Some people believe they need to be aggressive so as not to be taken to the cleaners by service people or contractors. I have my doubts about that. I think those people have consumed more bodily fluids in their food than they’re aware of. I had a carpenter friend who always added a Bitch Surtax in his estimates if he could tell someone was going to be a pain in the ass.
It doesn’t really matter, because I’m not capable of being a jerk to service people. About as mean as I get is not tipping a dime over 15%, and even that makes me squirm. I’ve seen some really, really poor servers before and some of them got great tips from me for being so comically bad.
And store personnel? Neither Dave nor I can stop ourselves from goofing with them. We like our fun. We still fondly remember the young woman we were trading jokes with when we were looking for an ice cream scoop. “But not the scoop scoop kind of ice cream scoop. You know? The kind that’s more flat and you can really drive it into the ice cream.”
“Oh, I think we can call a spade a spade,” she said.
That’s our kind of clerk, right there.
Anyway, I was feeling a little abashed at the paint store yesterday. Paint stores will take your old paint off your hands for free no matter what condition it’s in, but I’ve never brought any in. There’s something about old paint. You never know when you’re going to need a little touch-up here and there. Just that eensy bit. And all you have to do is muscle the lid off a twenty-year-old can and stir the contents vigorously for a half hour so it turns back into pudding and filter out the rust and spiders.
I have several dozen of these artifacts. But lately I’ve been trying harder to get rid of stuff. I needed a gallon of house paint and I gathered up most of my old cans and brought them along. I wouldn’t have even put any of them in someone else’s car, but mine comes pre-crapped inside and out. When I hauled them into the paint store and put them on the counter, I started babbling. I’ve heard you take paint cans back in any condition, I said, cringing. If Paul Bunyan had come straight from a forest fire and danced on the counter, he couldn’t have left a bigger debris field. The second paint guy looked super happy to already be helping someone else.
“I’m really sorry,” I said. “I should’ve hosed them off or something.”
“That’s okay,” he said, taking a bench brush to the scene of the catastrophe. “You wanted a gallon of paint?”
We went through the usual review of available paint grades and finally settled on the most expensive, because my house is crumbling and I figure it’s worth it to get the stuff that fends off lightning and plague. He started to mix some up.
“Oh look,” I added. “I brought you a spider.” Sure enough a very small spider was exploring the counter. The paint guy started toward it. I brushed it my way and onto the floor, in case the man was a skoosher.
He wasn’t. “Aww! I wanted to have a look at it. Looked like a little orb weaver. I love spiders.”
I bent down and coaxed it onto my finger and restored it to the countertop. “All yours, fresh from my basement,” I said. “I don’t have the glasses for it.”
He peered with his young-paint-guy eyes. “I love spiders. And insects. Everything, really. We have about a dozen raccoons and opossums at my place.”
“Wow! I never see more than one or two at a time.” I left out the time five raccoons stood on their hind legs watching Dave when he was taking a whiz behind the tool shed. Shut off the stream, as I recall now.
I talked to Dave a while about what I wanted the paint for, even though I wasn’t planning to do the whole house for a few more years. I didn’t really need a gallon, I said. But a quart usually costs close to the same as a gallon, so.
“Did you say you’d rather have a quart?” Paint guy, overhearing.
“Well, yeah, that’s really all I need, but…”
“I can get you a quart.”
Okay! But I was pretty sure he’d already mixed up my gallon. It was whacketing away on the shaker.
Sure enough, he banged the lid on and set it on the counter. “How about if I sell you this gallon for the quart price?”
Um? Sure? Why are you being so nice to me?
“Hey. You brought me a spider.”
I wonder what he’d give me for a roof rat?
The keys to the store, I imagine.
Awesome. You know they have an entire WALL of premixed sample paint jars? Like, 4-ouncers? I could get in a lot of trouble with a store like that.
