"Don't move," I said softly to my mom as we sat having lunch at an outdoor cafe.

"What is it?" she asked in a somewhat alarmed tone.

"There is a spider hanging from your hat," I replied. "But I'll get it." Even though I am deathly afraid of spiders, I felt it was my duty, as my mother's only daughter, to risk life and limb and remove the tiny, fire-breathing spider from her hat. But before I could reach over to grab the thread the spider was hanging from, my mother screamed, jumped out of her seat, and threw her lovely straw hat into oblivion.

She stared at me accusingly.

"What?" I demanded. "It's not my fault the spider was on your hat. I was just the messenger!"

"Yes, but you could have removed it before you told me what it was so I didn't have a heart attack," she responded.

I looked at my husband for help. He just shrugged. He was the father of a spider-hater — and the husband of a spider-hater. He'd had to deal with enough hysteria around the presence of spiders to last two lifetimes. There was no way he was getting involved in this one.

My mother looked around for her hat and spotted it on the sidewalk near a potted plant.

"Can you get it, Tray?" she asked.

"Well, now we have a dilemma, Mom," I said. "Since you tossed the hat before I could get the spider off, we don't know if he returned to his post on the hat or if he dismounted to look for friendlier terrain. I'm OK with grabbing a spider that's in plain sight, but I'm not really comfortable retrieving something that is known to have had a spider dwelling on it that now may or may not still be on it and could, if given the chance, leap off the hat onto my arm as I pick it up."

We both turned and looked at my husband.

"Nah-ah," he said, shaking his head. "I'm on a spider sabbatical."

We all stared at the discarded hat, which clearly was not going to walk back by itself. I looked at my mom and could see the wheels turning in her head.

"Excuse me," she called out to our server who was walking by. "Would you mind grabbing my hat?" she said sweetly, pointing to the hat on the ground. "It blew off in the wind."

I swear she batted her eyelashes at him as she made her request. I admired her ability to both lie so easily and also get people to do things for her that she didn't want to do for herself. I wished I had such a talent.

"No problem," he responded. He then walked to her hat.

"Oh," she shouted at him, "and make sure to give it a really good shake on the way back."

Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller, "Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble," available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online! You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com.

Photo credit: Elizabeth at Unsplash