Today's guest post is one I've been looking forward to for a long time. It's from my favorite older sister, Laurie. I would love to tell you that she made this whole story up, but then I'd be lying.
Laurie has a blog she attends to in the summers when she's not busy teaching school called Walking On Sunshine.
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Alternatively Titled: The time I rendered my brother half naked and slapping himself on the side of the road with one softly spoken sentence
Ricky had a love affair as a young teenager. This happened long before he met my beautiful sister–in-law Jana. Her name was Maxine. She was two years younger than him. She was beautiful (in his eyes), and she stayed with him for three long years. She was great on dates (or so I am told), and she knew how to hold him just right in her seat.
Maxine was a 1982 Nissan Maxima. She was cool because she knew how to talk. Remember those cars that told you ‘the right door is ajar”? That was Maxine. She was a hand–me–down from our grandfather (Editor's Note: Not really. Laurie is older than me, and thus gets confused sometimes. My grandpa's old car was my next one, Charlotte). Ricky loved her dearly.
Right after Ricky got Maxine, he also got his learner’s permit. This meant he could drive with a much older, much more mature driver in his car. On this particular night, this meant me, being all of four years older. We decided to drive a few miles down the hill to go to Target. The road was straight with very little traffic, so it should have been an easy drive. We got in, buckled up, and were off. Ricky sat straight up in Maxine’s lap, gripped the steering wheel, and drove with extreme care.
About half way to our destination, he began to twitch his head and neck. Then he began to yell at me to stop bothering him. Since I wasn’t doing anything, I told him to keep his eyes on the road. His twitching behavior didn’t stop, and he again yelled at me. At this point, I looked over at him and saw a huge orange spider crawling on his neck. Knowing Ricky, and his fear of any moving bug (remember his bee admission?), I decided to be proactive.
“Ricky, pull over right now,” I said calmly. He pulled Maxine off the road. I reached over the turned on the hazards.
“Ricky, there is a huge, orange spider on your neck.”
What followed next was film worthy, but none of us had smart phones or even cell phones then. He literally opened the door, fell out of the car, stripped many layers of clothing off, began yelling, and frantically swatting himself. Thankfully the road was empty at the time, or someone might have called 911.
It took close to 20 minutes to calm him down, dress him, and get him back behind the wheel again. We never found the spider, and he now drives with one eye on the road, and the other looking for it.
I am not sure who kills the spiders in Ricky and Jana’s house, but I am pretty sure it isn’t Ricky.