I LOVE bantering with the counter help — and the other customers — when I’m being waited on! If it’s someone who waits on me all the time, I like to learn their names and remember things that they told me before, because so many people just bark out their orders and don’t treat counter help like real people. (I have read that this is why the French don’t like American tourists; they don’t say “bonjour” and treat the counter help as people. They tend to just point at what they want.) It’s also why, when Paul and I go out to dinner, we sit at the bar. We develop a kind of relationship with the bartender, and I get to talk to strangers (which I LOVE doing.)
The guy at the paint store… I’d go in there, even if I didn’t need paint, just to chat with him. He seems to love all the creatures that I do. Not only spiders, but raccoons, opossums, and probably even squirrels and groundhogs as well!
Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute–leave them damnable squirrels out of the list!
I missed the part where you explained the title, The Seventy Dollar Spider. Is that what a gallon of paint goes for in Portland?
I also never heard the bit about paint stores taking your used cans of paint for disposal. Around here we have to wait for a specific day when the township comes by the collect paint and chemicals. Not even sure we can just drop it off at the dump.
I also like spiders, but I wouldn’t be cavalier about sweeping them onto my hand. I’ve been bitten by two of the garden variety and the last one sent me running to urgent care because my thumb and forefinger swelled up bigger than the rest of my hand. Had to sit in the dark with my hand wrapped in an ice pack and elevated for two days. Whatever med I had to take made a person particularly sensitive to sunlight.
$20 for the paint, $50 clean-up fee?
Oh, and here, you have to pay an extra fee when you buy paint, and I believe that covers the recycling/disposal later when you bring back your cans.
The premium paint was going to run around $100, and the pint was $30. And I didn’t sweep the spider. I suggested he climb my finger. He elected to. I figured he wasn’t unhappy.
Yeah, I also don’t invite spiders to choose or not choose to climb onto my finger. It’s sorta like standing out in the yard with a metal rod during a thunderstorm and allowing the lightning to choose or not choose to hit me. And you probably remember how that worked out for me last time.
I’ve been bitten by spiders, as i handle a lot of firewood in the winter. It itches a lot, turns red, but it ain’t nuthin’. I still love them.
i once got a Jumping Spider to perch on my finger. I was so pleased! Normally they are skittish, but this one was rather curious and almost friendly. I still try to get them to perch, but it has never happened since.
Perch, and then scoot right, scoot left, make like a tank turret! I love jumping spiders. And Bruce, I wouldn’t stand next to YOU in a thunderstorm.
Bugs I Will Allow On Me
1. Butterfly
2. Praying mantis
3. Katydid
Bugs I Will Scream the Bloody Roof Off If They Get on Me:
1. Bees and wasps
2. Spiders
3. Ticks
A few years ago, there was a memorable moment in September when I was taking out the compost. I felt a sharp pain on my back, followed by another one. I immediately tore off my sundress (thank goodness I was wearing underwear… THAT time!) and ran screaming into the house. Turns out it was a yellowjacket. It got under the back of my dress, couldn’t get out, so it started stinging me. Those bites are PAINFUL! I’m sure my next door neighbor thought “Oh, that Mimi! WTH is she on about now?”
I was riding on the back of Dave’s motorcycle once when he got a wasp under his T-shirt which was flapping madly in the wind and he started smacking himself repeatedly at 60mph. I DID think he was having a seizure. And Susan? Little fuzzy bees too? Totally with you on the ticks.
No, no bees, fuzzy or bald. Well, actually those tiny ones, the so-called sweat bees, don’t bother me that much. They’re kind of cute. And I like ladybugs, too.
Our garden has several robust (and wildly proliferating) patches of a fall-flowering plant called physostegia. Ours are hot pink. The flowers are absolutely covered in bees. Huge bumblebees the size of Rhode Island. I don’t mind standing right next to them and listening to the astonishing collective buzz. Which would be a good name for a band.
Awwwwwww….. His momma raised him right.
God help me, I probably reminded him of his momma. Or Grandma.
I LOVE the premixed sample pots. They’re just the right size for painting or touching up garden gnomes or other ornaments out in the weather. My home isn’t my own so I don’t have to bother with painting it.
There’s something about little pots of paint that fluffs the heart.
I love “fluffs the heart”. Great descriptive!