yo So it has been a fairly busy time of late - several birthdays having gone or shortly going by; all those of us whose folks presumably had fairly quiet Christmases and New Years' back in the day. As a result, I have had the good fortune of celebrating several comings of age - always a big event, particularly in my neck of the woods - as several close friends from work and karate finally turned 21. Yes - at this stage, I do feel particularly old. Two such events occurred fairly recently. One involves foreign languages, racism, a large spider, and loads of peeing in the great outdoors. The other involves a randy, recently remarried mother, a pair of very red testicles (not related, surprisingly), a ghastly amount of fresh vomit, and loads of peeing in the great outdoors. Peeing in the great outdoors is a very liberating thing - I suggest you try it. As for the first one, the only real talking point of the evening was the large spider. I got a phone-call from home half-way through proceedings to ask me to please return at my earliest convenience on account of the house being under assault by a somewhat determined and fairly capacious arachnid. I was not all that keen to head home at that precise time on account of me a:) being well in there with some chick (another story, best left untold) and b:) having managed to misjudge my alcohol tolerance levels and not be in the best shape in the world to drive home. The downside being I could actually see the house from the party since it was literally a baseball field away - the party was held at the sports club over the road from our house. Needless to say, I was not in any position to refuse coming home because mother and sister both a little concerned about said large spider. When I say a little concerned, I mean blindly terrified. We are talking a few steps past mere dislike of spiders and well into the territory of full-blown arachnophobia here. I made my excuses to the bird who was no doubt planning to jump my bones and headed home, trying very hard to will the alcohol from my system. It's kinda a respect thing - I wouldn't ever get home completely wrecked for the sake of my mom, who has Very Fixed Ideas about what is good for me, and thus her. It really is a lot easier to either not get plastered - and that suits me too since I am unpleasant when hungover - or to sleep out on the nights where that sort of thing is likely. No such luck tonight, though. Anyway, I got into the house and attempted to appear completely sober; I'm not sure I succeeded, to be truthful, but the sheer panic ensuing in the house means I got away with it. I ask about the whereabouts of said archnoic beast, and pick up a smiting shoe. I aim for the back door and my semi-hysterical sister ells me I can't go out there, I have to go through the garage because it was right there near the back door and she is terrified that it will come into the house. She is in tears at this point. It is at this point that I realise that this is not the usual garden-variety large garden spider, or something similar, but may well be into the realm of the dreaded baboon spider, or as it is known scientifically, the African Tarantula. Large, hairy, gray-brown and scary, and we are about the only people in our area who have not had one in the house. I had always said that if we find one in the house, we leave and sell the house, in that order. I am not overly keen on huge spiders either, you see. Luckily it is very much a penis thing that alcohol makes you bulletproof, and luckily I have a penis and had lots of alcohol and thus was not only bulletproof but Bullitproof (more hardcore, you see) and also spider-proof. I grabbed the keys to the garage door and headed in there. Couldn't get the garage back door to open into the courtyard though, and so wrestled with it for a time before it finally popped open adn I stumbled out into the dark to meet my fate. It was 2am, a clear night, dark, cold and crisp. I could taste electricity on my tongue - probably just cheap wine repeating on me - and hear my heart pounding in my head as I crossed the threshold and quicly shut the garage door behind me. I'm in the courtyard, washing line to my left, back door leading into the house on my right, kitchen windows up ahead. I'd been advised that it had first been on the wall under the kitchen windows, and my sister had taken station near the back door and watched it through the glass, determined to know where it was until I arrived home to kill it. She looked away for a second and it disappeared. That was when she had the nervous breakdown and I was phoned to come home now. I look around quickly, the alcohol spinning the world gently around in my poor vision. Nothing. I'm wondering if it has headed into the roof to mate and produce an army, when my sister yells at me through the back door that it was near the dustbin (trashcan in American) by the windows. I take a doddery step forward and peer over the bin. I realise that I am peering down the length of two legs, with another six bringing up the rear, as I am face to face with a large rain spider, something which has only been in the house once before, very briefly, before I annihilated it with a broomstick and a doorframe. With my hand at full stretch, I could not actually cover it, this is how big it was. Not that I'd want to touch it, of course, because... no. It is on the wall behind the bin and just out of reach of any sort of good killing blow. I would need to move the bin to hit it, and moving bins with spiders nearby always makes them run like the dickens, I have found. The same was true that morning, at 2am in the crisp cold, with the taste of electricity on my tongue and fire in my veins as I move the bin and it moved rapidly upwards,heading for the roof. Without thinking, I swung my shoe and smashed it against the wall. The plus side about having the spider on the wall and not in a web is that you don't misjudge your arc and end up breaking the web and having the spider fall onto your head because your arm movement is round and nor straight. So the shoe managed quite nicely to make the spider about eight inches wider and about 3 inches thinner than when it started running. As the body fell onto the floor, I mashed it another three times with my size 13 shoe, waking up the neighbours in the process. Satisfied that it was dead, very very dead, I managed to stumble back into the house and receive a hero's welcome, all except for the hero's welcome part. In fairness, I made excuses to go and try to get my contact lenses out without putting my eye out - another downside to drunken debauchery - and headed off to bed. By the time I got up the next morning, ants had done away with the leftovers of the spider, and I was left with a small sense of pride and a nasty buzzing headache. -d-