I will kill a spider for you

When I was in middle school, heck maybe even in high school, I wrote a lot of letters. Loads of them. Instead I didn't call them letters. They were "notes". And all of my girlfriends wrote notes, too. We wrote them back and forth obsessively. Lines and lines of gossip, complaints, harangues, meltdowns, spastic joy, and painful sorrow. I imagine kids today use their cell phones and text messaging to the same effect. Much shorter and less grammatical but still probably very similar.

A very, very good question you might be asking, and you would only ask this question if you weren't lucky enough to live through the note writing days with me, is when did we have time to write notes? Oh my - during school, of course! Amazingly we were all good students so our grades didn't suffer while we used school hours to feverishly pen our missives and never, as I recall, were we actively "busted" by the teachers for note writing during class.

I don't know where it came from but we all ended our notes with the valediction of LYLAS.

LYLAS is a five letter acronym:
Love
You
Like
A
Sister

I never thought much of it. I used it because everyone else did and it was a cute, chummy thing to do. Hmm...was there ever a better description of peer pressure? Anyway, I ended all my notes with LYLAS and the notes I received all ended with LYLAS and it was good.

Interestingly, I am still in touch with many of the girls, women now, who I wrote notes to in middle school and claimed to love like sisters. And I do love them like sisters. I have been very blessed with a rare and special circle of friends. We bicker, get grumpy, forgive and forget, and we love just like blooded family members.

I had a special visitor last weekend. Someone who received countless notes from me over the middle school years - someone I wrote LYLAS to. And as I was showing my visitor around the house, we noticed an intruder in the guest bathroom. A spider! Quelle horreur!

You may or may not know that I loathe bugs. And yes, I am enough of a biologist that I know it is not accurate to class spiders with insects but WHATEVS, people. It's my blog and I'll do what I want.

Upon reflection, loathe is actually too soft of a word. Hate might be more accurate. In addition to strongly not liking them (I've always been cautioned against using the word hate), I've also developed a borderline crippling fear of them. I have waking nightmares that they get in my hair or clothes or fly into my face.

True story: Once I almost drove off the highway when I realized I was sharing my car with a cicada. YUCK. Despite my obvious disability, my passenger (Hi Shaz!) was NOT amused when I told her to make her peace with God because I couldn't guarantee that I would stay on the road if the cicada decided to dive bomb me while I was driving. Fortunately, the cicada remained out of sight (and away from my person) until I was able to safely stop the car. And then abandon my car and go buy a new one. Not really. But I thought about it. I really did.

OK, back to the intruder.

My visitor looked at me with that face that people make when they want someone else - aka YOU - to do something. The intruder was in my house, in her guest bathroom, and I was clearly expected to make her world right - or at least spider free - again.

Pushing aside the urge to throw up a little in my mouth I grabbed some toilet paper, smashed the interloper against the door jamb, and then flushed that sucker. I am spider killer, hear me roar!

Bauer, this post is for you because I killed a spider for you.

LYLAS forever and ever and ever,
Jaime