Conversations on Bugs

I am pretty sure my mom's favorite phone conversations with me are the ones where I am outside with my daughter and I am telling her not to be afraid of bugs.

I have a long history of being terrified of bugs of all kinds.  When I was a kid, I was a freak about bugs.  I would call my mom screaming if there was a bug in my room.  We went to a family reunion once during the summer of the cicadas at a forest preserve on the South Side. As we pulled into the forest preserve, you could hear the crazy bugs and their lyrical opera.  We had all the windows rolled up, but somehow one got in our car anyway.  When we got out of the car, they started dive-bombing us.  I happened to be carrying two lawn chairs and started screaming, flailing and throwing lawn chairs at them.  I spent the next 5 hours under the shelter and only came out for the water balloon toss.  My brothers teased me and told me that they would crawl into my french braid and lay eggs that would hatch in 7years.

My fear followed me into my adulthood was I lived in the city in an old studio apartment.  I was on the phone with a friend when I noticed an ant on my windowsill where my alarm clock was.  Then I saw another and when I lifted my alarm clock to check the source I found a colony of carpenter ants.  I hung up the phone and ran to the store for every ant killer known to man.  When I got back I sprayed them and more poured out of my windowsill.  It was like the apocalypse.  Then I saw a huge one in my box fan.  I swear it was the Queen and when I sprayed her, she got up on her hind legs and screamed at me like some sort of creature out of a Japanese monster movie. I slept on the couch for a week after that.

Now I a parent and of all the things my daughter could inherit from me, she got my unreasonable anxiety about bugs.  As I write this she is hanging on my arm because there is a fly in the house.  So now I have to calmly explain to her that the bugs won't hurt her, she is bigger than them, to ignore them and they will go away and all the other lies my mom told me. 

I also have to put aside my own fears that still exist and sit there calmly and pretend not to be bothered by the creatures myself.  Still, I have fled the tower on the swing set because of a bee stalking us and left my son in the jogging stroller in the garage while I ran inside the house when a bee flew out of the stroller.  I have a hard time killing scary bugs because my biggest fear is that they will dodge the paper towel and land on my head or come and attack me.

This week I was put to the test and had to be the "adult" and had to keep my cool under pressure. The other day I jumped in the shower while Colin took his nap and my daughter watched a show in my bed. When I reached up for my shampoo, there it was…a giant bee or wasp or whatever.  My heart started racing, I started to sweat (even though I was in the shower) and I almost screamed at the top of my lungs and went running out of the shower, down the stairs and in a closet.  I knew I NEEDED to take this shower for the sake of everyone I encountered throughout the day. So, instead I took a deep breath and with one eye on the bee I washed my hair,  rinsed, conditioned my hair and rinsed most of it out before I jumped out of the shower, threw a towel around me and ran out of the bathroom and shut the door.  Luckily our master bathroom is set up where our shower and toilet are in one room separated by a door and our vanity is outside of it. I stood there dripping wet and my daughter looked at me like I was crazy and asked why I was done so fast.  I ended up going into the kid’s bathroom to complete my shower.

I returned to my bathroom door and put several towels at the bottom of the door in case the bee decided to stage a prison break and sneak out under the crack.  I knew my best bet was to wait until my husband got home so he could take care of the situation.  When I talked to him later that day I told him about my frightening experience and his response was "Why didn't you just kill it?"  Who was this man?  After all the years he has known me did he really think I was capable of battling a giant bee in an enclosed space?  Was he nuts?  We mutually decided the conversation was over and went about our day.

I, however, kept thinking about that darn bee.  The movie "Candyman" kept popping into my head.  Clearly I've never seen this movie since all I needed to see was a preview and know that there was a terrifying scene that involved bees to keep me from catching that flick.  All day I kept hearing the Candyman's deep voice in my head and had a hard time looking directly in the mirror.

Lucky for me when my husband got home he went upstairs to assess the situation and the bee had died. I am sure the fact that I sealed off any source of oxygen to the small bathroom did the trick.

So, the lesson of the week is 1) I still hate bees. 2) Both bees AND kids smell fear, so suck it up and do what you have to do and 3) above all else, never let them see you sweat.