Halloween Hi-Jinx Chez McClusky

Our Halloween decorations this year included a large bag of black plastic spiders. Kate and I both spotted them amidst all the other spooky crap at Target and I’m not sure which one of us got more OMG-I-must-have-them-now fired up. Suffice it to say we couldn’t wait until checking out to bust into the bag.

My guess is this delightful sack o’ arachnids were meant to adorn the nearly suburban-mandatory big fake spider web that covers the pumpkins on the stoop or is stretched across the front porch. But at that point we hadn’t rigged our web yet. And when we got home, somewhere in the course of the day Kate had dropped one in the hallway by her bedroom. I have to admit that more than once I walked by the same fake spider sitting in that same place on the floor and had a momentary ick shiver. Which got me thinking that less truly is more.

So I stuck one on the soap bar in Mark’s shower.

After getting ready for work the next day Mark didn’t say a thing, and I later discovered our eight-legged friend on my pillow. And from there we went back and forth–it was in the medicine cabinet on his toothpaste tube, in my jewelry box, under the sheets on his side of the bed, yadda yadda yadda.

But of course, I had to think of the way to end this cat and mouse game with enough flourish to mark it as the grand finale. And also to assert my clear and evident spider-hiding domination. I mean, not that I’m competitive or anything.

As I pondered my coup, I was chagrined at the thought that in the few days leading up to Halloween Mark was going to be in New York. And then–duh!–I realized that having him find it there–while I was home in California–should be my genius next move. So, when he was  taking his pre-airport departure shower at the painful hour of 5:30AM, I sprinkled the entire bag of spiders into a section of his suitcase, reserving some for inside a pair of dress shoes he’d packed.

It sucked voluntarily getting out of bed in the wee small hours to do this, but I’m willing to make sacrifices like that to secure my place on the medal podium of pranksterdom.

The voicemail Mark left me after unpacking his bag at the hotel–and sending a bunch of spiders flying–was, “Well played, honey. Well played.”

Of course, when he got home a couple days later, I pulled back the sheets of our bed to see all the spiders come home to roost. Sure, it surprised me, and sure, gave me the proverbial willies, but we both knew that the game had really ended with my bold and brilliant suitcase move.

Or so we thought.

Today, Mark sent me an email from the office entitled “I don’t know if you’re teaching Kate tricks.” Turns out that when he put on his cycling jacket to ride to the gym at lunch he discovered that the pockets were filled with dozens of small wooden mushroom- and pepperoni-painted disks, part of the pizza-making toy Kate’s currently obsessed with.

Mark was fairly certain that this was my handiwork, or that I’d coached Kate to do it. But I’d undergo a polygraph to prove that the girl acted entirely on her own. I wasn’t even aware she’d done it. Though if I did happen to catch her red-handed, God knows I wouldn’t have stopped her.

Ah well. Just when I thought I had the last laugh, little Miss Kate comes in out of the blue and ends the game with a dazzling flourish.

Well played, Katie. Well played.