What Dreams May Come, Volume V: The Plastic Arachnid

Dreams are a perfectly normal phenomenon. For that matter, so are spiders, if you can call them a phenomenon. Lots of folks would call them an annoyance or worse. I don't mind spiders so much, and would prefer not to kill them, so long as they aren't actually crawling on me. The way I look at it, anything that might be eating ants or earwigs is more welcome in my home than either of those insects. But this isn't really about how I feel about spiders. This is about a dream I had recently. As you may have guessed, this dream was indeed about a spider.

The dream began with me waking up. Not literally, but rather waking up in the dream. I know, that is a strange way to start a dream, but that's how it went. The kids were calling from the living room because they had seen a spider. In reality, we don't get that many spiders in the living room, but when the kids see one, they probably would call rather excitedly. And so I got out of bed and went to check out the spider. This one was big, with the legs reaching out far enough to easily span a nickel, maybe a quarter. Also, it was blue. Or at least the body was partially blue, which was unusual. I don't think I've ever seen a blue spider before, and I suppose I still haven't seen one, not really. But what made this spider particularly different was that it was in the process of consuming an insect. At least, that what I assume it was doing, as it had an insect, I believe some sort of beetle, firmly in its grasp.

Thankfully the spider, with meal in tow, skittered under the couch and out of sight before I had to explain to the kids what exactly the spider was doing. Describing how a spider stuns its prey with injected venom, waits for the innards to liquefy, then drinks it, leaving a dried husk of exoskeleton, is not something you really want to describe to your two year old daughter. After all, it was complicated enough explaining the concept of an exoskeleton to my four year old son the other week, but I digress.

With the spider mercifully out of sight, I did what any dad would do in this situation. I went back to bed; apparently in my dreams I'm not going to win father of the year. I'm not sure how long I dreamed that I slept this time, but I was awakened in my dream once again by the children in regards to the spider. This time it was in the bathroom. Doing my duty as a dutiful dad, I went to check on it. And it's a good thing I did, because the critter had grown. Now it was approaching tarantula territory. Also, the entire body was blue. Of course, even though it had enlarged by a factor of 10, it never once occurred to me that this could be some different spider.

As mentioned before, I generally try to tolerate spiders, but this one had to go. Not wanting to kill it, I went to look for something I could scoop it up with and bring it outside. I believe I closed the bathroom door to keep it contained in there, or maybe I asked the kids to keep an eye on it, but when I returned, after a surprisingly long time in my dream, it was still there. Only now it had grown even more. Before it was almost tarantula sized, now it was the size of a guinea pig. Plus now it looked to be made of plastic, mostly blue with some yellow and black, only still very much alive. It also seemed that it could bounce up and down as if it had some sort of hydraulic suspension system.

I realize that for most people, living blue plastic spiders the size of guinea pigs are not the stuff of dreams, but rather of nightmares. But not once during my dream was I the least bit apprehensive about this strange arachnid infesting my bathroom. Not even when it started shedding . . .parts. I say 'parts' because there's no other way to describe it. Something dropped off the back of the spider, something resembling a yellow plastic bumper or rail. I picked it up and examined it, and then did what no perfectly normal person would do in this situation — I ate it.

At least, I tried to eat it. I took a bite and started chewing. If you're wondering, plastic spider parts really don't have much taste, at least, not in my dreams. Not really much of a food like texture, either. I don't recall if I took a second bite or not, because it was around this point that my brain decided it was time to revolt. And so I woke up, not ever knowing just how big this spider was going to get, or how I was going to get it out of the bathroom.