Ghost Lobstahs Staying in on a Saturday Night

There are many things I find amusing throughout the day, so I've decided to start a collection of these stories and observations purely for my own amusement. I was going to call it "An American Student in Montreal", kind of like "An American Werewolf in Paris", but I felt no one would get it, so I didn't. I would normally just file these little stories away in my own brain, but I am a bum and no matter how often I may refresh the "jobs" page on craigslist I cannot find a job to employ the copious amounts of free time I find myself with. So I figure "Hey, why not type shit down, it's not like I already have to read and write enough already as an English Lit major!" So here I sit in bed drinking beer on a Saturday night, staying in because I've spent my self-designated weekly booze allowance on a pet rat, whose gender I'm currently unsure of. I'd also like to scan some drawings to illustrate my posts, but seeing as I do not have a scanner and am not nearly dedicated to this enough to go all the way to the university library to scan them, we will see about that part. So for now I only have paintbrush, which I am stupendously incapable of working well. However, I was thinking about making one of these last year when I lived right downtown, and have a few of these poorly done drawings along with an accompanying tale of distress and paranoia, so here we are:

I am terrified of all bugs. In fact, when I was a chillun' I used to have a fear of lobsters because they resemble bugs. Subsequently, my parents would occasionally find it amusing to follow me around the house brandishing them. I shared a room with my twin sister, and we had a fear of,i kid you not, ghost lobsters at the bottoms of our beds who we believed would pinch our feet if we stretched out in bed. I believe I slept curled up in a ball for at least a week for fear of having the undead soul of a crustacean take off my pinky toe. A completely rational fear.

Considering my fear of bugs and organisms that resemble them, it's pretty much a given that I am absolutely horrified by the idea of spiders. I'm pretty sure most people are afraid of them, and my first assumption when it comes to people that aren't is that they've been dropped on their head as a nugget. Anyway--last year while I was living in my university residence, in a room that greatly resembled a very long walk in closet, Christmas break happened. Or, I should say, Christmas break happened for everyone else. Being one of the odd non-fine arts students in the building, I actually found myself having a legitimate finals schedule, and subsequently was there wandering the halls of my dorm much later than it's average inhabitants. So what did I do with this wealth of time by my lonesome? Well, I'll tell you! Study and watch bad (codeword for awesome) halloween slasher films from the 70s and 80s. Think "Firday the 13th", "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Halloween". 

Anyway, there I'm sitting contentedly watching Freddy invade the dreams of the baby-faced Johnny Depp when BAM--out of the corner of my eye, I sense something is wrong.

Now to the eyes of one who is not deathly afraid of spiders, perhaps nothing seems strange about this scene. But to the carefully trained eye of someone who cannot help but nearly shit their pants when they see an arachnid, the view looked like this:

Now the ceilings in this dorm are extremely high...in fact, the ceiling was most likely 12 or 13 feet from the ground. Now I'm no short girl, I stand just under 5'7'', but even with the help of my desk chair this spider was out of reach. What's a girl to do? Every five minutes I would glance up from my slasher film to make sure that the spider had not changed it's location on the wall. I always hold the irrational assumption that spiders have the mental capacity to plot against me, and I had just killed a spider the week before by drowning it in laundry detergent because I hate the crunch you feel when squishing them, and ever since I had been paranoid about other spiders seeking revenge in the name of their fallen comrade. 

Eventually, I decided I needed sustenance to continue my strenuous task of laying in bed watching movies and keeping an eye on spiders while being depressed about my lack of human interaction. To accomplish this task I needed to trek 10 minutes in the Montreal cold to get to our library building so I could get a soggy veggie wrap from the caf, meaning I would have to leave my new enemy unattended. And leave the warmth of my bed. I was not happy about either, considering it was -17 degrees Celcius that day, which I remember so specifically because it is the coldest weather I have ever felt. I got bundled up, went out on my journey and made it back. My spider had not moved. Breathing a sigh of relief, I  returned to my movie, still glancing up every few minutes to make sure that my life was not in danger. After the conclusion of the movie, I decided it may be a good time to go to bed, considering it was probably around 1 or 2 am around that time, but I felt strangely defeated when I turned off the light. I felt as if I was letting the spider win, like I was giving him a free pass to come bite me and lay eggs in my face while I slumbered like a babe. So I lay tossing and turning in the dark for a while, until I had a thought:

And sure enough, I was right. The conniving little thing had snuck further down the wall, as if it was slowly making it's way towards me in bed. But it had made a terrible mistake: it had come within reachable distance if I stood on my desk chair. This spider would rue the day it messed with me. Feelings of defeat now replaced by those of triumph, I grabbed my shower flip flops and crushed the spider, not even thinking twice about the small crunch that could be felt through the foamy sole of my shoe.

                                                                I had won.