Today I had an unusual number of encounters with insects—though, of course, spiders aren't actually insects, they're arachnids, so on and so forth. Normally I get through my days without bugs being involved, but today I had three (well, two and a half) encounters with small exoskeletal creatures.
Encounter 1: The Undead Spider. Earlier this morning I was in my room reading, checking Facebook and pretending to clean. My mother was at the store, my dad was watching something on Universal Sports, and my younger sister was going to take a shower. Suddenly, she comes tearing into my room, screaming and wearing nothing but a yellow towel that she's slightly outgrown. "Can you come kill the gross big spider in the bathroom?!" she yells at me, holding the towel in place over her chest.
I said yes, stopping by the kitchen to grab a Mason jar and a sheet of paper. I hate killing any animal or creature of any kind, and so I planned to capture the spider and release it into the field behind our house—the exact same thing I've done with every other spider I've found in the house. I absolutely hated using any sort of spray to kill insects, and so I avoided them whenever possible. And squishing them seemed unnecessary, not to mention less-than-aesthetically pleasing. Who wants spider guts all over their floor or their shoes, I ask you.
Standing in the doorway of the bathroom, I could already see the spider. There, in the corner between the wall and the bathtub, I could see it. It was big, even from a ten-feet distance. Already slightly grossed out, I walked over to it, preparing the jar in one hand and the paper in the other. I blew gently on it, trying to coax it out from the corner onto an open wall where I could capture it more easily.
And all of a sudden, the spider's legs unfolded from beneath its disgusting hairy body, making it the size of a 50-cent piece or more. It turned around, jumped from the wall to the floor and hurried to hide under the bathmat. The sudden movement of the spider startled me, but I carefully reached down, picked up the bathmat, and—
The spider, sensing me or something, scuttled out from its hiding place, heading directly towards me at a pace mindblowingly unimaginable for such a relatively little thing. I screamed, nearly dropping the jar, and ran out of the bathroom and down the hall, my sister close behind.
I grabbed the Ant, Cockroach and Spider Spray (lovingly referred to as scuttly-insect-killer) and headed back downstairs to confront this monstrous thing. It had retreated to behind the trash can, hidden in the shadows. I sprayed at it, and it scuttled under the counter, heading for me again. I followed it with the spray stream as best as I could, but this was one scuttly insect that didn't want to die. It ran out in a zig-zag pattern, its legs pumping like a marathon runner's, and its feelers black, bulbous, glistening and otherwise nauseating.
After a short game of tag with the spider and the spray, my sister screaming and jumping in the background like a neurotic cheerleader, the arachnid finally slowed down enough for me to get a good aim at it. I sprayed for a good twenty seconds at the motionless thing, before pausing to let us take a look at it.
IT WAS STILL CRAWLING A LITTLE, still trying to do something—hide, attack us, maybe climb under the counter and recuperate until tomorrow. I sprayed some more and waited until it curled up like spiders do when they die. My sister took her shower, and the spider was forgotten for a good twenty minutes.
Until she got out of the shower. She called me downstairs, and we both watched the spider twitching feebly in its puddle of scuttly-insect-killer, nearly half an hour after we had left it for dead. It was sad, in a macabre type of way, but the spider had little of my sympathy. If it had scuttled slower, I would have caught it and let it go; but as it was such a fast little bastard I was afraid of chopping its legs off with the jar, making it angrier and envisioning it coming after me in my sleep.
My sister, sick of this twisted game with the undead spider, grabbed the vacuum, sucked up the still-twitching and scuttly-insect-killer-drenched body, and emptied it into the trash outside. And for all we know, it's still twitching out there now. I shudder at the thought.
Encounter 2: The Bees. My twin nieces' birthday party was today. They turned two, and we all celebrated by barbecuing and eating cake in our backyard. As we were setting up decorations, I noticed a cluster of wasps crawling over our fence, doing something with the nest they had inside. At first I thought that was fine and all, but then my sister, the mother of the twins, mentioned something about there being seven or eight kids under five at the party.
Under-five-year-olds and wasp's nests don't mix—I know from experience. I pointed this out to my mom, who told me to spray the nest. (Nests actually—there were three different hives in our fence.) My younger sister wouldn't do it, being scared of stingers. My older sister wouldn't do it. My mother wouldn't do it. My father couldn't do it. So I had to.
The wasps followed the same pattern each time, which was also mirrored by the spider. I sprayed the entrance to the nest, and most of them fell off and died. A few could still fly, and they came after me. Luckily I'm a tall and gangly person, because I ran before they could get to me. Watching from a distance, I saw more wasps weakly leave the nest and fall to the ground, and I felt terrible. But then my four-year-old nephew asked what I was doing and then wanted to play with the dead bees. So I knew I did the right thing, at least for the young ones.
