Tag Archives: bug

My grandmother wasn’t scared of bugs

I’ll never forget the time my grandparents took my brother and me up north when we were little kids. My grandmother was originally from Canada, and so this one summer, I think it was like 1993 or 1994, we drove from New York to Ontario to visit some of her relatives.

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They always spoiled us, the way that only grandparents can, crossing all of the normal boundaries that made up our regular lives back home. I remember, among other things, my grandfather enlightening us that “goddamn” technically wasn’t a curse word, and so regarding my parents’ rules regarding foul language, well, goddamn it, we could say “damn” as much as we wanted.

Or the Super 8 Motel we stopped at overnight, somewhere near Corning, New York. I look at a Super 8 motel now and it’s like, well, it’s nothing special, it’s a cheap place to break up a long drive into two days. But my grandparents made even a dumpy motel room into something special. They rented Batman Returns for us to watch, way too graphic a movie for two little kids, much more adult than any of the Disney movies we watched back home. And in the morning we woke up to chocolate éclairs, an unheard of dessert breakfast to start us off for that second leg of the trip.

But the memory that stands out most happened before we ever crossed the border. It was in the backseat of their sedan, I can still picture the scene unfolding in real-time through my head, all of the sudden my brother and I noticed a buzzing, it was coming from right behind us. It was a wasp, and when I think about it still, I can’t come up with any explanation as to how this thing got in the car, and why it was so quiet for such a long stretch of time.

Because we were two or three hours on the highway when this thing started freaking out. My brother and I panicked, throwing ourselves against the opposite end of the car, unable to even make out words to describe what was going on. My grandparents just kind of looked at us for half a minute or so, they couldn’t figure out what was up. But one of us must have choked out something like, “A bee! A wasp!”

And I don’t know, I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I remember this thing being bigger than just a bee. I can see a light brown body, that giant middle section, a crooked stinger clearly visible under the blur of its frenzied wings. My grandfather spotted the source of our screaming before my grandmother did, and I can remember him letting out a non-expletive of his own as he slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the shoulder.

The only one who maintained any sense of calm or composure was my grandmother. As the three of us scrambled to jump out of the car, Grandma rolled up a piece of newspaper and jumped headfirst in the backseat, swinging away. I couldn’t even comprehend such courage, but after three or four whacks, she emerged from the car, holding the squashed source of our fears for us to see before telling us to get back in the car.

“Those bugs are more afraid of you than you are of them.” I think she called us a bunch of sissies, or ninnies, or some other old-fashioned word you’d only ever get called by your grandmother. And that always stuck with me, whenever I had to deal with a bug, even if I couldn’t get past my own fear, I knew that my grandmother wouldn’t have had any problem showing an insect who’s boss.

Grandma, thanks for all the great memories, I’m so lucky to have had such an awesome thirty years with you in my life. I’ll miss you a lot, and every time I get freaked out by a goddamn bug, no matter how big, I’ll think about you while I swallow that lump in my throat and look for some newspaper to ready my attack.

I thought I saw something

You ever get that feeling like you just saw something out of the corner of your eye, but you’re not sure if it was real or imaginary? I was just sitting at my desk when I swore I noticed some sort of movement, just right at the edge of my peripheral vision. I looked, and there was nothing. But what was it that I thought I saw? Was it real? I have no idea. I don’t want to say it could’ve been a bug, because to verbalize it might make it come true. So I kind of do a quick check behind the desk, alongside the wall. There’s nothing out of the ordinary.

blrrr

It’s tough because there’s no reliable track record for this type of activity. I can’t go back and judge this experience based off of past encounters with roaches or spiders. It’s like, every once in a while, I’ll think I see something, and then a minute passes, maybe another minute and, yep, it’s a bug, it’s a roach and it’s running across the floor.

But then other times it’s all in my head. Like when I was a little kid and I still believed in Santa Claus, every now and then I’d swear I caught a flash of red out of the corner of my eye. So I don’t know what to believe. I do know that if I’m not careful, I’ll let my imagination get the best of me. If I too actively seek out every shadow or imaginary movement I think I see, it’s only going to increase the frequency at which I’m seeing these phantom blurs.

But I also know that I live in New York, that maybe half the time I catch myself looking behind the dresser or underneath that stack of plates, it’s because I actually did see something. And sitting back and ignoring it, pretending like I never saw it in the first place, it never solves the problem. Best case scenario, it just comes back out a minute or two later, and now I’ve definitely seen it, now I have to take action and kill it. Worst case, it disappears into the cracks and crevasses of my walls and flooring where it’ll spawn an entire generation of creepy-crawlies.

I hope I’m not giving the impression that I’m living in a bug-infested dump. My place is very clean. But I’d say once or twice a year I’ve got to kill a roach, usually a really big one that’s either trying to find a warm place, or that’s trying to get back outside now that the weather is nice. I definitely see bugs all the time outside. And mice. And rats. Luckily my block is overrun with feral cats, and so yeah, I’d much rather stray cat colonies to rats.

Several years ago I was living at this apartment by my school in the Bronx. That was the first time that I had an actual mouse try to move in. Those little guys are fast, much faster than any bug. And so that feeling of seeing something moving in the corner, once you actually get a mouse cohabitating with you, it becomes way more pronounced. You’ll see that blur of darkness every time you enter a room. And the worst part is, once out of every twenty or so times, you’ll actually see it, like for real, a real mouse.

Then you have to lay out traps, and worry that the peanut butter is going to attract bugs. And then you finally catch the mouse and you have to wipe up all of the guts and everything that explode all over the place when the mouse finally takes the bait. Like I said, I’ve been really lucky that the worst I’ve had to deal with here is the occasional roach.

And a silverfish every now and then. I don’t know why, but silverfish don’t gross me out as much. For some reason they always kind of blend in with the floor, and so maybe it’s just like an optical illusion, but I never see any imaginary silverfish.

OK, I just saw it again, the movement, something creeping around. I’m still not convinced that it’s anything real, because I’ve just spent the better part of a half an hour talking about roaches and mice. If anything, I’d be more concerned if by this point I hadn’t concocted some hallucinatory pests. But still, I’m having a hard time suppressing my urge to start stomping on the floor, kicking piles of stuff. If it’s hiding in there, I want to see it. I don’t really want to see it. I hate when it comes true, when it pops out from one hiding spot and immediately dives into another. I just … I just wish I had X-Ray vision, that I could see any bugs in the walls of under the floors. No, that would be a terrible super power. A curse really. I just want the phantom movements to stop.