found drama

Alternate childhood. Something about separated (divorced?) parents. Mostly I stay with my dad (who looks nothing like my really real dad — this guy has a construction mustache and is bigger in the shoulders). And he loves me (which is good) but he’s selfish and something of a child himself. He doesn’t have much money but he tried hard to provide for me. We eat a lot of frozen burritos because he thinks that I like them. He carries a hammer in his belt an awful lot. Our apartment looks like the one that D. Stein had in New Orleans. Well, the living room at least. I have these plastic toy trucks that I like. Dad’s returns to the room with a couple burritos on a plate and is settling into the couch with a Pabst. There’s a giant spider that crawls out of the dump bed of my plastic dump truck. Of course, the dump truck is yellow and half this spider’s markings are yellow, too. His abdomen is as big as my hand which means that “legs and all” he’s bigger than my hand. Obviously, he is quite poisonous. The spider goes straight for the couch. Dad looks at it for a second before jumping up on to the couch. He’s tough but he’s not stupid. Too bad he left his hammer in the kitchen. He looks at me. The spider. The kitchen. Even me (the little kid) knows that he doesn’t want to leave for even a second lest that poisonous eight-legged bastard try to get me. The easy answer would have been to smash it with the plate. But dinner! Dad bites the upper lip and goes for it. Which is right about the time that Stoli comes out from under the couch (an oddly inconsistent consistency) and proceeds to bat at the spider with his paws. You can tell that the spider recoils to strike. Stoli takes another swat and pounces on the giant thing. It’s unclear if the spider got a bite in but Stoli is covered in yellow-green spider ichor. The cat falls over the moment Dad returns with the hammer. He drops the hammer and rushes to the cat (seeing that I’m OK) who is still breathing but who knows for how long.

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