Spider Vs. Sleeping Joey, Postponed

Go figure, the only female I ever find randomly lying in my bed is a spider.
Some luck.

Had I not caught her under my covers, one of us surely would have paid for it. Tonight I chased her out.
But if she returns, perhaps we will lie awake all night talking about how much we long for the comfort of -
Yes, right.

If I ever found a random lying in my bed, I would ask her who she is and how she got here, regardless of how single I am at the time. I would heroically help her find wherever she was lost from. Fighting bad guys along the way, I would reunite her with her lost love. I would receive gracious thanks and praise from the townspeople for my noble deeds. And riding off into the sunset, preferably on a faithful steed, back to my bachelor-esque life of rescuing the people, I could be heard singing most debonairly the theme to Batman.

And if I find that spider in my bed again, I will probably have to kill it.
This makes me sound insensitive, I think to myself, as I drift into a deep slumber. The venom of her sultry sting coursing through m-

You'll have to forgive me. It's late.
And I just don't feel like deleting this because it makes me laugh.

Basketball Vs. Fear

I leave my shoes - my basketball shoes that get damp with sweat - outside after I come home from an afternoon on the court. Sometimes I forget they are out there. Other times I just don't want to bring them in. My family appreciates this, though they've never had to realize how much so.

Today I went to get them. They were lying outside the garage door, and had been so since Saturday. In the shade, one sat on its sole with my ankle brace peaking out of it. The other rested on its side in the grass near some small bushes and the brick wall. As I leaned over to pick them up, I noticed a spider web... but no spider.

Where was this spider?, I wondered.
Could it have climbed in my shoe?
What kind of spider is it? Could it be poisonous? Aren't there poisonous spiders around here? Of course, there are, especially in summer. Remembering one of those stories - the ones your parents tell you when you're young to scare you into behaving or being safe - about how spiders, mostly Black Widows, like to hide in cool damp places in the summer, I was careful to pick up my shoes by their soles.

Stretching my arms out as far as I could push the shoes away from my body, I circled the house to the back patio, and threw them at the concrete. I picked one up by the toe and shook the brace out of it. No spider yet. I picked the other up. Still pushing the shoes away, I tried smacking them together.
I clicked their heels.
I banged the soles.
I turned each upside down smacking it against the concrete, but still no spider.

Determined to get it out of my shoe - or both shoes?! - I found a stick. The stick jabbed around for a minute in one shoe, then the other, and back to the other shoe for a moment. Still it came up with nothing.

The shoes are black on the outside with a white stripe, and black on the inside. They are very dark. I cannot see into the toe part of them.

I put the shoes inside the house at the front door. I think I'll wait an hour, or more, before I try sticking my feet in there.
But I'm ready to play basketball now.

...