I Never Cared for Popularity

I really never did. This is, of course, because I was never popular. And, as I say, I didn't care. Or I cared, but I didn't care for popularity, in the sense that I didn't like it. (What a smooth, transitional lead-in to my next paragraph.)

Our garage is a kind of clean, nice one (kind of). The floor is tiled- with ugly, public bathroom type tiles, but it's not cement or anything. The walls were recently painted and looked fresh and new until Greg's dad made an interesting design on one of them with his side-view mirror and tire while attempting to exit said garage. But still, it's not a creepy or dirty place. Or it wasn't.

A week or so ago, I noticed a large spider in it's web in one of the corners. I was considering getting rid of it, when I noticed a small centipede that had just become caught in the web. I watched the spider race out, numb the multi-appendaged creature and climb back into it's corner. About 5 minutes later I came back to find the centipede still in it's place, but it was now just the skeleton. Greg and I took a look at the spider and saw that it wasn't a scary or ugly spider, and it seemed to be rescuing us from some other yuckies, so we decided to keep it as a pet.

Well, I usually sweep the garage about every week or so, but I hadn't done it in 3 or 4 weeks when I started this morning. Um, apparently we weren't the only ones who saw the virtues of our pet spider. It appears he has a lot of friends. Or maybe we should call them followers, because they all seemed to follow him right into our garage. Here we have popularity again which, if you'll remember, I never cared for. Still don't. It seems our popular spider has set up a new little subdivision called "spiderland". Sweeping the garage this time wasn't just a matter of sweeping those tiles, but the broom was also pointed toward numerous webs in corners and on walls. I saw at least 4 spiders. One was stubby and stocky and red, one was super skinny and gray, and one was a regular black spider. I know that's only three, but I can't remember the other one so give me a break and stop keeping count of things like that.

I sort of like how diversified that little spider neighborhood was (until I destroyed most of the homes and possibly a few of the residents). Diversity is something I miss badly, living in small town Poland. It seems spiders don't have the same problem, and I was a little pleased that our pet spider (who we affectionately never named), while popular, did not limit his circle of friends to include only the unoffensive, dignified spiders like himself. He was an equal opportunity friend. I think I'm referring to him in past tense because I'm not really sure whether he survived the destruction or not.

So, if this spider friend of ours was a little more like myself, and didn't care so much for popularity, he could have had a nice, comfortable home and been left alone. Unfortunately he was/is popular and so he won't. Poor Mr. Spider has had to learn the hard way what I knew all along: popularity is dumb, pointless and can be dangerous. (and don't everyone start philosophizing that my mayhem in the garage is some sort of vicarious act against the popular kids in school, please).