moments it was gone.
Hair looked up from his last slice of pizza over at the spider. "Have you fed it yet?"
"Yeah," said Aly, as she got up and plopped on the couch. She leaned backward, arching her back and looked at the spider. It stared right back at her.
"Have you given it a name?" she asked.
I shook my head, then thought for a moment. "I was thinking Maximilian, actually. Aly and Hair quickly vetoed that name as quickly as I had come up with it.
"How about Sydney?" suggested Hair.
"Hmmm," I thought, "Sydney." That had a nice ring to it.
"How about Alex?" I suggested, not ready to rest on one of the first names we came up with.
"No," answered Aly, then a moment of silence followed.
She fell back and laid prostrate on the couch, looking up at the ceiling, then began playing with her hair, pulling it over her forehead and down into her mouth, chewing on the ends. "Spencer," she said, breaking the silence, as Hair and I watched the lifeless bug in its terrarium. Or, as Hair preferred saying, the "terrorium."
"Spencer it is," I said. Hair simply nodded in agreement and gazed at the bug, waiting for the excitement to begin.
Aly dumped the whole cup of crickets on the spider. He must have felt like a Spanish child who had just taken the lucky swing at a piñata.
She said that she liked Robert Urich on the detective show of the same name. Hair and I turned from our perch at the back of the couch, where we had been anxiously waiting for the Spider to launch into his prey, and then looked at each other. I liked it. So did Hair. And so it was. We had a name for the hairy monster sitting at the end of the couch in our living room.
Spencer.

March 15 - Chinese Food, American Girls, African Bugs

2007-03-28T19:53:00.000-07:00

I came home from school and had time to kill before work, as did Hair. Aly always had time to kill. She was in between high school and college, so road trips weren't only fun, but mandatory.
We went to China Dragon (as usual) then went to the Pet Store (as usual).
But, after entering the pet store today, the purpose of the journey turned quickly. Susceptible to young brown-eyed girls, I was taken aback by one of the salesclerks. She was very plain-Jane, but very attractive in her own right. Her name was Michelle and Michelle became the sudden sense of purpose for this adventure.
As Hair and Aly strolled through the fish section, I lingered back by the dog cages. That's where Michelle was lingering, too. I made small talk about dogs and how long she had been working there, and if she liked her job and other nonesuch. I think she was on to my plan, but continued to play along, at least for the time being.
Hair came around the corner and saw the two of us talking, and broke it up immediately, also aware of my intent.
"Hey, let's get an aquarium for the apartment," he suggested, "I've always wanted some fish."
"Sure," I answered, then followed him to the wall lined with aquariums and fish.
We looked at tetras and goldfish. Neither the tetras nor the goldfish were very appealing though. Then we saw some Japanese Koi and some balloon fish. The Koi were large fish of many differing varieties, spotted in orange black, silver and white.
Aly had taken a liking to the Koi almost instantly. The balloon fish were also beautiful. They were goldfish with large cheeks, sort of like Dizzy Gillespie. We loved them. Unfortunately, the Koi liked the balloon fish, too. So much so that the balloon fish was in the Koi's diet, so that, too, seemed to be a bad choice of pet.
After that, we went to the back room where the big fish lurked. We saw a beautiful Sand Shark. Again, there was a problem here. The Sand Shark was only 50 dollars, but we would have to get a 20-gallon tank, as well as the appropriate accessories.
This left us spending our next two paychecks.
When we finally agreed on the combination of fish we thought we wanted, I quickly did the math in my head, and started to think this was more trouble than it was worth.
About that time, Michelle appeared again, and the small talk picked up where we left off and I kind of liked that. The small group wandered around the store until I saw something that had caught my eye.
It was a rose-haired tarantula.
"A tarantula?" asked Hair.
"Yeah," I replied. In all actuality, I've always wanted one. Well, ever since I found out my last roommate had a fear of spiders and she had begun to get on my nerves. I think that was the actual starting point in my love affair with big creepy insects.

