I just pulled up something I wrote in 2002 and thought I’d share it with you. It’s true. I did not make this up.

My co-worker was home alone when she found a large spider on a pile of towels. She smacked it repeatedly with a fly swatter. screaming all the while, but afraid that it was only stunned, she scooped it up in the towels, dropped them on the driveway, and whacked it several more times, again screaming the whole time.

Later, she overheard her husband asking her son about the spider in the driveway, assuming he had run over it in his car a few minutes prior.

“Oh, that big, brown thing?” her son exclaimed. “It was huge! I couldn’t believe it! Good thing Mom didn’t see it.”