Encounter 3: The Guardian Moth. By now it's the evening. All the partygoers have gone home. I was in my room, leaching the neighbor's wi-fi so I could check a school website. (Morality note: the neighbors said I could use their internet. It's not like I broke in or anything.) And suddenly a moth fluttered out of nowhere, landing on my left index finger.
I stared at it; it turned and faced me, though where it was staring was difficult to tell. "What do you want, little guy?" I asked. "You've got to have better things to do than sit there and watch me." The only reason I could think of as to why it was in my room was that my room was the only one with lights on—moths love lights, don't they? That may be so, but why, then, wasn't it fluttering around the ceiling, occasionally throwing itself against the bare bulb like they do in movies? It was most unnerving, that's what it was.
For the next twenty minutes it went like this. I was talking to the moth that wouldn't leave my finger—I had tried blowing on it, nudging it, typing, but nothing made it move any more than to rotate itself to stare at me some more—and it just looked at me. I commented on what I was doing, how boring the life of a moth must be, and what a nice face it had, for a moth at least.
Why is there a moth staring at me? I asked myself. My (il)logical mind could find only two solutions: the moth was the reincarnated soul of all the other bugs I had killed today, and if I didn't apologize in the next thirty seconds it was going to rip my throat out; or it was some sort of guardian angel come to tell me my life was destined for greater things, that my fears were irrational, and that I would not die a virgin. (Just a few of the metaphysical questions I had been pondering as the moth appeared.)
First I said how deeply remorseful I was for the spider and the countless wasps that had died at my hand today, that I only did it because I could see no other option for us all to live in peace, and that I hated myself a little more for every one that I killed. The moth merely looked at me, his—for by this point I had given him a gender—antennae twitching.
My heartfelt apology caused no visible change in the moth, so maybe that wasn't the way to go. Going with my other conclusion, I thanked the moth for delivering his message of hope and love, saying he could leave now and continue on his angelic way. This also had no effect on him. Getting sick of holding my hand so I didn't squish him, I grabbed a sheet of paper and nudged his legs onto it. I folded the paper and stuck it on my bookshelf, continuing my work now that I had two free hands.
Even now, at least five hours after making the moth move, he's still sitting on the folded sheet of paper, staring at me. No, it's not dead—I just checked. It fluttered around for a second before landing again and turning to face me. Looking close at it, I can see its compound eyes glittering at me, and it's a little unnerving. Why do I have this moth that refuses to leave me alone, that sits and watches me from a distance when I won't let it use me as a perch? Why did I automatically assume that it was the spider reincarnated, when I don't believe in reincarnation, or a guardian angel, when I don't believe in those either?
And, perhaps most importantly of all, why was I talking to it?
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
Le Mort du Pere
Until about a week ago, I had made a solemn, eternal vow I would never, ever, ever in my life write a blog. Admittedly, that promise hadn’t been very long-lasting, just under a year, and I only told myself this because my English 11 teacher said that every single one of us would have a blog at some point or another; being the contradictory person I am, and not liking the teacher in the first place, I raised my hand in class and said I would never, ever, ever write a blog, specifically because he said I would write a blog. (Anti-self-fulfilling prophecy, I dubbed it.) He laughed, moved on with the lesson, and kicked me out of the class at the semester, thanks to a less-than-tactful letter in which I told him of our personality conflicts, his (in my opinion) subpar teaching methods, and my refusal to format the letter to his specifications.
With my amusing and complicated anecdote out of the way, we can get to some of the more important things. Like, why did I suddenly change my mind and cave to my disagreeable teacher’s prediction? Me, Bradley J., the one who sticks with his decisions to the end? (Okay, maybe I’m mincing words here. But I do stick with arguments until the end, at least until I can understand the other’s side, which Mr. L and I have not reached and never will.) I changed my mind for a lot of reasons. I was suddenly struck with the idea that I can get my voice into the world without having to go through the lengthy process of publication; I thought I might have something worth listening to, even if it is the rants of an angsty teenager with nothing better to do than sound ridiculously biased about everything in his life. But mostly I wanted to say something—without sounding sadistic about it:
I want my father to die.
How can that not be sadistic? What sort of cruelty could drive someone to that? Unless, of course, this is merely the sort of thing that nearly every teenager thinks at some point: I have been prevented from staying out another half an hour; I feel misunderstood and controlled; it is so obviously my parents being dominating, rather than concerned for my welfare or schoolwork, that I must blame everything on them and say terrible things I will regret in an hour or so.
