The great spider hunt!

Two kids, a cherry bomb, an outhouse, and spiders... what could possibly go wrong?

Inspiration

By Charles Towne

Dootsie Bobo, (not his real name) was a friend of mine and his mama hated spiders. She didn’t just hate spiders, she hated spiders with a passion.

One day his mama told us that if we killed the spiders in their outhouse she would give us each some of the oatmeal cookies that she just had baked. Wow, what a deal!

Dootsie Bobo told me that the reason his mama hated spiders so bad was that she was afraid one of the was going to bite her on her bum. Anyway, we went out to their necessary facility and started looking for spiders but soon realized the spiders were smarter than we were ‘cause the were hiding under the toilet seat where we couldn’t reach them because as much as we wanted those delicious oatmeal cookies, neither of us wanted to stick our heads through the hole in the toilet seat to hunt for spiders.

We soon came up with a solution for our dilemma. We would blow the spiders up! I had some cherry bombs left over from the 4th of July and after giving it a very little thought, we figured that if we dropped a cherry bomb down the toilet hole, BANG! No more spiders.

I held the cherry bomb while my old pal Dootsie Bobo lit the fuse. I stepped into the outhouse and threw the cherry bomb down the toilet hole and turned to jump back outside just as my old buddy Dootsie Bobo slammed the door closing me in the outhouse!

And he was a friend!

Well, my desire to get out was greater than his desire to keep me in so we were both standing outside laughing when the cherry bomb exploded. W expected an explosion but all we heard was a faint, pop. Neither of us had ever heard of a dud cherry bomb before. Well, we put our heads together and concluded that if we twisted the fuses together on half a dozen cherry bombs it might do the job.

See, who said kids don’t think?

About the time we threw our spider killer down the toilet hole Dootsie Bobo’s daddy came down the path on an urgent errand. He threw the door open and was sitting down when our bomb exploded…spectacularly I might add. Quite suddenly Dootsie Bobo’s daddy exited the outhouse without even opening the door. I mean, he quite literally tore the door off its hinges. He didn’t even look at us as he hobbled up the path to their house, with his pants down around his ankles and his backside adorned with the aromatic contents of the outhouse, as he mumbled something about, “where in the world did the kids get the dynamite!?”

Well, Dootsie Bobo and I were given the task of washing the inside of the toilet but his mama did give us each a glass of milk and some oatmeal cookies. It was about that time that Dootsie Bobo’s daddy began to develop a very peculiar twitch similar to my father’s.

Papa God’s children sometimes do some rather goofy things but do you know what? He loves us anyway, and He is going to give us something a lot sweeter than milk and oatmeal cookies!

Live simply,

Love generously,

Trust God, and make a difference, today.

Charles Towne is a longtime Apopka resident, member of Insp!re Church and a published author.