I hate bugs.
HATE.
BUGS.
!
As in, one of the things I hate most in life. For those of you that know me well, it's up there with my fear of elevators. And I really should be more careful with admitting things like my worst fears because I do have two brothers. Thankfully in light of this confession, I don't live with those two boys anymore and the boy I DO live with is nice to me and kills all the bugs for me. Although, I think my dislike for bugs is serious enough that even my brothers know better than to go too far with their pranks. Make me sleep beside their snake, Magnus - I'm fine with that...been there, done that even. But bugs...I shudder at the thought of them.
My intense fear might have come from the time that I had a tick crawling up my leg and my dad, trying to break me of my fear, refused to get it off of me and instructed me to pick it off myself. And as much as I was terrified at the thought of it crawling on me, I couldn't bring myself to touch it in order to get it off of me. When I was nearly in hysterics, my dad finally rolled his eyes and picked it off of me. Or the times I'd find a bug in my room and would yell for a boy in the house and they'd just have the best time making me squirm while refusing to get it for me as it crawled closer to safety (a dark crevice or somewhere we couldn't get to). And then when they would finally get it, they'd have to gang up and pin me down and threaten to stick it on me before finally flushing it or squishing it or whatever. So maybe there is a reason I'm truly terrified of bugs crawling on me...I was tortured as a child.
When I was young, around 6 or 7...ok, fine, I was like12, we had a centipede problem in our basement one summer. These little centipedes were everywhere and the day I first saw one upstairs, I freaked out. Especially because they would crawl on the ceilings and I was terrified that they would drop off the ceiling...like on top of my bed or something. So you can imagine my terror when I SAW one of those nasty creepy crawlers drop off the ceiling onto my sister's bed one afternoon. I was so horrified that I wouldn't go to bed that night and after putting up a long fight, my mom finally took me to sleep at a neighbor's house. That's embarrassing to admit, but I'm admitting it because if you know how much I shudder at the thought of a bug on me, you can fully appreciate the story I'm about to tell you that happened to me today.
So, at work today, I was just sitting at my desk working on the computer when I suddenly heard something land right beside me on my desk and saw it out of the corner of my eye. It startled me in the kind of way it would have if I was in my zone and someone had thrown a paper ball at me and it had landed on my desk, except no one else was in the room. I glanced over and then out of the corner of my eye saw something fall from my desk to the ground and scamper away really quickly.
It was one of these...
A thousand-legger as my friend and office-mate, Jocelyn, calls them. I'd never seen a "thousand legger" before working in Cameron, but we see these guys every now and then and both Jocelyn and I HATE them. I can't bring myself to kill them. Don't get me wrong...it's not because I have pity on them whatsoever. It's simply because even with a shoe between me and a critter, I still can't physically bring myself to do it. It's a mental thing I guess. So Jocelyn always does, the brave soul that she is.
But Jocelyn was out of the office today and no one was around to kill it so as it quickly scampered away and was just about to disappear beneath a piece of furniture, I had to make a decision. Kill it myself or spend the rest of the day knowing that it's roaming around the room somewhere freely. So as much as it grosses me out to squish a bug, I stomped on that sucker. And it's guts were all over the floor and on my shoe (it had lots of guts!) and some of it's legs fell off. Ugh...I almost gag at the thought of it now. Especially the thought of then having to clean it up with a paper towel. Nausea. Shuddering. Sweaty Hands. I literally lost my appetite and didn't eat lunch until 3:30. You think I'm exaggerating? Well, my mother and my brothers and those who know me best will read this and know that it's true.
So, after the whole killing episode, I sat back down in my chair thinking "where the heck did that thing come from?!?" as I remembered it landing on my desk out of nowhere. And to make matters worse, when I looked down at my desk to the spot where it had landed, I saw that it left behind it's ghost to haunt me...
How disgusting is that?!???
Want a closer look?
At first I was baffled. But then I looked up. And right above me is a large square vent. So doing the math, I figure that the thing fell out of the vent and when it landed with a thud on my desk, it left behind a dusty imprint before jumping off my desk and fleeing for its life.
Imagine my pleasure at having to sit under that vent for the rest of the day.
And knowing that I have to go back and sit in that
3 comments:
i laughed....A LOT reading this...it reminds me of our old apartment and the silverfish that invaded when we first moved in...then at work the other day a little kid came in that had BOTH a cockroach and a silverfish in her ear!!!!!
oh, im also impressed that you had time to whip out your camera and take pictures of your victim before he met his fate!! haha.
Brit...please tell me you are joking. how the heck did a girl have a cockroach and a silverfish in her ear?!? now I will have nightmares. poor thing! Did you have to help get it out?
and fyi - i only whipped out the phone camera AFTER the thing was dead. The picture of the actual bug (not the ghost pics) was just an image that came up when I googled "thousand leggers" to show you what kind of bug it had been. lol
I'd just had the same fearful experience. I do not have a phobia of bugs. I just do not like for them to be on me. For instance, the night I saw the movie Arachnophobia, the power went out in the house. On my way to the circuit breaker box, a web wiped across my face. I FLIPPED out, wiping my head as if one of the spiders from the movie was upon me. of course, I'd laughed about it a minute later. Meanwhile, for decades, I've had a fear that one of these mila/centi/thousand legged things will drop from the ceiling on to my face. I hear that their bites hurt, but am not certain. I kill maybe three per year, catching two of the three on the ceiling. Now, I'm a man with well more than ten inches of hair; so I wear a satin "scull cap" to bed, for more than keeping my hair and scalp healthy. It also prevents me from feeling something in my hair and going berserk. Tonight -while sitting next to my desk- something hit my forehead which was already covered by my "scully". I'd assumed it might be one of them so I just stomped my feet wildly. A few minutes later, it comes crawling up onto my desk. it was injured, but not as injured (obliterated) as it became a few seconds later. Luckily I keep a fly swatter two feet from where I was sitting. As I was only wearing a t-shirt, I could swear it was aiming to land on my ...well, I'll just say, my "gender identifier". I'm just paranoid, right?
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