Mirror Woes

Yesterday our friend Milciades' grandfather died.  It was cold, so he decided to travel to the settin' up (wake) with us rather than on his motorcycle.  I jumped in the shower an hour and a half before time to go, took my time thawing out in the warm water, and then when I got out, realized I had actually read the clock an hour off.  I came out of the bathroom with wet hair and everyone else was ready to go, gawking at me.  I threw it together as fast as I could, until it hit me that I can't really wear anything other than tennis shoes right now.

I'm using the cane, but I'm thinking I should probably go back to the walker.  The past couple weeks have been a steady decline.  I'm not very stable right now and the knee gives way without notice, so those inserts in my tennis shoes that balance me a little, are even more important than normal.  Well, even in my flattest, ugliest loafers, they didn't fit.  So I determined to walk as little as possible and have someone at my side all night, and go in the loafers.  After all this back-and-forth in shoe world, I had run out of time to fix my face or hair.

We jumped in the car and I pulled down the visor to see if I could put on a little lipstick and mascara in that tiny mirror in the dusky sunlight.  I could barely see, so I had my face REALLY close to the mirror.  We were still making our way down the long driveway when a humongous spider crawled over the mirror, just centimeters from my face.  I didn't know if it was dangling from the ceiling or on the mirror or what, but I instantly slammed the visor back up to the roof of the car and screamed.  Ken braked, I opened the door and--forgetting all about loafers and inserts and canes and pains, jumped out in a panic, while kids and adults from the homes came running out.  I explained that a monster spider was somewhere in that car, and it'd have to be found before I could get back in.

I'm not one of those spider freaks (arachnaphobics, maybe?), but I'm telling you, the joker was huge.  Riding in the dark with a huge spider just didn't appeal to me at all.  Thankfully, when Ken flipped the visor down, we saw that my quick reflexive slam had squished  him.  Even dead and curled up the fella was mongo big.  Not cool at all.  The kids all had a good laugh, and the guys joked all the way to the funeral home that the poor spider's last sight had to be me up close in the mirror.  Maybe the Lord knew that Milciades needed some humor.  Next time I hope a simple knock-knock joke will do!

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