Tuesday, August 05, 2008

This bug is entirely too hairy.

I was inspired by Dingo after reading her post about the geckos that ruined her life to share my story of the centipedes that ruined mine...

After I graduated from college, I moved in with Mom and got my first teaching job. We lived in military housing in Great Lakes, Illinois. The house was fabulous with a great kitchen, cute little sunroom that we spent most of our time in, 3 main bedrooms, and even a freaky 3rd floor that could have been haunted. It was a huge house, but very charming. We felt like plantation owners, especially when Mom hosted events and the Navy sent over cooks and servers. It was way cool.

The one thing that sucked about the house was the lack of air conditioning. Mom purchased a couple of window units, and I won the random drawing to have one in my room (a.k.a. The Mother's Guilt Raffle). Some dudes came and installed it, and I soon began to enjoy the fresh breeze of fake air. Ahhhhhhh.

One day we started noticing these weird bugs throughout the house - one in the bathtub, one in the kitchen sink. "Ew!" we'd shout, then crush it's hairy body with the nearest item we could find. As the summer wore on and turned to fall, the hairy things started appearing more often. Once I had to get up in the middle of the night and I sensed something. Normally, turning on the bedroom light just to go pee would never happen. But something was there. I turned on the lamp and what I saw still makes me shiver. There were at least 10 hairy, nasty centipedes on my ceiling and walls. I quickly killed them. Little did I know, installing the air conditioning had opened the doorway to centipede

After a while, killing centipedes became routine. Each night, I would get my trusty tennis racket (or the broom if they were in a particularly hard to reach spot) and make my rounds. In the instance that one of the bastards escaped my nightly killings, I would do what any normal person would do - I would wrap every inch of my body in the sheets, leaving a small space for my nose. I wasn't about to let some nasty bug crawl all over me in the middle of the night. (This trick also works for husbands, ladies.)

Then, came THE night. The night to end all nights. The night where my annoyance and slight fear of centipedes turned into a psychotic freak show. T was with me. In fact, I blame him a little for the downward spiral that nearly put me in the nut hut. Middle of the night. After the nightly killings. T awoke with a fright, ripped the covers off the bed and may have yelled "It's ON YOUR FACE!" I fell out of the bed, fought my desire to barf, and began to cry.

After this horrific nearly-break-the-barf-streak night, I took up residence in the sunroom. I had never seen a centipede there. I made the sofa bed and basically lived out of there for a month or two. Exterminators came and went, left traps, poison, and advice to just "live with them." Every centipede sighting set me over the edge. I screamed, I cried, I lost all control. I never slept, I was seeing centipedes in my sleep. I had an obsessive-compulsive nighttime routine. Centipedes were hitching rides in my bag and scaring the kids at school. They showed up at T's apartment when I went for visits. There was no escaping. The lowest night of all was when I saw a centipede crossing the floor and heading toward my sanctuary, the sunroom. I think I cried all night, continuously having to dart out from my sheet burqa to blow my nose. Finally, I saw a therapist.

As I sat on her little couch, sobbing about the bugs in my head, in my clothes, in my SKIN, constantly scanning the ceiling for my nightmare, she looked at me and said, "Honey, you don't need a therapist, you need an exterminator."

I moved out of the plantation shortly thereafter.

And I still check the ceilings every single night.

10 comments:

Sharlene said...

You are going to give me nightmares...

Anonymous said...

Let it be known that although I may have caused the downfall, I was right by your side. I had a perfectly nice centipede free apartment I could go to. That's dedication.

I'm 98% sure that I dreamt the centipede was on your face. I'm 100% sure I jumped out of the bed like a psycho and scared you to death.

The jones Family said...

And you still married T after all that? LOL! Thanks for a good laugh today!

The Romero-Schroeder said...

LMAO... OMG you two are meant to be together!!!!

Anonymous said...

That. Is. Disgusting. No, that is MORE than disgusting. Centipedes beat geckos any day. Blech. I have to go scrub my brain now.

Terri said...

That is the ugliest bug I think I have ever seen!

Tamara Mitchell said...

OH my heck! I scream and have cried at spiders. I honestly would have ended up in the looney house after the first week! Funny and great story though...thanks for sharing!

Shannon said...

EWWWWWW! I am seriously going to have nightmares about those creepy crawlies too. Maybe they can hang out with South Carolina cockroaches or California black widows who have taken up residence in some of my dreams already. Bleh!

Anonymous said...

How horrible! Hope you have ended up somewhere without bugs!

The Broken man

http://theblogofabrokenman.blogspot.com/

Bre said...

I'm sorry but I must admit that I did laugh out loud reading this post! You're so funny!!! But I can relate. My last house we had a scorpion and centipede problem. I still to this day don't walk into a dark room unless I've found the switch to turn the light on first.

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