A surprise in a bunch of bananas

You can tell by the picture what's going to happen, can't you? This is a story about my father as a young man. He was born in Wales but his mother (my grandmother) moved with him to London when she was looking for a job. He also found a job but his was on the London docks unloading boats. On one occasion, he was unloading a boatload of bananas and felt something crawling on him. Before he could put down his load and swat the thing off, it bit him. Now, my father was rather fearless about most things but something about spiders really set him off. So, he panicked.

They took him to a nurse but she didn't move fast enough for his liking. He told me he yelled at her to hurry up - that he was dying. It didn't speed her up. Either she knew that the bites of these types of spiders were not generally serious or his description of it let her know that it wasn't a serious threat. Or maybe she just didn't care. He told me he thought maybe it was a young spider and didn't have much venom. No matter what the circumstances, he didn't die and wasn't maimed. I don't think he went back to the docks for work after that, though.

Ironically, one of his favorite songs to sing was the Harry Belafonte hit "The Banana Boat Song (Day-o)". He never sang the verse about the deadly black spider, though. I think it brought back too many bad memories.