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SPIDER AND SPIDER MAN COME TO TERMS
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Three-year-old Jimmy Three is stooping low, almost squatting, here on the front lawn of his parents’ home. His head is inches above the base of a holly tree, and he is peering intensely at a spiderweb.
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The fresh, dewy summer morning sun warms his back while he waits for signs of the spider’s arrival.
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Jimmy Three remembers being taken to a sawdust circus just weeks ago, a canvas-tent cathedral filled with playful clowns and glowing tigers and pretty acrobats and lithe jugglers, all existing for the moment just to please J. Three and other admiring kids.
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But the memory he treasures most is the one where a safety net topples to the ground just before a limber trapeze artist does his airborne triple-somersault feat.
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Earlier, the acrobat flips through the air and effortlessly flies above the gasping crowd, safely rescuing himself at the last moment in the clutches of a fellow performer. Then, for a suspenseful tick or two, he stands high up on the small suspended ledge, stares down, then free-falls down, down, down to the waiting net, where he lands, bounces, and forward-flips himself safely to the ground.
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The crowd and Jimmy Three are happy and satisfied. But the acrobat has just begun.
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At the holly tree, a gangly black spider cautiously appears on the web, making it quiver a bit. Jimmy Three doesn’t move, doesn’t blink.
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The circus crowd applauds, then suddenly freezes. That’s because the trapeze artist is now knocking aside the metal posts that suspend and secure his safety net. In seconds, the net is flat on the ground. The acrobat glances up at the high platform and begins ascending the ladder.
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The spider begins its eight-legged journey to the center of the suspended web. Jimmy Three wonders what would happen if the web fell and the spider fell with it. Do spiders survive such falls? He picks up a nearby twig.
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Now the circus acrobat is back on the ledge. The trapeze is freeswinging, teasing him with its closeness, penduluming back, out of reach. The artist’s companion is at another ledge across the tent, waiting to swing and catch his partner should he decide to do a netless triple flip.
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Before the crowd has time to gasp, the act is in motion, the rapid muscular flips are done, the actor securely rescued, the finale underway, and the singular moment permanently recorded in the imaginations of every child present.
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Jimmy Three smiles to himself at the memory, waves at the safely bouncing spider in the morning web, puts aside the stick he was about to employ, and goes on to the task of finding four-leaf clovers in the dusty yard
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© Jim Reed 2017 A.D.