Bug karma

I have a long and troubling history with bugs. I think it's mostly my fault. When I was five, my brother and I liked to stomp on the ants in my grandma's driveway. 

Now, I don't necessarily believe in karma, but I really think bugs are out to get me. They want me to suffer for what I did; suffer for murdering hundreds of innocent ant families with their ant babies who never stood a chance against a giant four-year-old. So a few years after the senseless violence, I had my first horrifying run-in with bugs.

My brother and I were digging in the dirt on the side of our house with a little plastic shovel, trying to find treasure, or at least something interesting. We found this weird little gray blob that looked like a sack.

 So we did what any self-respecting children would do: we poked it with the shovel.

The blobby little sack tore open and black stuff started coming out.

It turns out that the black stuff was spiders. 

Lots of spiders. Lots of evil, angry, tiny spiders spilling out of the sack and scuttling on their tiny horrible legs towards us.

THERE WERE HUNDREDS OF THEM.

I still have nightmares about this, guys.

I was convinced for a long time that it couldn't get any worse than that, but let me tell you: IT DID. The next horrifying run-in with vindictive bugs happened when I was an angsty teenager. One morning as I woke from a peaceful sleep, I heard this little scratching sound by my ear. It was quiet, but had the alarming quality of sounding like something that was alive and invading my personal space. As soon as I found the source, I was already in grave peril.

The was a bug on my pillow, headed straight for my mouth. That's right; a bug tried to sacrifice itself in the name of revenge by CRAWLING INTO MY MOUTH.

Although I escaped having the bug enter my mouth, I didn't trust my pillow for a long time. Or mattress. Or any of the house.

You're probably convinced that it couldn't get any worse than that, right? Unfortunately for both of us, IT DID.

In seventh grade science, all the biology teachers gave their students a project in order to appreciate how sciencey nature is. All the merciful teachers with sense assigned their students to create a leaf collection, to show the diversity and beauty of autumn leaves in our town. But MY teacher thought leaf collections were too boring, too lacking in adventure. He assigned us to create BUG COLLECTIONS (seriously, what kind of sick, twisted irony is that?).

Bug collections--it is exactly how it sounds. We were ordered to catch bugs (with our HANDS),

"humanely" kill them by freezing them (by our FOOD), 

and then stick pins through their crunchy, crackly little corpses to display them on some cardboard (ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh).

Needless to say, I forced my dad to do the entire project for me. Except for writing the labels. I did that like a champ.

Am I the only one that all the bugs in the world are targeting, or are there other victims out there? Although it will probably generate more content for awful nightmares, I must know: AM I THE ONLY ONE??

Swim rebellion

In elementary school, I took swim lessons. They were fantastic! After nearly drowning when I was seven, my new-found ability to not drown in the deep end was something I enjoyed.

In the third grade, I was in one of the advanced classes that got to swim in the deep pool. After one particular lesson, my teacher promised us that we would get to play a game... after we did the front stroke across the pool and back.

This didn't sit well with me. I was tired and didn't particularly feel like getting water up my nose and getting more tired. Plus, I always seemed to swim lopsidedly, ending up far away from my intended destination, so it was a bit awkward for me.

So I did something I had never done to an authority figure before (except for parents). I said NO.

The swim teacher asked me why. I said I didn't want to. She asked me to do it in a politer voice. I said no. She told me to do it. I said no. She threatened me with punishment. I took the punishment.

While the other kids played sharks and minnows, I sat on a swivel chair beside the pool (still not sure why there was a swivel chair right next to the pool), shivering in my wet swimsuit. When my mom picked me up, my teacher told her of my rebellion and I was further punished at home.

I can't remember if I continued with swim lessons or not after that. But since that day, I've hated front stroke and avoid it whenever possible.

The barbecue

When I was eleven, a mountain right by my neighborhood caught fire.

My mom woke me in the middle of the night, told me to get dressed, and said the mountain was on fire. That was enough to jolt me awake.

A fireman had been going door-to-door in our neighborhood, telling everyone that they needed to be prepared to evacuate in case it got any worse. I couldn't imagine the fire being any bigger, but I prepared in my eleven-year old way, throwing my favorite toys and diary together, in case we had to drive away.

While my mom turned on some cartoons to distract me and my brother, my dad was talking with the neighbors. I thought originally that they were coming up with some sort of neighborhood defeat-the-fire plan, but he was really just at a barbecue, watching the fire with our neighbors. Apparently he wasn't struck with the sense of terror that my brother and I were feeling.

Happily, the fire never made it to any houses, we didn't have to evacuate, and everything was okay. The worst thing that happened as a result was the mountain looking even drier and browner than it had before.