Grandpa Comes For A Visit – A Ghostly Tale – Part 3
After grabbing a quick shower I inspected my toe once again for damage. It was scraped raw, but fairly undamaged, although it still throbbed like a bitch. I snatched my shaving gear and lathered up. When with my wife in the LOS I have to shave daily, a chore I despise really, because she bitches and moans if I try to kiss her with a day's growth of stubble. Preferring kisses, to bitching and moaning, I shave daily. When back in the states without her I shave every three or four days, unless I have something to do somewhere where a clean shave is necessary. Or when, while brushing my teeth, I look in the mirror and notice all the silver hairs in my beard, which annoys the hell out of me for some reason. Fuckin' mortality sucks. My body surrendering to the aging process annoys me, dammit.
I finished shaving just as the first stirrings in my bowels signaled the coffee was doing it's job. Good! Maybe today I could take a decent shit for once. I had been eating so much rice and noodles, and vegetables, and other Thai/Lao stuff of late that I had been crapping like a rabbit the past week or two. I needed some beef and potatoes to straighten up my innards. I vowed to go to Makro later in the day to buy some and feast in the evening on some goddamn falang food for once.
I reached for the toilet paper, which I keep up on the towel rack on the other side of the hong nam, mainly because if I put it on the toilet paper dispenser it gets wet from the shower. I've yet to find the right type of shower curtain rod and ceiling hanger supports for what I need to put up a proper shower curtain. Another thing I need to get done one day. As I grabbed the roll of paper something inside the cardboard tube moved and touched my finger, scaring the shit out of me, figuratively, and causing me to yelp and drop the toilet paper roll on the floor. It instantly soaked up the water on the floor where it landed, becoming unusable. Dammit.
"What the fuck!" I growled as I stepped away from the ruined roll of paper and glared at it.
From the center of the roll came two silvery furred legs wavering about and testing the air for danger. A fucking spider! I hate fucking spiders. Especially these bigassed hairy muddafuggas in Isaan. I had noticed one hanging around the bathroom the past couple of days since the rains started pouring down nightly. He gains entrance through the air blocks in the rear wall and sits in the corner catching and eating anything smaller than himself that comes within his reach. Even baby lizards! I have no idea if they are poisonous, but I've seen their big black pincer jaws, and have no desire to ever get bit by one of these ugly sonofabitches. Plus I have this thing about bigass spiders. Creepy fuckers got too many damned legs if you ask me.
Once he climbed all the way out of the toilet paper tube I grabbed the hand shower and pulled the water knob to full blast. I proceeded to wash him into a corner and drown his ass for disturbing my, what I was hoping was anyway, first good shit in a couple of weeks. Bastard. I harangued him with my full sailor's vocabulary of swear words as I watched him shrivel up and drown. I gave him a good piece of my mind, which I can ill afford. Then I washed his dead ass out the drain on the floor. Served him right.
A knock came to the bathroom door and my wife asked, "You okay tilac?" I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around my waist and opened the door. "Yes, why?" I asked her, as she stood peeking into the hong nam. "Who you talk to?" she said. "Who? Oh! I was killing a spider that was hiding in the toilet paper roll!" I exclaimed. She gave me a funny look and said, "Oh. Okay."
"Listen," I queried her, "Did Sis bring back the newspapers from Surin this morning?" Sis usually grabbed the Nation and the Bangkok Post for me from Surin every morning. They were a day old, as the papers get to the shop around noon time, but she had the guy save a paper each for me every day, and she got them every morning after bringing our daughter to school. A day old English language newspaper is better than no paper at all when up in the village, believe me. "Yes." said my wife, "You want?"
"Yes please. The Nation darling, if you can."
She left and came back with the paper. I thanked her and grabbed it, and ducked back into the hong nam to see if I could reclaim the bowel movement that I had lost in the excitement with the damn spider, while reading the paper on the toilet.
I made like a rabbit once again.
