"Dares a spider!" he said as he ran towards me. I was on the couch and quickly readied myself to dive for a tissue and dispose of the intruder. But Dean was pointing to the middle of the room and all I saw was beige carpet. Soon the spider was appearing everywhere, from my face to the inside of his sippy cup. Hmmm.... The spider kept getting bigger and more aggressive apparently. Dean was getting more and more worked up over this invisible spider. So I did what I always do, I tried to give him a reasonable explanation about spiders; how they are God's creatures, they are afraid of us, they are very interesting, have eight legs, can be helpful for catching other bugs, and any other positive trait I could possibly remember about spiders. None of my interesting facts made a difference to Dean, however. He just wanted that spider to disappear...a difficult task for a non-existent spider. My mommy brain kicked in after I drained all my logical resources. I simply told him, "Spiders don't live in our house, only people are allowed to live in our house. So you tell that spider to get outside!". We laughed, he practiced his spider-bouncer speech and the spider seemed to be forgotten for a little while.

Little did I know, the spider hadn't "moved out", he had only detoured up the stairs to make his home. I discovered this as we were getting Dean ready for bed and the spider talk started up again. Dean was following along behind me to the bathroom when I heard his tiny voice say, "Hey Spider! God loves you spider, but I don't have to!". And that was the end of the spider.