V-S Day

I have held off in making any final declaration, but five days after the cowardly and treacherous attack on me by a spider in the privacy of my own home, I feel secure now in declaring victory over it. It bit me, but I feel fairly confident that I killed it that night and now I am certain that I have triumphed over its weak and ineffectual venom. I won't deny that I was concerned about how I would weather the toxin coursing through my veins, but now I know that I am impervious to its effects.

I'm classy enough to now discount the idea of a lawsuit. Having beaten the spider's venom, I have nothing to prove against it, and I think that we all know spiders don't have money in any case. I would like to have a parade or a staged photograph such as the one of the sailor and the nurse on V-J Day, but I gather that parades are expensive and awash in red tape, and I sadly know of no attractive nurse who will submit to a "spontaneous" kiss.

Those things aside, I am a happy man today. Even more so than Lou Gehrig, I consider myself the luckiest man in the world- luckier than Lou in a sense, although the baseball hall of fame remains intransigent in response to my desire for admission. I very well could have required medical treatment for the bite, and so I do consider myself rather fortunate. In my life there's always something to be worried about, and so I don't want to lose sight of the good news in the midst of the troubling news that is always there to be found by the persistent.

In closing, I offer a message to the spiders. You have shown no respect to me and exhibited no sense of class or dignity, but I will not respond in kind to you in future. I will give spiders the benefit of the doubt, trusting that the one who bit me was exceptional among the good and decent spiders who far too often are silent by comparison with the more villainous elements among them. If I may, there is something in this to be said to others as well: if it is in me to outlast the venom of a spider, then you too may do the same without employing its own methods and weapons.