This morning, at approximately 3:45 AM I began to stir due to an odd sensation on my left shin. I first believed this sensation to have been caused by our rotating fan pointing a breeze towards the lush forest of leg hair which adorns my left shin (a bountiful harvest of leg hair covers my right shin as well though it does not play a part in this story). When this incessant tickling continued after the fan had made its pass over our bed, I assumed that, perhaps, the sheet was the culprit, which led me to make the executive decision to continue my slumber atop my covers. I promptly fell back asleep: problem solved…for ten minutes. At roughly 5 til Four, the tickling resumed and I reached down to scratch the affected area of my shin only to realize that it was neither the fan, nor the sheets, nor my masculine leg hairs but rather some type of insect. I ever so calmly leapt from the bed and squealed nearly sending Abbey into cardiac arrest. I still had not seen the culprit, but I believed it to be one of the long-legged easy-to-kill, slow, dumb, aggravating spiders – a species of which I have been responsible for the murder of about 25. I went into the bathroom, turned on the light, grabbed my weapon of choice (toilet paper) and re-entered the bedroom to see Abbey standing in the corner wondering what in the hell I was doing.
Utilizing the light now emanating from the bathroom, I slowly straightened out the sheets in order to locate the soon to be spider carcass. As I pulled back the last corner of the beautiful quilt that Centieme had made us a few years ago the light reflected off of the back of a large, grotesque, demon roach. Ignoring my inner monologue of “EW GROSS THERE WAS A ROACH ON YOUR LEG WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING WASH YOUR LEG NOW EW EW EW,” I dove at the beelzebubian beetle with the wad of toilet paper. I dove. It dodged. I slapped. It moved. I slapped again. It FLEW. I forgot those things could fly. I leapt back to figure out where it landed while Abbey remained in the corner. The spawn of satan was perched on the side of our vacuum cleaner. I knew that, like someone who enjoys keeping their home tidy, I had removed my shoes downstairs and there were several boxes between my other shoes and I and I may lose the enemy in my quest for a stronger weapon. Knowing shoes wouldn’t be able to be used as a weapon at this point in the war, I did the only thing I could think of – a stumbling roundhouse kick to the vacuum. The bug was again in flight, this time landing on my leg, mocking and infuriating me.
It was then that I remembered the sage advice of our new neighbor, upon seeing ants in our apartment on move in day he dove to the ground and punched each and every one of them. He then stood up and proclaimed that the only way to ensure that the bugs would learn a lesson immediately prior to meeting their maker was to punch them. I kicked the bug off my leg and dove to the floor and began punching at this evasive beast as he darted from one end of the room to the other. I landed a good 6-7 punches straight into the ground before the roach found himself on the tiled floor of our kitchen, at which point I leapt to my feet, sprinted downstairs, and grabbed my shoe. Upon returning to the kitchen the beast had vanished – likely under a counter (or perhaps he took his talents to south beach). I used a flashlight to look under the counters and was unable to locate the enemy. The gloves were off – if he was going to hide like a sneaky little beast waiting for me to go back to sleep just so it could once again experience the joy of navigating my leg, then I was going to engage in chemical warfare. After spraying the perimeter of our kitchen with roach spray I knew it would be unable to escape. Abbey was still in the corner of the bedroom.
I came back in the bedroom and admitted temporary defeat. It was approximately 4:30. Abbey then pointed at the wall and said “I see it!” I looked up to see a much smaller member of the devil’s minions and, in one of my more boneheaded moments, I said “that’s not the one I was chasing.” Now here’s a fun marriage lesson – if your wife is petrified of bugs and you are chasing a bug around in the middle of the night until you ineptly lose it and then your wife points out what you know to be a different bug you just kill it/remove it from your household. You do not tell her “no, there are several currently running around, the one which climbed into our bed being one of them” unless you really hate sleeping. I grabbed my shoe and killed the little one and, on my way to the bathroom, considered going lord of the flies with this roach and a toothpick in the middle of the kitchen to teach all of the other ones a lesson. I thought better of it, flushed the beast, and spent the next several hours waking up every time the covers moved. The battle has been won by the enemy, though I fear the war is far from over.
Also – DJ Pauly D was on the radio yesterday and I taught Abbey how to fist pump.
Thanks for reading.