No, this is not the case. I want my father to die. To summarize:
After a lifetime of various injuries, including but not limited to being hit by a car, having a forklift land on his head and break his neck, falling and breaking a hip, and developing an abcess of fluid in his brain that needed draining twice, he is currently in a wheelchair with a broken femur; a replacement hip; and memory, balance, and coordination problems. He has not seen our basement in over two years. Going up or down stairs, even if it’s a set of three, can take ten minutes. Helping around the house is impossible: even if he could do most of the stuff, my mother would prevent him from doing so.
My mother. Well, she’s a whole new can of worms. Even before my dad was confined, first by a walker and now by the wheelchair, she sought after people’s attention. More than once I remember her on the phone with the neighbors telling them how tragic her life was, even before I can remember the presence of a cause for this tragedy. Just last week, it seemed like she called every single set of parents on her roll (she teaches preschool out of our basement) and gave them each a half-hour sob story about how she didn’t know if the open house could happen now, because her husband is in the hospital, yes, he broke his femur, yes it’s so sad, and she was expecting it because he’s always so shaky and tries to do things without his walker, don’t know what he’s thinking, but the hospital might discharge him before Friday, and she has no idea what she’s supposed to do.
Admittedly, I can be easily frustrated by my dad, especially after the third time he’s asked me a question. My mother, on the other hand, is even more so. She is also much more vocal about it than I am. Most of the time, it seems like she doesn’t know how to communicate with people unless she’s yelling at them—I didn’t clean the bathroom to her standards; my sister hasn’t fed the cats while she does her laundry; why haven’t I taken the trash out yet, does she have to do everything around here—but my dad seems to be the focus for most of her anger.
In his own way, he deserves it. One of his favorite pastimes is saying or doing things to piss my mother off on purpose, something to be expected when you combine my dad’s personality and lack of real things to do in his infinite stores of free time—how many days in a row can you watch Crocodile Dundee or read Louis L’Amour without getting bored out of your skull? But when she yells at him for trying to do a load of dishes or sweep the kitchen floor, or even just get up and stretch his legs—that’s when she is going too far.
Even as I write this, I can hear something banging loudly upstairs in my dad’s room (my parents haven’t slept in the same bed for as long as I can remember, apart from a brief session when my dad wore a neck brace after the forklift incident) and my mom’s dulcet tones echoing through the ceiling. I don’t know what she’s yelling about, and I really don’t want to know; whatever it is, I’ve heard it before, over and over until I could probably quote what she’s saying.
I want my father to die. It would be a relief for him, I imagine, once he’s free of his mental challenges, once he can remember things clearly and walk on his own and do things without people getting mad at him. (I don’t believe in an afterlife, a heaven or a hell, but I think my dad does, so for him I stick to his canon here.) And my mother could breathe easier, soaking up people’s sympathy and free dinners every night and finally being free of her burden of a husband. After all those years of “being the only financial support for my household,” she could stop blaming things on my dad, hopefully coming to her senses a bit and realizing that she, too, has faults and might make mistakes on occasion—hopefully, but not very likely.
And, okay, I kind of would like to be rid of him as well. He means well and loves me in his own way, but constantly being treated like a four-year-old bothers me, not to mention getting in the crossfire of my parents’ verbal nuclear war. And if he did die, I would feel sad for him, of course, but not in the way most people would feel about their fathers. I remember very little about my father throughout my whole life. In some ways he has been like an uncle who lives with us: I saw him at home sometimes, depending on which shift he had at whatever job he had, and occasionally he would try some male bonding that ended with awkward silences in the car. But there’s never been a whole lot of interaction between my father and anyone in my family. (In fact, the only real pre-Junior-High memory I have of my father is when I asked him where babies came from, a conversation that ended soon after it began—he told me to consult the biology textbook my older sister gave me when she dropped out of college.) And if he were to die—or move to a care center where they can bathe him and my mom can get on with her life—it wouldn't make much of a difference in my life. I can't miss what I never really had. And I never really had a father.
So now, think of me as you will—evil, bloodthirsty son or misunderstood teenager—but know this: I have a lot to say. And I'm not done yet.
With my amusing and complicated anecdote out of the way, we can get to some of the more important things. Like, why did I suddenly change my mind and cave to my disagreeable teacher’s prediction? Me, Bradley J., the one who sticks with his decisions to the end? (Okay, maybe I’m mincing words here. But I do stick with arguments until the end, at least until I can understand the other’s side, which Mr. L and I have not reached and never will.) I changed my mind for a lot of reasons. I was suddenly struck with the idea that I can get my voice into the world without having to go through the lengthy process of publication; I thought I might have something worth listening to, even if it is the rants of an angsty teenager with nothing better to do than sound ridiculously biased about everything in his life. But mostly I wanted to say something—without sounding sadistic about it:
I want my father to die.
