The Beast – The Real Story

4^th grade was really wearing me out. There were just so many things that I had to worry about: boys, math, boys, writing in cursive, boys, science experiments… oh yeah did I mention boys? It had been a long and tiring day and I felt like I deserved to take a little siesta on my bed, in my room, in our nice cozy basement of my family’s house in American Fork. I had been hesitant to move down into the basement at first but I didn’t let anyone know. My best friends Meghan Johnson and Melynne King were already on the move to their basements so I couldn’t be the only one who stayed up stairs with mommy and daddy. Before I was allowed to move into the basement I had to prove to my parents that I wouldn’t be petrified during the night with them two levels away. So I valiantly grabbed a sleeping bag and my teddy bear (Alexander) and trudged down the seemingly endless stairs to what was then ‘the craft room’.

There has never been a night in my life that has been quite as long as that night. I became more and more jumpy with every creak of our 5 year old home and every car that passed by leaving shadows on my wall from their headlights. Needless to say when the sun finally rose and my family was bustling about the house getting ready for the day I was very intimidated by the thought of moving down stairs and I knew that I didn’t want to do it by myself. I began formulating a plan in my head of how to get around being the sole basement occupant. My brother Andrew being only two years younger than me was the perfect candidate to move into the dark abyss of a basement with me. It didn’t take much convincing him when I so kindly explained to him that he wouldn’t be cool if he stayed up stairs with mommy and daddy. So after a couple days of moving and getting everything set up in our new rooms Andrew and I were now the proud new inhabitants of ‘our basement’.

Now back to the day at hand. As I was lying on my bed trying to salvage any amount of laziness that I had lost throughout my busy day I heard a bustling coming from our playroom which was at the bottom of the stairs and in between Andrews room and mine. Knowing that I would never be able to relax until the basement was quiet I went out into the family room to tell whoever it was to quiet down.

The scene before my eyes was quite hilarious. My mom, Andrew and my younger sister Stephanie were all in huddled together in the playroom and they were all eyeing the staircase. I looked over to the staircase and saw a huge hairy spider sitting on one of the steps. Around said hairy spider were many toys that had been thrown at the spider in a futile attempt to smash it without getting close. My mom related to me later in life that she was too afraid to throw a soft baseball bat at it because she was afraid it would land close to the spider and ‘pop’ the spider up and in our direction. I, of course, joined in the huddled mass at the bottom of the stairs due to my extreme arachnophobia.

Hours later when my dad arrived home from work he walked in to an empty house. He called out for his family and heard faint yells from the basement. Upon investigation he found us in the exact position we had been in hours earlier. He swiftly killed the spider, which had moved only inches from its original spot, and relieved us from our vigilant posts.

And then he laughed. And laughed. And laughed.

The Beast

I'm in the process of writing a few memoirs of my childhood. They are taking longer then I thought they would. So I decided to steal a story from my brothers childhood that he wrote for a school project a couple years ago. Gee, I wish I had all my Creative Writing stories still!

The Beast

Cursing, I glanced at the blinking red glow of my alarm clock. 6:32. I rolled out of bed and tripped on the standard accumulation of clothing on the floor. Part running, part waddling, I made the journey toward the bathroom at the end of the hall. Upon reaching my destination I dropped my drawers and waited for relief to come. After alleviating the pressure I sauntered the length of the hall toward my warm bed and whatever sleep I might salvage from my restless night.
Three feet from my room, a cold chill stopped me dead in my tracks. Frozen temporarily, I spied the largest, hairiest, most disgusting spider I had ever seen. The beast was crouching on the small spans of carpet between the foot of the stairs and the doorway to my room. A shocking two inches wide, the beast blocked the entrance to my private sanctuary with fear alone.
Several years later my sister, Megan, was reading me an e-mail she had received from one of her co-workers. "The average person swallows four to five spiders whole while sleeping each year. Though many of these spiders may have poisons that will cause illness within a human, it does not cause problems when swallowed because it is neutralized by the potent acids within the stomach."
"Yeah…um…that's an urban legend," I told my mortified sister.
"I don't know. It sounds to me like that could happen, especially if a person is sleeping with there mouth open. A spider could crawl inside to escape the cold."
"Yep, that's an urban legend."
"Prove it," my sister said with intent of not being proven wrong.
Confident, I took her place at the computer with full intent of showing her the error of her ways. Though I found that the e-mail had been grossly wrong, it was wrong in the opposite direction I had been expecting. The e-mail had been a very conservative projection.
After a quick search in Google, I found that the average person swallows twelve spiders whole while sleeping each year. The average person will also eat over a pound of spider parts in various foods. The government actually has regulations for products like candy bars on how much spider they can have per gram. Far from being poisonous, spider is an excellent source of protein.
"That's disgusting!" my sister exclaimed as I read the article out loud.
Several weeks after reading the article on the internet I wasn't surprised to wake up after feeling something other than my tongue in my mouth. Remembering that it would be worse to be bit, I swallowed it. Though the taste was nasty, I no longer needed breakfast that morning.
With the topic on my mind, I recalled standing at the base of the stairs one morning when I was eight.
As I stood stationary at the bottom of the stairs I considered my options. Most logical and rational paths I could come up with involved smashing the spider. But the thought of getting nearer to the beast was eliminated immediately in my mind. On the other hand I could go and climb in bed with my older sister. This thought was also eliminated by the thought of a titan spider prancing around my room, enjoying all the luxuries therein, or even worse…laying eggs. This left one more option…
"MOM!" I screamed up the stairs, "MOM!!"
Under the obvious impression that I was in life threatening danger, had a serious injury, or both, my mother darted out of bed and ran down the stairs to my rescue. Reaching the top of the last flight of stairs she stopped.
"What's the matter?" she asked, her voice dripping with disappointment that I had not somehow severed a limb.
"Spider," I gasped extending my arm in the direction of the menacing beast.
"You have got to be kidding me," she said gazing down upon her pathetic son.
With one swift motion my mother had come down the stairs, grabbed a stick from a nearby room, and smashed the spider.
"Go back to bed," she said directing me to my vacant room.
My humiliation complete, I staggered into my room. Collapsing upon my bed I could only think one thing…
"You're pathetic."

