Day of the Tarantella

Everyday life is prone to little interruptions.  Sometimes these interruptions are welcome, making life more interesting, and sometimes they’re not, making them a nuisance.  Piano lessons are not immune to these little disturbances.  We can try all we want to make things work out smoothly and then, without warning, something happens to throw it all off.  A tarantula decided to throw off my lesson plans one unsuspecting day.  It crawled down the sidewalk leading to the studio, perhaps intent on some music instruction for itself.

A teenage girl was sitting in the waiting area, watching out the window for her ride to come.  She was the first to spot the music loving tarantula and came to get me. With a concerned look on her face, she said there was a big spider on my sidewalk.  I went to look, figuring it was just one of the lizards who crawl up the rocks to sun themselves in the afternoon. (I live in the southwest desert of Utah so we see a lot of nature.)  There it was, a beautiful specimen of unwelcome nature in full force, a wonderful and horrifying tarantula. Of course, all the students working at different stations in the studio had to come and look out the large window at the curiosity.

Knowing that more students would be arriving and would need to walk down that same sidewalk, I thought I had better do something.  I quickly looked around for help, seeing only freaked out girls and teachers and one little boy who was already out the door to get a better look.  I followed him out, grabbing the broom I kept by the door as I did.  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.  I didn’t want to harm the tarantula…just get it to change its location.  The other two teachers came out too, and I quickly handed off the broom to one of them.  “What am I supposed to do with this”  she asked.

“Maybe you can sweep it down the hill and out of the way.”  I replied, standing behind her.

“No way, I’m not going near it.”  She told me .  That’s when I realized that Matthew, the little boy, was our only hope.

“I’ll do it”, he eagerly volunteered.

So with my cowardly supervision, Matthew preceded to “sweep” the confused creature back down the hill.  Every time he did, the spider would crawl back up, and all the girls would scream again.  Time ticked by until the lesson hour was almost over and a solution to our problem was still not found, at least not until Matthew’s mother came by to pick him up.  Why were we all outside?  We told her what was happening and she immediately asked for a Mason jar.

“Make it a wide-mouth jar.” She said.

To my amazement, her and Matthew managed to capture the tarantula in the bottle with the plan to take it to the Science Fair. With the spider safe in the bottle and driving down the road in Matthew’s mom’s car, the next hour of lessons could resume as planned and everything was back to normal.  I could see where Matthew got his bravery from.  Too bad he hadn’t inherited a little talent along the way too, I secretly thought to myself, but that’s another subject for another time.

The day of the Tarantella was at an end. Everyone had experienced one of life’s little interruptions and had gone away better for it, with a great story to tell friends and family.  The tarantula was a hit at the science fair and was given a new home afterwards on some rocks far, far away from my house.

Don’t you just love happy endings?