The novel spider

On the 22nd of January 2021 I met my first Berlin spider. They appeared sometime between the afternoon and evening — spiders always seem to just appear, don’t they? This meeting was memorable because having moved out of our basement apartment in Toronto 4 months ago we hadn’t encountered a single one — an underrated perk of above ground living. So I really noticed it against the white stucco wallpaper, near a hairline crack — a new spot of high contrast.

I remember a time, still well into adulthood, when I wouldn’t be able to sleep if there was a spider in the room. I’d have to carefully extract it and set it free or (more often) close my eyes and scrunch it up into a tissue. Then we lived in a basement for a decade and I just got over it — I had to or I wouldn’t have slept. Plus they mostly kept to themselves. I even came to appreciate them in a way and would let them be for a while. Until too many accumulated in the corners, forcing me to perform a mass exorcism with the vacuum.

I recounted my spider meeting to Matt and we had a laugh about it because he had noticed it too. He says he likes the idea of “The Novel Spider” and I thought to myself “that’s a nice way to put it”.