March 6, 2014 | 304 words
The Sunday before Ash Wednesday I saw a man reach for a black widow spider with his bare hand, moving to enclose and crush it, grinning with carelessness. We were eating when we saw the spider – I noticed her first, hanging from the stucco wall seven feet above the ground, twisting on an invisible thread, her bulging abdomen and inkblot size a clear message: danger.
“It’s a black widow,” we said to the young man, that late-adolescence I still think is “my age,” and he nodded like he understood, already – or still – sporting a sloppy grin. We had been watching it for a while now, fascinated by its intricate spinning as one is obliged to be when observing a spider, but marveling most at its proximity, at our ability to sit so near this fearsome thing and realize its power so diminished by its distraction, our early recognition.
We all screamed when he reached for it, the moment elongating and condensing around this sudden and inconceivable realization that he meant to grab it in his fist, protected by nothing but a thin plastic food-service glove. I only heard my undignified nonoNONO! after it had left my lips, like my ears were on a time delay. He dropped the spider – not because he now understood what it was, but because we startled him by yelling – and stomped on it, still grinning.
We tried to explain to him what he had almost just done – that’s a black widow – if that stung you, you’d be in the hospital – but he just turned the grin at us and held up his hand to show us his saran-wrap glove. I spent the rest of the day wondering what it was like to have no clue what a black widow spider is, to think a plastic glove functioned like armor.
