The spider managed to swing between the hinges of the door and come to rest on my cabinet. All the better to squarsh him, I thought. But with what? I didn't want to get too close. I grabbed what was immediately at hand. An eighteen inch long pink bubble wand. You have one of those lying around your kitchen, don't you?
I lunged, mighty pink plastic wand leading, to poke at the creature. He moved to one side, dodging me. It was then that I realized, this arachnid had eyes. Two big black beady ones, pointing straight ahead, fixed on me.
Oh, now it was on. I lunged. He bobbed. I lunged again. He weaved. Then, I started to get scared. What if he was one of those "jumping" spiders? What if I poked, and missed, and he jumped on me? The fit I would have, screaming and flailing around the kitchen, would have been enough to put me in the hospital.
All of my lunging and screaming distracted the children from Sesame Street. They were rapt by the spectacle that was there mother. Their strong, self-assured, never-one-to-be-a-damsel-in-distress mother, shrieking like girl over a little bug. (In my defense, he was not all that little, and he was ugly.)
Finally, Jonah says, "Mom, I can kill it."
"Can you? Really?" My sense of relief was palpable and yes, a wee bit embarrassing.
Jonah, age five, thirty-nine pounds soaking wet, strode into my kitchen, and took up the mighty pink wand. He eyed his opponent briefly, inhaled, focused, exhaled, and beat that spider to the ground where he beat on it some more until it was dead. With his mother, the whole time screaming, "Kill it, kill it, kill it!!!"
I was so proud of him. He stepped up to protect me, one of his women folk. But then, as he went back to watching Sesame Street, I heard him say, "Finally, I got to kill something." Do you think this is going to be a problem?
Just for the record, my foe was (I looked it up later) what is known as a black and white jumping spider. Ugly, no?
The top image is a Happy Meal Toy (don't judge me) from the latest Shrek movie (which they won't see) that Jonah dressed up with a shield and sword so that it could battle a dragon. See below.
'Twas an epic tale of Knights and Mommy Princesses. Pretty awesome. I laughed. The other day I was in the shower and my uber flamboyant gay roommate (who is more prone to PMS than I am), had to come kill a spider for me. He felt like quite the man.
ReplyDeleteBoys are like that. And so are Mothers.
ReplyDeleteThere are loads of 'right on' girls that will not have anything sharper that a spoon in the house having been taken with the notion of 'World Peace' and that Men are the cause of wars and all those nasty things. So if only they as Mothers could keep weaponry out of the hands and therefore the thoughts of the fruit of their wombs everything would be rosy.
Such the ship sails under the helm of the peaceful Captain until one day she finds the homemade crew at war using anything they can get their hands on and morphing it into a deadly weapon like a MacIver only more ingenious.
As to any worries you have about the enjoyment derived from having smote, your best bet is a Karate, Judo, Fencing but not boxing class. For you will need something that all of them can do. And don't get over worried when he lamps one of his siblings.
But stay well away from notions of Mommy Princesses, that's just handing some shrink his house payment.
Well put Vince.
ReplyDeleteWe decided early on that there was no point in trying to keep weaponry away from our kids as they were likely to imagine their own. We just roll with it. But if anything used as such makes contact, it get confiscated. Pretending to buckle your brother's swash is one thing. Beating him with a stick is another.
And I am no princess, but I find that son, like father, wants to know that I do need him, at least sometimes.
I laughed out loud with the "I finally got to kill something" comment. It must be hardwired into some kids (read: boys -- mostly anyway). I just saw Shrek tonight with my stepdaughter and it was really cute. But my stepdaughter is 31, so she is old enough to see it. I was thinking that it actually would be kind of scary for little kids. Meaning I would have been scared under the age of 8 at least. But good ending, love wins out, and even if you know you are have love, you still need to remember to appreciate it. Especially when the going gets a bit rough.
ReplyDeleteJumping spiders? Eeeeeeeeek! And I'm sure I've heard exactly the same thing about finally getting to kill something, coming out of my boys' mouths when they were little. Yes, many boys need to go through that phase no matter what, and if you deny it, you might as well deny them breath. I remember when my husband would tickle me or we'd wrestle for the remote or something, my second son would attack him and tell him to 'leave mommy alone!' What a little knight he was. I finally had to tell him I didn't really need him to fight for me, though. I was pretty capable of handling it on my own.
ReplyDeletelove it!!! I'll leave the creative writing to you ;)
ReplyDelete