"What would we do with him?" asked Aly.
I didn't know. I actually wanted a dog, but wasn't sure of my ability to commit to caring for a dog. I knew that was a big responsibility, so to bridge my pet gap, I felt a spider would do just fine.
My indecision on buying a pet may have been a subliminal message originally instilled in me when my father decided that selling the "GRIT" newspaper would be a good warm-up for delivering the local paper. He reassured me that if I sell just thirty issues of GRIT a week, he would match the 24 cents per paper offered by the publishers of "America's Family Newspaper".
That was a safe bet on his part. Though the average kid delivered about 35-40 papers a day, and was only paid two or three cents per delivery, they didn't have to sell anything. Local news is inherently more interesting than features about twelve uses for Pumpkin in the house other than Pie.
Well, this would be different, I thought to myself as I looked at the bug sitting still in his small plastic cage.
"How much is he?" I asked.
Michelle picked up a clipboard and flipped through it.
"Sixteen ninety-nine."
"Well, that's a lot cheaper than a dozen fish," said Hair.
"Okay, we'll take it,"
Michelle quickly ran to the back of the store and retrieved the other sales clerk, who came out with a small box. He lowered a cupped hand into the cage, scooped up the spider, then dumped him into the box. Five sets of eyes peered down on the tiny tarantula. He cowered in the corner of his box, not knowing what we would do next.
As soon as we arrived home, it was time to make a place for our new conversation piece. Hair went to the attic and emptied out a large cardboard storage box. He folded it closed and turned it on its side. It rested uneasily as we set the aquarium upon it. We dumped some old encyclopedias inside, and it felt at least a little more stable than it had before.
Hair emptied the first bag of sand into the aquarium while I steadied the sides of the box, just in case. The aquarium rested easily on the box as he shook out the first bag, He added the second bag and began stirring the sand around, trying to arrange a good nest for our fuzzy little pet. The cardboard box wobbled a slight bit, but settled down as we propped it between the wall and loveseat
I grabbed the hollow log, sandstone and decorative skull and arranged them in the bottom of the aquarium for best effect.
"Move the skull to the back corner," he suggested as he pointed out where he wanted it to go.
"I like it better here," I said.
"Well, the skull was my idea. You can put the stone and log wherever you want, but I get the skull," replied Hair.
I relented and the skull was moved to the rear left corner of the terrarium, half-buried in sand. We were all more impressed with the skull than the spider, especially when the spider did weird things in conjunction with the skull, like squeezing through the eye sockets, the effect was pretty awesome, at least as far as we were concerned.

March 14 - The Quarter Century Mark

2007-03-28T19:48:00.000-07:00

Being my twenty-fifth birthday, there was no time like the present to buy myself a birthday gift, so I did.
My roommate Hair and his girlfriend Aly had bought me a case of Coca-Cola, knowing my unyielding addiction to Coke. Of all the possible gifts I could have received, I don’t think any would have been as good as those 24 cans of Coca-Cola. Possibly a big red Coke machine with the narrow glass door that you have to open, then you grab the top of the bottle, pull it out slowly from two metal jaws and there you have it, a ten-ounce glass container of ambrosia! But, he works as a delivery driver at Pizza Hut, and I cannot expect the world.
I used to work at a general store with a machine just like that.
Late one summer night after the store was closed, a group of kids came armed with Styrofoam cups and a bottle opener. They popped open the bottles and let the contents pour into their cups. It was a cool trick until they used up all the slots of soda. That continued for a short time until (as far as I can assume) someone decided to bring a straw to finish the part that couldn't beat the laws of physics.
That week was the last time I saw ten ounce bottles. My great-uncle Oliver always complained about the change from 10 ounce to 16 ounce bottles. "Nobody can drink that much!" I doubt I could make him believe some of my friends aren't satisfied with two-liters. Ollie would turn in his grave.
After I put the Coke in the refrigerator, we went to China Dragon to eat dinner. Hair and Aly paid for that, too. The place is far from classy (as about half of all Chinese places are). The tables are awkwardly small and mismatched, and the chairs do not balance on the tiled floor. Or - maybe the floor doe not balance under the chairs. Anyway, we sat down and ate large portions of Moo Goo Gai Pan, General Tso's Chicken, and Triple Delight, as well as the regular assortment of side dishes.
Then, with nothing better to do, we journeyed through a nearby strip mall, stopping at the clothing and sports stores when Aly saw the sign.
Jacks Aquarium & Pets.
"Let's go in," she said. We, as custom was, said nothing, but followed. There was not much to do in the strip mall, so this was a welcome stop.