A Year in the Making

Ah, 14 years old. The time in any young teenage girls life where everything revolves around boys. Everywhere you go your looking over your shoulder hoping to see that perfect boy. You seem to have this fairy tale vision in your head: you and said perfect boy lock eyes realizing at once that you two were meant for each other, he runs over and sweeps you off your feet (literally) and your lips lock into the most perfect kiss you can imagine (which really isn’t that perfect considering you haven’t even had your first kiss yet so you really have nothing to compare it to – but that’s beside the point right?).

I was the epitome of previously described 14-year-old girl. It seemed everything in my life revolved around boys. The nice thing about having this be my obsession was it was also my aunt’s obsession and she was only about a year older then I was. So at every family outing the two of us were always ‘on the look out’.

My family has a time share on a house boat down at Lake Powell and so every summer we would spend a week down there ‘catching up’ with each others lives. This also turned out to be great ‘guy watch’ time. Pathetic, I know. I remember many times cruising down the channel, with my grandparents no less, and checking out the guys (I guess we can’t really call them ‘guys’ at this stage of life right? Should I use ‘boys’?) in other boats.

The summer after my eighth grade year was no different. Darcy (my aunt) and I spent our days down at Lake Powell lounging on top of our house boat waiting for any ‘hot boys’ to pass. There seemed to be a drought of ‘hot boys’ that year so I think we got to the point that any boy within our age rage would pass as eye candy.

This year was also my first year wearing a ‘two pieced’ swimming suit. It was a strange and exhilarating feeling all rolled into one. I finally felt like a woman. I was finally going to get the attention that I deserved… all due to showing my stomach… or at least that’s what my 14-year-old mind was telling me.

One exceptionally hot day Darcy and I were lounging on the top of the house boat after a nice dip in the lake when we saw a house boat about the size of ours pull onto the beach across the canyon from us. We watched as a plethora of boys piled out of the cabin onto the top of their house boat. We took one look at each other and immediately knew what we needed to do. This called for the first ‘real’ shower we had taken all week and possibly firing up the generator to blow dry and curl our hair.

Darcy was the first to be done getting ready, spending a good 55 minutes as opposed to my 65 minutes, so she was already sprawled out upon our air mattress that we were going to use to ‘accidentally’ float across that canyon to said boys house boat, when I appeared on the back of the boat. I kindly asked Darcy to paddle back and pick me up seeing as the mattress had floated a good five feet away from where I was standing. Darcy politely refused (we were always so nice to each other…) and I was left with thinking up some brilliant plan as to how I could get from the back of the house boat to the air mattress completely dry.

I pondered for a moment as I looked around and took in my surroundings. My uncles friend Brian was sitting in a lawn chair watching my predicament as were the ‘cute boys’ across the canyon. I knew I had to do something awe inspiring. After just a few more moments of pondering a light bulb went off in my head. I would commence to jump belly first and land on the air mattress gracefully. I once again looked around to make sure that everyone was watching and then launched myself from my dry stable ground hoping that in a few brief seconds I would feel the air mattress underneath me.

I closed my eyes as soon as I was airborne and looking back that was probably a good idea considering had I seen what was coming there would probably have been a loud shriek followed by some thrashing of limbs. Instead of feeling the softness of the air mattress as I landed I felt the ice-cold smack of the waters of Lake Powell hit me and knock the air out of me. This was not what I had expected. I sucked in a breath feeling the cold water fill my lungs as I quickly scrambled to the surface. My head popped out of the water and I sputtered water everywhere. I could quickly tell that the mascara that I had so carefully applied to my eyelashes was running down my face.

And then I heard the laughter. It was coming from the air mattress, the back of our house boat and across the canyon. I looked around to see the source of the laughter but instead my eyes landed on my swimming suit top floating a couple feet away from me. How it happened to dismantle itself from my body and float a couple feet away I will never know. All I do know is that the blood quickly drained from my face as I grabbed it and tried to cover myself.

This was quite possibly the most humiliating experience I had yet to have and the next thing I heard made it almost unbearable. From the back deck of my house boat my uncles friend who had seen the whole debacle loudly stated:

“Now Megan, that is something I will NEVER forget.”

Apparently I won’t ever forget it either.