Meet Ivan The Terrible!

Anyone who calls me friend and speaks with me on semi regular bases is aware of my issues catching any more than three hours of sleep a night since arriving in country. But my lack of sleep is not the point for relaying the above exposition. The point is when I sleep it is not deep and any little noise wakes me. Thursday night was one of the hardest nights to catch any shuteye. Finally, around 3am I gave in to what my body has been telling me for weeks now, “Hey dumb a**, you’re tired and if you don’t sleep I am going to shut down. Then where are we going to be?” Closed my eyes, tried to block out whatever has been keeping awake, broke down, and finally went to sleep. 

Something, something because I am not sure what it was, woke me. I looked at the clock and the time I read was 8:55. This made me relieved I actually managed to sleep more than four hours. However, I soon realized that I had to be down and at school in less than a half hour. Panic accomplished the completion of the waking process. I looked at the clock one more time. It read 6:55am. Exhaling I laid back down with the promise of falling back into dreamland.

 

My room is big enough to not feel like a prison, but not big enough to feel like an actual bedroom. The head of the bed faces two huge windows and the foot faces the door. I laid back down and caught a glimpse of a black dot above my door. I blinked a number of times trying to get my tired eyes to focus. It was then I aspirated a muffled HOLY S***, that cannot be what it looks like. I refused to believe God created something as immense as whatever was skulking near the door jam. Black spot! I began trying to explain away the fact that the spot seemed to be moving. Black spots are all over the dorm floors, walls, and etc… The false supplication was not working and it began to move farther than a damn black spot ever could. The same panic washed over me in Tsunami like waves. I hopped up for a closer look at this alien looking object. As I got as close as I dared, it moved fast and covered a huge distance. At this point the HOLY S*** became HOLY ***K, that is a spider. A huge black spider!! It had huge teeth, legs, and did I mention the teeth? TEETH. I did what any woman would have done upon finding themselves in a similar position. I retrieved my IPad from the desk and snapped a few dozen pictures of the monster. Once I was satisfied I had covered my model from every angle, I picked up my shoe. The spider was still too high to spray and have the spray do its job. As I threw my shoe at the monster I rattled off in my mind any scientific information I could recall on short notice, still being very tired. It quickly moved down towards me. All I could think was now why did you go and do that tard? Make the huge teethed monster move towards where you’re standing. That’s not shrewd; it jumps in excess of 100ft and eats people as a light snack before its main meal of water buffalo with a side of Bambi. Scientific recall at its best, I assure you. I decided I wasn’t taking any more chances and pulled down my handy can of “Blah blah Raid”. At least the lady who sold me the blah blah raid said it kills all bugs. The blah blah raid only works if you can actually hit the bug you want exterminated. I couldn’t. It moved too fast and in a split second it vanished behind my dresser. I soothed myself by mentally explaining it would find a way out my room and wasn’t poisonous, just f*gly. Being convinced I headed down the hall to wash the spider off my hands. When I got back it was back on the ceiling, but too high to hit or spray. I made a few loud noises and it took off again.

Ivan The Terrible

 When I got down to school I showed the picture to more than a few natives. Not one native knew what to call the beast in English, but all knew the blah blah name for the spider. Like that helped me. I mean really? Do you think knowing the name of the fiend planning to kill you in your sleep is going to help? Do you think it really wants an introduction? Hello, my name is huge, scary, big teeth villain, but you can call me Sam. Seriously? Sarcasm is lost on people here, so I just smiled and thanked them for their assistance, even though their information was as useless as tits on a boar. Finally, I found a science teacher. He informed me this was a “good” spider. Excuse me? Crazy blah blah science teacher says what? I thought I had misheard what he was telling me. He went on to explain these spiders are just ugly and not poisonous. He keeps one as a pet. Are you kidding me? What do you take it out for walks so it can eat poodles at the local dog park?They are timid creatures, he continued on,  and there has never been a reported case of these spiders ever biting a human. Yea, that’s because the spider killed the human and silenced the rest of the people who would report the little dear. The science teacher went on to tell me they eat roaches, which are only a little smaller than the spider by the way, and mosquitoes. Hmmmm  a mosquito eater? That could be a reason to let the psycho arachnid continue living in my room.

Once home I found him back on the ceiling. I looked at him with cynicism and gave him the following warning. I said, Ivan, you stay out of sight and you are free to eat all the bugs you find in my room, especially any roaches. If you do what is expected I will not spray blah blah raid and kill you, even if I need to stand on a chair to finish the task. He moved his ugly antenna looking things in agreement. He now lives somewhere in my room and I hope he is eating bugs. I named him Ivan the Terrible. He looks Russian and probably is working to ensure his wife, Iyvonna, and their spider babies do not go hungry. At any rate, every respectable spider needs to have a name. Ivan better not think just because I gave him a name and allowed him to live, means I like him and won’t kill him. Trust me, he creeps me out, and would kill him in a heartbeat for no reason other than looking like he could eat a water buffalo.

 

Jing-Xi’s Lesson of the Day: Never judge a book by its cover… I do not believe this statement applies to everything. On some occasions it is perfectly acceptable to judge a book by its cover. After all one can do this in regards to the classic, and the title classic is used lightly, piece of American Literature “Moby Dick”. Everyone knows by now the most exciting part of the story is found on the first page, first line. “Call me Ishmael.” From that phrase forward the book is not worth reading and bores one to the point of madness. One eventually even finds themselves hoping the white whale eats the entire ship. Judging a book by the cover might rectify many of the world’s more injudicious problems . For example: if it looks like it could bite, it probably does. If God had meant monkeys to be kept as pets He would have created a domestic version of the animal, as He did for the dog and cat. The above can also be applied to alligators and large snakes. If God wanted humans to be able to jump through bonfires drunk, He would have made our skin out of something fireproof and less burnable. A healthy fear of the unknown and the mysteries of life is essential for survival.     

HOLY ***T he is huge!