How can that not be sadistic? What sort of cruelty could drive someone to that? Unless, of course, this is merely the sort of thing that nearly every teenager thinks at some point: I have been prevented from staying out another half an hour; I feel misunderstood and controlled; it is so obviously my parents being dominating, rather than concerned for my welfare or schoolwork, that I must blame everything on them and say terrible things I will regret in an hour or so.
No, this is not the case. I want my father to die. To summarize:
After a lifetime of various injuries, including but not limited to being hit by a car, having a forklift land on his head and break his neck, falling and breaking a hip, and developing an abcess of fluid in his brain that needed draining twice, he is currently in a wheelchair with a broken femur; a replacement hip; and memory, balance, and coordination problems. He has not seen our basement in over two years. Going up or down stairs, even if it’s a set of three, can take ten minutes. Helping around the house is impossible: even if he could do most of the stuff, my mother would prevent him from doing so.
My mother. Well, she’s a whole new can of worms. Even before my dad was confined, first by a walker and now by the wheelchair, she sought after people’s attention. More than once I remember her on the phone with the neighbors telling them how tragic her life was, even before I can remember the presence of a cause for this tragedy. Just last week, it seemed like she called every single set of parents on her roll (she teaches preschool out of our basement) and gave them each a half-hour sob story about how she didn’t know if the open house could happen now, because her husband is in the hospital, yes, he broke his femur, yes it’s so sad, and she was expecting it because he’s always so shaky and tries to do things without his walker, don’t know what he’s thinking, but the hospital might discharge him before Friday, and she has no idea what she’s supposed to do.
Admittedly, I can be easily frustrated by my dad, especially after the third time he’s asked me a question. My mother, on the other hand, is even more so. She is also much more vocal about it than I am. Most of the time, it seems like she doesn’t know how to communicate with people unless she’s yelling at them—I didn’t clean the bathroom to her standards; my sister hasn’t fed the cats while she does her laundry; why haven’t I taken the trash out yet, does she have to do everything around here—but my dad seems to be the focus for most of her anger.
In his own way, he deserves it. One of his favorite pastimes is saying or doing things to piss my mother off on purpose, something to be expected when you combine my dad’s personality and lack of real things to do in his infinite stores of free time—how many days in a row can you watch Crocodile Dundee or read Louis L’Amour without getting bored out of your skull? But when she yells at him for trying to do a load of dishes or sweep the kitchen floor, or even just get up and stretch his legs—that’s when she is going too far.
Even as I write this, I can hear something banging loudly upstairs in my dad’s room (my parents haven’t slept in the same bed for as long as I can remember, apart from a brief session when my dad wore a neck brace after the forklift incident) and my mom’s dulcet tones echoing through the ceiling. I don’t know what she’s yelling about, and I really don’t want to know; whatever it is, I’ve heard it before, over and over until I could probably quote what she’s saying.
I want my father to die. It would be a relief for him, I imagine, once he’s free of his mental challenges, once he can remember things clearly and walk on his own and do things without people getting mad at him. (I don’t believe in an afterlife, a heaven or a hell, but I think my dad does, so for him I stick to his canon here.) And my mother could breathe easier, soaking up people’s sympathy and free dinners every night and finally being free of her burden of a husband. After all those years of “being the only financial support for my household,” she could stop blaming things on my dad, hopefully coming to her senses a bit and realizing that she, too, has faults and might make mistakes on occasion—hopefully, but not very likely.
And, okay, I kind of would like to be rid of him as well. He means well and loves me in his own way, but constantly being treated like a four-year-old bothers me, not to mention getting in the crossfire of my parents’ verbal nuclear war. And if he did die, I would feel sad for him, of course, but not in the way most people would feel about their fathers. I remember very little about my father throughout my whole life. In some ways he has been like an uncle who lives with us: I saw him at home sometimes, depending on which shift he had at whatever job he had, and occasionally he would try some male bonding that ended with awkward silences in the car. But there’s never been a whole lot of interaction between my father and anyone in my family. (In fact, the only real pre-Junior-High memory I have of my father is when I asked him where babies came from, a conversation that ended soon after it began—he told me to consult the biology textbook my older sister gave me when she dropped out of college.) And if he were to die—or move to a care center where they can bathe him and my mom can get on with her life—it wouldn't make much of a difference in my life. I can't miss what I never really had. And I never really had a father.
So now, think of me as you will—evil, bloodthirsty son or misunderstood teenager—but know this: I have a lot to say. And I'm not done yet.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)