“What’s the matter?” she asked.

It was the middle of the night. We were staying at a hotel in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. I had gotten up to use the bathroom, but instead beat a hasty retreat back to bed.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“You came back too quickly.”

I didn’t want to scare her, but thought it best to ‘fess up.  “Well, I saw a spider in the bathroom.  Actually, a very large spider.  A giant spider. A tarantula, I think.  It disappeared into a large crack in the floor next to the toilet.”

We decided to leave the lights on.

After a few minutes, sure enough, the tarantula emerged from its crack, entered our bedroom, and began to climb up the wall opposite our bed.  We both froze in panic. It climbed across the ceiling and came to a stop directly above our bed.  Clearly, it was planning to drop down and kill us.

I was so scared I couldn’t think of what to do or even what I should ask her to do (assuming she wasn’t as terrified of spiders as I was).  We did nothing but watch and wait.

Eventually, the tarantula slowly retraced its path and exited our bedroom.  Maybe it returned to its hiding spot in the crack next to the toilet.  We stayed in bed with the lights on and remained awake the rest of the night.

In the morning my parents arrived in their VW Van to pick us up.

“Please take us to Mexico City,” I said.  “I want to go home.  Now.”

“But you have reservations at beautiful hotels for the next four nights,” my mom said.

I didn’t care. “Mom.  Mexico City.  Please. Now.” I told her about our night of terror.  My mom was already familiar with my arachnophobia.

At seven thirty that evening I gratefully fell into my bed in Los Angeles.

“I’m never going back to Mexico again,” I vowed.

It’s now been more than 45 years, and I haven’t.  I have seen a few rather impressive bugs in Hawaii, but . . . well . . . they weren’t tarantulas.

This is a true story.

Have a Happy Halloween.

Alan

I embraced many beliefs when I was younger that later turned out to be entirely wrong.  Here are ten of my favorite misconceptions:

1. Every family uses a shared dish towel and passes it around the dinner table as needed. It’s wasteful to provide a napkin for each person’s individual use. When I was sixteen I invited a girlfriend home for dinner.  She was horrified by my family practice. She thought it was unhygienic. Five years later we were married anyway. At her insistence, I gave up the tradition I’d grown up with and now use napkins instead.
2. It is important to preserve your body by not working it any more than necessary. I avoided walking whenever I could.  Now I walk several miles a day.  For both health, and for fun.
3. Being smart is all that really matters for a successful life. I’ve since discovered that emotional IQ is much more important. If you can only have one skill, getting along well with others is now my top choice.
4. Everyone has a messy bedroom. As an adult, no one I have lived with has had a cluttered bedroom. Not even me anymore.
5. To encourage a child to improve you have to criticize or punish them regularly so they will not get a big head and lose their incentive to do better.  Well of course that was wrong.
6. Never praise a child. See #5 above.  Yes, really. And equally wrong.
7. You grow up, get married, have children, and live happily ever after, all of the time. Maybe you believed that one too.  I’m still chasing the fantasy.
8. Work is to be avoided at all costs. Retire as early as you possibly can. Currently, I still find that work provides an important social and intellectual outlet for me.
9. You can never talk to anyone about sex. Or birth control. Thankfully, that is simply not true.
10. Women are wonderful. Men are unpredictable.  When I was ten I invited ten girls, and one boy, to my birthday party.  (My mother insisted on the one boy.)  In my early twenties I had only female friends. Now I know that people of all genders can be wonderful, and also sometimes unpredictable.

I’m sure if you thought about it, you could compose your own list of the misconceptions you’ve held at various stages of your life.  Especially concerning topics you were never able to talk about. Life is a learning process, and the older I get the more I learn.

I’m glad there are a few advantages to being an octogenarian.

Alan

In last week’s blog, I lamented losing the flipper that stands in for a temporary tooth pending my upcoming dental implant surgery. On Thursday evening, the missing flipper miraculously returned.

I smiled when the flipper reappeared on my night stand.  I assume the darn thing had been hiding in plain sight on the bedroom floor, and the housekeeper found it.

Wait.  No celebration yet.

On Friday Daveen and I headed out of town for a brief respite from the pandemic.  I wore the flipper all the way to the hotel, then put it in my pocket as I got out of the car.

In our hotel room I discovered that the flipper was, once again, missing.  This time I assumed that it was back in the car, which had already been parked, so I decided to ignore it for the weekend and instead enjoy relaxing and watching football on TV.

As I might have predicted, but didn’t, I could not find it in the car when we returned home on Sunday.

There’s a saying, “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.”

I’m not going to invest further emotional energy on this.  If the flipper knocks on my front door this evening, I won’t answer.  If I stumble across it in my bathroom, I’ll throw it out.  If it sends me an email . . . well, let’s not stray too far from reality.

When I was single I dated a woman who was upset that I had mentioned her, rather kindly, in my blog.  I had only used her first name, with a different spelling.  Nevertheless, she was unhappy, so I promised to never write about or contact her again.”  And I haven’t.

Flipper, wherever you are, I will not write about or contact you again.

That’s final!

I hope.

Alan