On their twice weekly walk, Katrine and Tom often talked about mundane family matters like the kids, parenting, finances, the future. Sometimes they’d walk in silence, both being comfortable with that, both deep in their own thoughts.
Today wasn’t such a day.
“The boys clean up their room last night like I asked them?” asked Katrine.
“Well, not really. Ya see, we got to carrying on and roughhousing a bit….”
“Check that out, Tom. Looks like the guy is having some kind of nervous conniption fit or something.”
The man in question was another walker about 150 feet away, but his arms were flailing and he was trying to bat something away, wiping off his arms and legs. He turned around and continued his flailing about even after he had seen the other walking couple. He jumped up once and ran his hands through his hair and several times into the back collar of his shirt.
“Now, that’s funny,” Tom said. “That’s a case of the SpiderWeb Two Step. Done it a few times myself. Gotta be a looong web from the top of that tree to one of its branches. He walked right into it or several of them and can’t get it off.”
“You sure? Looks like he needs help.”
“Positive. Matter of fact, I had that happen to me at about the same spot a few weeks ago. Probably same spider too, little red thing, as I recall. Gives me the shivers just thinking about it. He’ll be fine. Bet he avoids that spot for a few weeks.”
“Well, this is about our halfway point. Shall we cross and go back?” asked Katrine.
“Sure, why not?” Tom said, shivering once more in the 90 degree morning July heat.
*******
Good read David! I hate spiders. I'm with Tom I would be doing a spider dance too.