LEGGY, THE BATHROOM SPIDER

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It is with great sadness and a long onion face that I report to you the untimely passing of my dear and only pet Leggy, the bathroom spider. Leggy was a daddy long-legs and has been co-habitating in my bathroom for many months now. Yesterday morning, after my first cup of coffee, I entered the bathroom as I usually do and sat down. Instead of playfully scampering up to the corner of the room, Leggy just hung in his web, dangling like a piñata at an anger management convention. Did the deadly fumes finally overtake his tiny spidey lungs, or was it something less sinister like leprosy, mad cow disease, or gingivitis?

It is natural in a grieving state to want answers, and since the official autopsy and toxicology reports won’t be back for weeks I turned to a higher power. I asked Jesus why me, why is it my bathroom spider bit the dust? But since it was Sunday, Jesus was all booked up, therefore I consulted a secondary power, my magic 8-ball. With tears streaming down my face like a sad sad clown, I shook it and found my answer:


AS I SEE IT, YES


Ahhh, so simple and ambiguous yet at the same time complex and profound much like a Bazooka Joe comic. All Hail the infinite wisdom of the Magic 8-ball!


I know some of you are thinking “What kind of loser has a household pest as a pet?”, and you would not be unfair in that judgment as my own pop just asked me that in those exact words last weekend. Seems he was too busy with “more important obligations” to be able to pet sit for me while I am away next month setting up my Malt Liquors of the World exhibit at the state fairgrounds. Hater in the house, Et tu Popus. But what he and many skeptics fail to realize as that Leggy was more than just an insect, he was a friend. Sure you would never see Leggy scampering through a plastic labyrinth or scurrying mindlessly along some idiotic exercise wheel. Leggy was above that kind of self degrading, shuck and jive, minstrel entertainment. Like the late great ZZ Top once said, Leggy had legs, and knew how to use them.





When Leggy first came into my life I was sitting down in my bathroom one morning after a long night of scientific first person methodological analysis of Olde English, St Ides, Crazy Horse and other fine spirits contained in graduated 40 ounce cylinders. After a few sips of auto drip, I sounded off and things started moving along. My concentration was broken by some rapid scuttling along the starboard wall. Yes, it was Leggy, in an obvious hurry, retreating for higher ground. Being in the People’s Republic of No Man’s Land I was in no position to make a countermove, so I plotted my plan of attack while finishing what nature had already started. As I arose, a new and lighter man, I balled up some ghetto puffs and approached the beast to introduce it to a stinky swirly death. It was then that Leggy froze and looked at me with those warm and omnipotent eyes for the first time. Now I’m not crazy but I swear on my mother’s hairstylist’s stepmom’s grave that spider was talking to me. I decided to delay the execution to hear the mitigating circumstances. And it went a little something like this:

“Please good sir, spare my life. I’m just trying to survive like everyone else. What good could my death possibly bring to you I ask? Sure, there would be one less spider in this world, but is that a victory, I think not. Where is the love? Can’t we all just get along?”

Up until that day, next to Claymation, spiders were the one thing that gave me the heebie jeebies. They were creepy crawly sneaky little bastards that I went out of my way to dispose of in any way that I deemed fit. But Leggy was right, there was no victory in killing. My hands, or more accurately the bottom of my shoes, were stained with the blood of innocents. Where was my compassion, where was my mercy, where was my mind?

I decide to let Leggy go but made him pinky promise never to crawl on me while I’m sleeping, or poop in my coffee mug, or any of those other things spiders take great joy in doing. I fully expected the next time I went into the bathroom that Leggy would have been daddy long gone. But no, there he was chilling on the wall. He made himself a little sugar shack up in the corner when the goose noises would scare him, but other than that he was never afraid of me. In fact I think Leggy was rather fond of me, so I named him Leggy cause he had lots of legs.






It didn’t take long for us to become the best of chums. Leggy liked it when I fogged up the bathroom with Axe spray cause it made him smell fresh so he would run around in circles on the wall as if to say “hey ladies come check out my spidey sausage.” When he would see his reflection in the mirror he would run around in circles as if to say, “Damn you’re one pretty mother.” Sometimes when I would belt out “Love on the Rocks” in the shower Leggy would run around in circles on the ceiling as if to say “brother, you know my pain.” Yeah, we were real close.

But alas he is gone. There’s a hole where there once was a heart. I will be dressed in all black today, not because I think I’m Johnny Cash, but because I am in mourning over the loss of my friend, my comrade, my bathroom spider. Whether he is whimsically frolicking on Rainbow Bridge or burning in the fiery pits of spider hell, he will be missed. Tonight when I am self-medicating I will raise a toast to Leggy, an arachnid like no other. (sniff!)

In lieu of flowers I ask that someone add an audio clip to this thread of “Now I had the time of my life” from that Patrick Swayze movie where he rips that dude’s heart out with his bare hands. Leggy would have like that a lot.