Journey

I didn’t know it, but my housemate is afraid of bugs—deathly afraid. She stayed up until 2:30 the other morning because she saw something that she thought might have possibly looked like a bug beside her bed, and she didn’t want to turn the light out because, you know, bugs always move in the dark. I’m not fearless, mind you, when it comes to bugs, but I’d rather go through the peril of killing them than having them infest my home. One thing I know for sure, ignoring them won’t make them go away
The other day, I came home from work to find my housemate (affectionately known as Bruce) curled on our living room couch, staring up dubiously. I followed her gaze to a black speck on the ceiling.
“It’s a spider,” she said simply.
“I see that.” I put my bag on the table. “And why aren’t you killing it?”
She laughed nervously, explaining that she’d rather just live with it than encounter it. “Live and let live,” she laughed nervously.
I rolled my eyes, dragged a dining room chair across the room, and removed my shoe.
She shrunk a little farther back into the couch. “You’re gonna squash it?”
“Yup. I hate to kill something when it really hasn’t done anything to me, but I don’t want that thing crawling in my mouth when I’m asleep.” I mounted the chair.
She watched me, amused as I gathered the gumption to strike, hoping that the spider wouldn’t leap or fall on me. When I finally nailed it with my shoe, the spider tumbled from where it had lurked on the crown molding. I jumped down from the chair with a shriek, checking to make sure it hadn't landed in my hair. When I looked up, I saw that the poor little guy had landed on the top of one of my wall hangings--the wall hanging which reads, ironically, “Life is a Journey.” Too bad for that spider, it was the end of his.