Writer’s Prompt 2/5/19
You’d never believe me if I told you that I ______________, but it’s true, and I can prove it.
The Wedding Spider
Spiders: Any of numerous arachnids of the order Araneae, having a body divided into a cephalothorax and an abdomen, eight legs, two chelicerae that bear venom glands, and two or more spinnerets that produce the silk used to make nests, cocoons, or webs for trapping insects.
You either love them or hate them. Yes, they have their uses. They do keep the fly population down. Their web silk is useful in many industries. Spiders even have their benefit to storytellers; there are lots of stories about them, including the most famous one Anansi, who is an African legendary spider (man). Stories I can deal with, but I’m not fond of them in real life. If anything they always show up in the wrong place and at the wrong time like the infamous spider that crashed our wedding.
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It was a cold day at the end of March 1990. Christina and I were to be married at a friend’s house. A number of our friends and members of our families were in attendance. We had limited the number of people attending since this wasn’t held in a large banquet hall or religious institution but in our friend’s living room. We had rehearsed the parts of the ceremony and were confident that all would go smoothly. All was set. Christina was to come down the stairs from the second floor with her father and meet me in the corner of the living room in front of the secretary* where the ceremony was to take place.
As we got close to the part of the ceremony where I was to pledge my love to Christina an uninvited guest caught her eye. A spider was crawling across the desktop of the secretary towards where she was standing. As much as I’m not fond of spiders, Christina is less so. The expression on her face went from one of joy to one of worry. I was oblivious to what was happening. She began to wave me away and point back at the desk. Though I looked in the direction she was pointing, I saw nothing and was convinced that I had either forgot something or had done something wrong. Even as I got ready to pledge myself to her, she kept glancing to the side. It was my voice and that I was holding her hands that brought her back to me. Hoping that I didn’t screw up more than I had already, I shared my words of love, and she shared hers back to me and we were married.
I didn’t find out until after the ceremony when I asked her what I forgot or had done wrong that she informed me of the spider, which at that point was nowhere to be seen.
Was it real? No one else saw it.
It turned out that not only was it real, but we had proof. A friend of ours was video recording the entire event. As we looked at the video, sometime later, there it was for all to see. The spider didn’t start out on the desktop. He started out on the top of the secretary’s bookshelf and repelled down the side of it before it got to the desk part where it was spotted by Christina. If you don’t believe me check out the video. Pay attention to the 13-second mark where the spider first appears.
At the 1:13 mark after everyone there promised to support us she first sees it.
At the 1:17 mark she tries to warn me.
The rest as you say is history. To watch the video go to The wedding spider video: https://youtu.be/jjAWqgWlqSw
* secretary: A desk with a small cabinet on top that had belonged to my friend’s grandmother)
I am happy to hear. that the spider did not stop the wedding. Perhaps it was simply an uninvited guest who wanted to get a better look at the beautiful bride!