I was lying on the couch, talking on the phone to my adopted son Chris. We talked about getting our knuckles tattooed together. He told me that he recently went to the ER when a little red bump on his leg turned into a great big red blotch. They told him it was a spider bite and gave him some stuff to put on it.

An hour later, I noticed a bright red blister on my wrist. Much brighter than this picture. It’s hard to use your phone to photograph your hand. It was an angry purple-red. I looked through a magnifying glass. Does it look like a tiny penis burrowed in there? I was concerned.

I Googled spider bites, since I’d just been talking about them. And the photos looked just like my wrist! How could this happen? It’s too much of a coincidence.

Was it a Hobo or a Brown Recluse? Would it cause necrosis of the flesh, or vomiting and paralysis? I washed it wish soap and put neosporin on it. It got bigger and looked inflamed. More Googling and more dread.

It was nearly midnight and I was home alone. I called Chris and I called my nephew, who said he would come over. I called a free 24 hour nurse hotline and she told me to keep it clean. She read a statement absolving her of all responsibility.

Meanwhile, my stitches hurt. Ten stitches under the arm for a biopsy that no one is worried about, a whole other story.

Stitches, spider bite, I’d given up dairy products for two weeks to see if that was good, insomnia, Trump, senility, and so on.

My nephew arrived on his bicycle and we Googled spider bites together. I told him about the 5 Kinds of Becky and he told me I wasn’t a Becky so stop taking it personally. We discussed the parameters of the words “problematic” and “angst.” I love him so much. Times 100 or even a thousand.

I told him that if I died in my sleep from the spider bite, it would be okay because it wouldn’t be my fault. No one could get mad at me for dying. He was alarmed and told me that it wouldn’t be okay with him.

I woke up alive. Chris had texted me, “mommy, are you alive?” and I was touched that someone cared. I went to the Nurse Clinic at CVS, where a lovely nurse named Anulika confirmed that it was a spider bite. She told me how to care for it and prescribed something. We talked about how much we love Swiffer, and about eyebrows. We felt strongly about both topics and for a moment our souls were as one.

So in the end, I am ready for death but I’m a people person. Plus, I get to be Best Man at Chris’s wedding, a dream come true if I make it to October 31.

To paraphrase a quote misattributed to Mark Twain,  Rumors of the death of the hipster are greatly exaggerated.

How many times have you come across a snide appraisal of hipsters, whatever iteration hipster is current at the time, with the conclusion that the species has hit rock bottom. Hipsters are so over, just look at them.

The last time I read something like that, hipsters were kind of effete and emo, remember them? And they had to drink Pabst Blue Ribbon for some reason.

Chris Sanderson, a trend forcaster, explains:“The hipster died the minute we called him a hipster. The word no longer had the same meaning.” Oh please, Chris, as if.  Then there was  a report last month from researchers at the University of New South Wales who discovered that the hipster look was no longer “hip.”

I’m down with Chris’s notion that there are now two types of hipster: “Contemporary hipsters – the ones with the beards we love to hate – and proto-hipsters, the real deal.” So, okay, the Real Deal means ‘us’ and the faux hipsters are ‘them’. That’s cool with me, I guess.

Hipsters were once people who rejected societal norms. White people who liked black jazz, people who read William Burroughs or Iceberg Slim. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t about a uniform that signaled you were cool and in-the-know.

I still like the definition of a hipster as someone who was into whatever you’re into, 5 years ago. He has moved on and you will never keep up with him. I can reliably turn to my Nephew Russell, who was riding a fixed bike years ago. He is too hip for Facebook, not to mention Twitter. Whatever browser he uses for the internet, you’ve never heard of it. Whatever coffee you drink, he knows a place to get better coffee and it’s not a chain, either. It’s a given that he despises hipsters.

This Sanderson guy, the hipster expert, predicts an ‘overhaul’ in hipsters as we now know them  He predicts “A more macho look, almost to the point of caricature, in a bid for men to reinforce their identity.”

Uh-oh, he’d better be wrong about this. The hipsters I’m seeing (whether proto, meta or crypto) are already bearded and scruffy enough to be woodsman and ax-murderers. Will they adopt an even more primitive look, like early cro-magnons? Whatever the next wave turns out to be, I’m confidant that the hipster will be here til the end, a survivor, like the mighty cockroach. Just more annoying.