Prey
I hate spiders. I haven’t always; it’s something that developed, quite spontaneously and without provocation, during high school. Writing this paper made my skin crawl. In my mind, they are mindless, grotesque, prey-seeking creatures, and their existence bothers me. Yet, strangely, spiders are intimately related, by no fault of their own, to my writing.
I learned to write in the second grade. We - my classmates and I - had spent the previous two years preparing for that event, though we didn’t know it. In kindergarten we labored over the alphabet, slavishly learning the names and sounds and shapes of all the letters, and then we were employed as court scribes for the first grade teachers, churning out sheet after triple-lined sheet of scribbled, cheap imitations of their much neater, chalkboard-bound script. Now we had survived our servitude, and we were ready.
During second grade we were introduced to paragraphs. They seemed to be marvelous inventions, paragraphs. When my first one was completed - all four sentences of it - I felt like I knew what it was like to write a book. There was nothing you could say in a whole book that you couldn’t say in four sentences. At the time I apparently had a horribly skewed sense of scale.
These significant four sentences were about a spider.
Jumping spiders live in many different places throughout the world. There are more kinds of jumping spiders in the world than any other spider. They hunt for prey during the day and jump on their prey when they find it. Jumping spiders have eight eyes, and the two front eyes are very large so that they can see to hunt.
Mrs. Kendrick was my second grade teacher. I always thought that was the perfect name for her, with the hard consonants because she was strict, but with a letter or two that hinted at something else; she was a great motivator, and encouraged her students to reach for their potential. I remember her being an incredibly tall woman, even as adults went when I was that age. Tall, thin, and imposing, with a sharp intellect and a perpetually-knowing look of curiosity on her face which never yielded to what someone would quite call a smile.
Mrs. Kendrick had an odd fixation with spiders. They were present in all things in her class; several spiders lived in old wooden tanks in the corner of the room. I remember watching the jumping spider for a long while, waiting to see him leap. He never did, of course; there was nothing to leap at. These spiders sometimes served as the basis for our paragraphs. We would have to write a paragraph about the behavior of the jumping spider, or the appearance of the tarantula. Obviously, some of our paragraphs were about the more interesting spiders - tarantulas, black widows, and so forth - which did not grace us with their presence in the classroom.
Mrs. Kendrick was the teacher who encouraged me to excel. I attribute most of my academic success to her initial nudges in that direction. She taught me to investigate and wonder, and to look for ways to challenge myself. This extended to writing; there was one assignment in particular, a letter to the fictional character Amelia Bedelia, that lovable, literal housekeeper, which she used to encourage me. After I turned it in, Mrs. Kendrick approached me and complemented, in her subdued way, the quality and creativity behind my letter. She asked if she could show it to some people at a meeting; I’m sure she told me what the meeting was about, and who it was with, but I’ve long since forgotten. This was not the first piece of writing I ever turned in - there were some paragraphs first - but it was the first time that I received the gratification of an appreciative audience. The feeling was euphoric, and from that point on for many years, I was eager to impress with everything - but I always gave special attention to my writing. We did a lot of other little creative exercises in addition to our paragraphs, and I tried to make them special.
But the paragraphs were always about spiders.
Trapdoor spiders do not build webs like normal spiders. They dig holes and cover them with a lid. When prey gets close to the lid, the trapdoor spider comes out and attacks it. Then the trapdoor spider goes back into its burrow to hide until it has another opportunity to catch food.
Mrs. Kendrick was out of my mind by the time I hit sixth grade, temporarily discarded during one of several annual transitions from one grade to another. Despite her absence, I still maintained my interest in displaying my writing skill. I tried to push boundaries whenever I had the opportunity, just as Mrs. Kendrick had taught me.
Sixth grade found me my most enthusiastic audience since Mrs. Kendrick. This time it was my English teacher. From the beginning, it was apparent that I was one of her favorites; when we read a play version of The Hobbit out of our literature book, she chose me to be Gandalf, which seems to me to be definitive evidence. Once, we had an assignment which involved writing a brief story using fifteen of our twenty spelling words for the week. A simple enough assignment: it didn’t have to make sense, and it certainly didn’t have to be good. Of course, I tried to make both happen. I don’t remember my teacher being overly excited, though I’m sure I got a good grade; the person who got really excited was my father.
By then, I was fairly independent academically. This was also Mrs. Kendrick’s fault, as she always espoused being able to solve problems ourselves. I didn’t often get my parents to proofread papers, but for some reason, that time, I did. My father was really impressed with my silly little tale, which involved an alien who, no doubt because of his advanced intellect (and my need to use the word “vacuum” somewhere in there; it was on the list), had landed at a shopping mall. The alien, as I recall, also shared his name with his home planet, which shared its name with its native galaxy. Even then, I thought it was a little foolish - but only a little.
