Crawdad
Many years ago, before we got married, Hubby and I worked together. We met while working at a local art supply store–I worked customer service and he worked in the warehouse. My job was to take customer orders over the phone, fill the orders (except for the large items), and pass those orders off to future-Hubby to be packaged and delivered.
The warehouse area was, well, informal would be the nice way to put it. Honestly, I don’t know how we got any work done. It was the opposite of a hostile work environment, it was more like a giddy work environment. There seemed to be some kind of comedic oneupmanship competition going on; and I just happened to be on the receiving end of that contest one day.
Here’s some background–I am one of those unfortunate souls who seems to be wearing an invisible “kick me” sign. I’ve worn it all my life. So many people have teased me, picked on me, harassed me, and tormented me that I have become somewhat of a reluctant expert on the subject of teasing. People would often try to console me be telling me “Oh, he only teases you because he likes you!” or “She’s just jealous.” Nice try, Mom.
I can always tell when someone is teasing me because he or she genuinely likes me. Frequently, teasing is how some individuals relate to most people, but they only bother to tease those they like. The teasing is not mean-spirited, it is often gentle or funny or madcap. Future-Hubby and the rest of the boys in the warehouse teased me because they liked me and I was (and still am) short and goofy, and I reliably give the precise reactions teasers are just aching to get. I really need to work on that one.
Anyway, I always carried the customer order forms on a clipboard while I filled the orders. One ill-fated day, like so many other days, (cue the suspenseful music) I put my clipboard down on a table in the warehouse and left it unattended. Little did I know the horror that was to come.
Future-Hubby and some of the boys had found a crawdad carcass and were having some very juvenile fun sneaking it into each others’ work spaces. I was blissfully unaware of all of this behavior. Until.
Until future-Hubby got the bright idea to slip it onto the one place I couldn’t miss it, my clipboard. (To his eternal credit, he debated and then discarded the nefarious idea to perch the thing on top of my Dr. Pepper can.) He thought I would squeal and maybe flap my hands and dance around a bit. Ha!!!! I showed him!
When I rounded the corner by the table and saw this alien creature crawling (I didn’t know it was dead) on my clip board, I freaked. I let loose with a blood-curdling scream that brought people running from the front of the store. And caused the nice older gentleman who ran the delivery drivers to clutch his chest and proclaim, “What’s wrong with that kid!?” He then had to go home for the rest of the day to rest his poor heart. (He was just fine later.) The culprits were pretty easy to spot, future-Hubby and one of the boys were laughing their butts off.
In the years since, Hubby and I have enjoyed sneaking up on and scaring each other, but nothing has quite satisfied my desire for revenge. Until last night.
The kids had been dragging stuff out of the front closet, including my vacuum cleaner, and there was a stray piece of paper right in front of that closet. I bent down to pick it up and got quite a start. A very large, very dead spider was on the paper. It was on its back, spindly legs up, looking for all the world like the creature that wrapped itself around John Hurt’s face in “Aliens”. I swept up the scary thing and put it the trashcan.
It was right on top, where it could not be missed! Hubby is terrified of spiders. As I stood plotting and contemplating, a wicked, grinchy smile lit my face with its infernal light. After 18 years I would finally have my revenge! Bwa-ha-ha! I literally and gleefully rubbed my hands together in sweet anticipation, not for nothing does Hubby call me his Evil Pixie!
As I thought of fun ways to get him to open the trashcan, I had time to re-think. Then I decided that the sweetness of my cold dish of revenge would be utterly ruined by the inevitable trip to the emergency room for Hubby’s resulting chest pains. So, with deep regret, I decided to take the high road. When Hubby came back in, I warned him about the spider.
But I did tell him about my wicked plot and exactly why I plotted it! Which was almost as much fun as carrying it out would’ve been. Almost. Hubby hadn’t thought about the infamous crawdad incident in years so he enjoyed the reminder. In fact, he had to tell me the whole story from his perspective yet again. As if I wasn’t there at the time!
One of these days, though, one of these days. I will have my revenge. Does anyone know where I can buy a bucket of live crawdads?
