An E=MD2 Short Story
Can dried cement move? Sure, if a sufficient force is applied, right?
Have you ever noticed the composition of cement blocks? Anyone who has had anything to do with cement blocks will realize they look like granules of cement pressed together. The kind you might have bought for make-shift shelving in your dorm or apartment looks like pressed cement granules. Cement dust plus some cement granules will fall from a scraped edge of a cement block.
Can granules of cement block move? If you lift a cement block, you’ll find granules along the way or on your gloves. Are those moving? Or, are they moved? The intended question is can an individual cement particle move itself? Let me see what you think.
Setting the Stage
In this story, I am Mama. With four young children and one on the way, doing laundry in the basement was a minor inconvenience when Mama was the lone and pregnant adult at home with her four stairstep children. Thankful she didn’t have to travel with her children to a laundromat or local water source, Mama would either bring the young ones to play in the basement (tricycles, big toys, books, and games) or let the growing dirty laundry pile wait.
Remedy
The basement had a curious wall of cement blocks that divided half the basement into two sides (fourths). Mama and her father decided to install a frame to enclose the quarter of the basement with the washer and dryer. Framing the open side let us install an oversized hallow door and thin plywood walls that were light to install and did not create a sound barrier. The door could be left open when Mama was doing laundry. A large shelf was attached to the wall across from the washer and dryer. Braced against the curious wall of cement blocks, the shelf served as a surface to sort and fold laundry. When the electrician installed new service, Mama had adequate basement lighting installed. The exterior basement door was opposite the new laundry room door. Tempering effects of weather from that exterior door, the new basement wall kept the young children from playing around the washer, dryer, furnace, wiring, and exterior door. The remaining three-fourths of the basement became a fun playroom.
With attentive eyes and ears on the children playing in the basement, Mama would switch washed clothes quickly to the dryer and load dirty laundry promptly into the washer. When another adult was tending the children, Mama could work in the laundry to wash and fold clothes.
Did Mama See Something
One day, when their father had taken the children to the park, Mama remained home alone. The laundry had piled up with need to fold the washed clothes and to wash the dirty clothes. With both machines cleaning even more laundry, Mama settled into the mindless task of sorting and folding the gathered pile of clean laundry. Folding that much laundry was a rather mundane task interrupted by consideration of the wearers of the different clothes, the matching of sock colors and sizes, switching clothes to and from the machines, and mental wanderings through the clouds of thoughts that fill the mind.
As Mama folded and stacked the laundry, something caught her eye.
Movement! Motion along the cement wall?
Nah, I’m just tired!
Folding and sorting is interrupted again with what? Motion? Movement at the cement wall?
Is it a bug? Is it real? Or, am I really tired?
Leaning forward slowly as possible and focusing steadily while daring not to beath, there it was. Motion! Movement!
What Is it?
Looking closer and focusing more intently at a place in time when cell phones did not have cameras, only human eyes could look to see and one human mind could record to remember. No one was around to bring a camera! No one else was there to see it, too! Only one pair of eyes saw what moved.
What I know I saw
Now, all I can do is tell you what I (Mama) know I saw! It should be unnecessary to say that drugs, smoking, and drinking were not involved in this physician-mother’s life lest you decide what I saw was an hallucination.
Incredible is what I saw. A cement particle moving! The cement particle moved again and again.
Looking closer, I saw that cement particle had legs! Eight legs! A CEMENT Particle Spider!
What?!
Surely it was just a normal spider with cement dust gathered on its body.
Look closer!
I did!
The cement particle shape was the spider’s body!
It was! I watched it! One complete being walking on the cement block!
Oh, the thinks that follow seeing a moving, living cement spider finally escape hurriedly as I poked it with a pencil point to see if the cement was body or dust. GONE! The tiny fellow darted away from my vision – likely hidden among the sea of cement granules. Leaving me to the race of thoughts that flowed!
- Wonder of GOD’s Creation!
- How did Cement-Spider get to my basement?
- There must be such species in concrete sources, right?
- How old were those cement blocks?
- How many Cement-Spider babies? generations? colonies?
- What does Cement-Spider eat?
- How does Cement-Spider get water?
- What does Cement-Spider do? Why?
- How long does Cement-Spider live?
- Did GOD Make that spider just for me to find?
Search of internet brings the nearly obligatory internet-imposed AI assistance that finds three considerations, none of which is What I SAW!1
NONE of those is What I Say I Saw! Decide for yourself whether or not I saw what I know I saw!
Yet, “What you decide doesn’t matter,” says this physician who saw what she saw and whose “pet” during medical school clinical rotations was a silky spider under the sink…. because total neglect served the spider well. I moved it outside when I headed north from Texas to Oklahoma for residency!
The Heavens and all Creation declare GOD’s majestic Glory!
When I am Called Home to Heaven, I will meet Jesus Face-to-face.
Will I remember to ask Him about cement-particle spider?
Will He Show you and me that cement-particle spider?
Will you2 join me there?
I hope and pray you will!3
PSALM 19 (WEB)
1 The heavens declare the Glory of GOD.
The expanse shows His Handiwork.
2 Day after day they pour out speech,
and night after night they display knowledge.
3 There is no speech nor language
where their voice is not heard.
4 Their voice has gone out through all the earth,
their words to the end of the world.
In them He Has Set a tent for the sun,
5 which is as a bridegroom coming out of his room,
like a strong man rejoicing to run his course.
6 His going out is from the end of the heavens,
his circuit to its ends.
There is nothing hidden from its heat.
- When people search for “cement particle spiders,” they are typically referring to either highly seasonal tiny red bugs found on sidewalks, specialized construction machinery, or molecular science. per ERE prompt of “concrete particle spiders” responded by GOOGLE internet search with “AI Overview” at Google-Internet-Search_ConcreteSpider. retrieved 2026June01 ↩︎
- Thoughts from the BIBLE follow: You are an eternal spirit who has a soul living in a mortal body. Every human being sins. Human sin earns us eternal separation of our human spirits and souls from GOD The Creator. Without Jesus when your mortal body returns to dust, your eternal spirit is separated forever from GOD Who right now Waits for YOU to call to Him. GOD Hears you, and He Sees you! You are His Beloved Creation! For GOD so Loved you that He Gave His Only Begotten Son Jesus that your belief in Jesus shall give you everlasting Life, which is eternity with GOD! Ask GOD’s Son Jesus to Reveal Himself to you! He Will Answer you because He Loves YOU! He Took your sins upon Himself to die in your place. Do you want the surety of eternity with GOD? Do you want Peace that passes understanding, complete Forgiveness, and forever Freedom? Follow the link in footnote 3. ↩︎
- Billy Graham Ministries invites you to Peace With Jesus Christ, ↩︎