Long story short, I found that I hated the constant attention. My dad spared no chance to remind me of how much he liked my writing. The real breaking point was when I got a call from my grandfather, who lives in Richmond; he had received a copy of the story via e-mail and wanted to talk about it. I felt like all eyes were on me and hated it. I hated being reminded of my competence so regularly. I hated even the thought that my grandfather, who was a ravenous reader and often sent me novels, had spared some time to read my assignment. I knew I was inferior to those real authors who I was so fond of reading, and I felt embarrassed.
To this day I can’t quite understand why I reacted how I did. The feelings, however, have persisted. I appreciate - nay, thrive on - praise teachers and peers, but I hate to think about receiving praise from my parents. If I knew why I’d say so; if you know why, then you have me at a disadvantage. That was the last time my parents read anything I wrote, a state which persists even to this day.
I closed the trapdoor on my burrow and remained, safely cloistered in my private darkness for years.
Granddaddy longlegs have several names, including cellar spiders because they build webs in corners like you might find in cellars. There is a myth that these spiders have very strong venom, but this isn’t true. In fact, this myth is because they invade the webs of dangerous spiders like black widows and eat the web’s owner. Because of this behavior, some people think that they are more poisonous than the poisonous spiders they eat.
I didn’t really write again for several years. I kept up with assignments and did very well at them, but I no longer tried to stand out quite so much. I certainly never showed anything I wrote to my parents.
Finally I was flushed out of hiding. My high school had a writer-in-residence. She lived in the area and had published a couple of books and some plays, and so would sometimes come speak to classes about fiction writing. When I was a freshman she came to my English class several times, and often read a chapter from her first and most popular book. The book was at least semi-autobiographical, and her chapter of choice was about her first encounter with the works of some guy named William Shakespeare, thanks to an old reclusive lady across the street from her childhood home. I liked it the first time.
She was a grandmotherly sort of woman. She had a very down-to-earth sense of things, and obviously reveled in life’s small miracles. She organized a ten-session workshop for students from my class and a few others, and my English teacher recommended that I join. I was, understandably, reluctant; I remembered, less than fondly, what had happened the last time my writing had escaped the eyes of my teacher, and I didn’t consider the WIR a teacher. Worse, there was always the possibility I’d have to share with my classmates. The horror!
Grudgingly I accepted, though I think that was mostly to avoid disappointing my teacher. We met in an unused classroom and began the arduous process of building characters. I had long since parted company with spiders as subjects, and progressed through snakes, aliens, and all sorts of sundry creatures. This time I actually went with a person. The problem, in the WIR’s view, was that I chose to place that person in a non-contemporary setting. It was apparent that she didn’t appreciate the science fiction genre. Her silent, confused ridicule wore thin quickly, compounded by the fact that it happened, sure enough, in front of the entire class. I left after a few sessions, but the damage was done; I very nearly resigned myself to never write again if it was the last thing I did.
I struggled in that web for longer than I care to admit.
After that, once again, I didn’t do much writing besides what was required. I eventually pulled myself out of this state - though not without some help - and decided that, despite the bumps along the way, I wanted to write. In writing I found a glimpse of what I wanted from life.
Yet I can’t find a story in that revival. It just happened. Nor can I find a story, really, in any one moment leading up to it. Rather, these events form, in my mind, a complex but delicate web, which comes apart when I try to remove any event from it. This web shows me the path my writing has taken, and I begin to understand the lesson I should take from this. For this pivotal period in my writing life, lengthy though it was, I was on the prowl, hunting for prey. I fed on what I caught - teachers mostly - and used the energy acquired to pick a new target and adapt my methods. Spiders build different kinds of webs for different kinds of prey; I write different kinds of papers.
There is a very interesting thing that spiders can do with their silk, if they’re light enough, called ballooning. The spider spins a few strands of its silk into a simple flying apparatus, letting them take to the air. When writing this memoir, I was reminded of the first time I saw this, at the end of the animated version of Charlotte’s Web, when Charlotte’s offspring take to the winds.
At risk of overloading the metaphor, writing for others is like spinning a web. The web can be effective, but it can also be a hazard; the spider’s natural enemies know how to use its own web to lure it into a trap. Instead - and I have only recently really come to this realization - I should spin my silk - my words - for myself, and let it take me places I could not go otherwise. This is a process I have not yet truly undergone. I struggle with the change. Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if I’m one of those spiders who are simply too large to balloon, who will never know flight. Or maybe I just need to be lighter.
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