Poor Kerouac!

I was doing dishes.  Jackie, who was pretending to be a guest, was wandering around the kitchen and had come to rest before the refrigerator.  She was reading the things stuck there on.

"I don't know how I feel about exploding spiders."

I looked up from scrubbing the cookie sheet on which I had baked the evening's bread.  Jackie was reading the Jack Kerouac magnet, the one that reads:

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars...

"They're metaphorical spiders."

"I know, but I'm still not sure I like the image."

I thought about it for a moment and concluded that I was at peace with the image.  "Exploding spiders will never be in my hair."

Jackie is a more compassionate and enlightened person than I am (AND she reminds me, she used to work at a zoo), "there are lots of things that spiders can do that are not exploding or in your hair."

I once found a spider in my hair.  It was horrifying.  "but exploding spiders will NEVER be in my hair."

I'd like to think that my position re: exploding spiders, metaphorical or otherwise, is unassailable, but I have a feeling that Jackie may have the moral high ground here.