An Epic Battle of the Ages!!!

Tonight, as I was finishing up feeding my daughter her dinner, my 6-year-old son came running up the stairs: "Mom! Mom! There's a spider down there!" I froze. A spider. Ty was taking a much-needed and well-deserved nap after a long day at work, and he's usually the family Spider-Slayer. I wasn't about to wake him up just to take care of a spider so I took a deep breath, put my daughter in her crib, and tried to psych myself up for battle.
I hate spiders. I hate them as much as I hate Math--and that is a VERY powerful hate. Spiders are creepy, evil, and every one of them is determined to destroy the human race.
Yeah, I know that they're useful and help keep the insect population down, but they had darn well better be doing that crap OUTSIDE of my house. Once they step even one of their eight tiny little legs INSIDE my house, they're on the short list of "soon-to-be-dead creepy critters." It's just the way it goes. They can live their creepy little lives however they want, FAR FAR AWAY FROM ME.
Anyway, my maternal duty to protect my children from the evil of spiders was calling, so I grabbed an empty plastic cup with a lid, and headed downstairs to meet my Enemy. I wasn't sure if I could do the whole job with the cup, so just in case, I grabbed a couple of wet wipes out of the diaper bag and brought them with me as well.
We went downstairs, and my son pointed out the evil critter. I was all steeled up to deal with the monster, and then I actually saw it. It had long, black legs, and a black body with a gray tushie. It was larger than I'd expected, and all of my former resolve completely disappeared.
It was intense. I sat there on the floor, staring down this little monstrosity for at least ten minutes. I swear this thing was mocking me in its own silent, creepy language: "BWAHAHAHA! I'm barely the size of your thumb, and you can't come any closer to me! I'm totally gonna call all of my spider friends and we'll carry you off as soon as you fall asleep tonight and sacrifice you on an altar to the Gods of Spideria!"
The spider was right. I was frozen. My son--who is almost as freaked out by spiders as I am--was sitting at my elbow. His constant stream of comments on how big the spider was and saying things like "You can do it mom. Come on, do it now!" was decidedly NOT helpful.
Finally, I swallowed my terror and reached out with the cup. I trapped the beast, but I couldn't bring myself to put the lid over the opening. I couldn't bear the thought of getting any closer than an arm's length away. So I just sat there with the cup trapping the spider, and thought up a plan.
I laid out one of the wet wipes underneath the place where I was holding the cup, and picked it up a little. The spider wasn't on the couch anymore, but it wasn't in the cup either. It had fallen onto the wet wipe on the floor and tried to crawl away. I acted on instinct. I reached out with the bottom of the cup and used it to violently smash my enemy. However, when I pulled the cup away, the spider was still walking!!! I struck a second time, but it was STILL alive! So finally I went nuts and repeatedly crushed that stupid little thing until it was just a crumpled mass of legs.

I folded my vanquished enemy into its wet-wipe shroud and handed another wipe to my son, who bravely used it to pick it all up. Then he carried the spider up to the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet. He was very proud of me, "Mom, you did it! I can't believe you did it! Good job!" It's awesome being praised for bravery by a six-year-old, especially one that just watched his own mother stare white faced at a spider while she scrounged up her last scrap of courage to get rid of it. I displayed the exact opposite of courage, but he only saw that I won the battle and praised me for it, no matter how freaked out I was during the whole process.
Ty, who had been lying on the couch next to this whole scene, woke up just as I was delivering the fatal blow. Our son explained the situation, and I told him the story.
Ty said: "Why didn't you wake me up? I could have done it."
I shrugged, "I didn't want to wake you up just for this. It seemed rude."
Ty yawned, "You didn't have to stare it down either." Then he rolled over and said: "Good job, you fearsome warrior, you."
I walked up to the kitchen to obsessively wash my hands of spidery contamination and bask just a little in the glory that comes from defeating an age-old enemy.
And thus ended the Great Spider Battle of 2011.