I'm still here. Don't let me go.
One time, I saw this cricket in the kitchen. Goddamn thing was huge (and winged, of all things. Oh, the humanity!). It was sitting in the corner of the wall, standing still. I didn't trust it. I was keeping an eye on it from a distance. I had my giilfriend with me. She kept laughing of how terrified I was we had a damn flighted bug next room. He could land on our faces at any time! I looked away for a few moments, but when I looked back, it had moved. It was now closer to the veranda. "Good, maybe it'll just go away", I thought. But it didn't. So I took upon myself the horrible, dangerous, probably suicidal task of killing it with a sandal. I approached it slowly, wondering if it knew I was coming, if it had its guard up, if it was going to fly at me and get stuck in my hair. Oh, jesus fuck. I attacked. It feel on the floor, nearly dead. It was still squirming. "What should I do?", I asked my girlfriend. "It's suffering!", I said. Looking closer at it, it looked like it had something coming out of it. "It was giving birth", she said. I lifted my hand and smashed it hard, trying to kill it once and for all. It wasn't until later we found crickets lay eggs. But I felt horrible at the time.
I wonder if there was some sort of childhood moment that made you so terrified of bugs? My bug story: I was working at a nice restaurant as a manager. There were banquette tables that were against the wall. Table 50 had 4 people at it that were all busily eating their meals. I looked at them, nodded and smiled. Then I noticed that next to one of the woman's head on the wall was a giant cockroach, at least 2-3 inches long. -A big one. I remained calm, grabbed one of our napkins and walked over to the table. As I asked, Had they seen the roach, there certainly would have been screams and it would have made a scene and likely had an impact on future business. I earned my paycheck that day. I hate cockroaches, it took all my willpower to do that."how is the food this evening"
, I leaned against the wall casually with the napkin in my hand and squashed the bug in it. They replied, "great, every things great"
, I nodded walked away and threw the napkin in the dumpster outside.
My most terrifying bug encounter happened during my college days - sophomore year. I was living in NYC in a shithole "duplex" in west village. Our apartment covered the first floor and basement the back door from the basement was next to a sushi restaurant's back door. Luckily, we were pretty routinely sprayed for bugs so usually I only found a dead roach every month or so. We made sure to keep our place very clean. I was living with a 22 year old, straight, male actor. Very hipster. His prescription glasses were Ray Bans. Also, I'm a girl. It's about 9pm on a Friday and I'm drunk. I was downstairs in my room and pull myself away from my online activities to take a much needed piss. I sit down on the toilet. Suddenly BAM ping pong ping pong - there is a GIANT FLYING ROACH-SPIDER HOPPING/COLLIDING around my tiny NYC bathroom. The way the bathroom was set up the toilet sat in a little nook with tile walls on both sides. Imagine that shit ping ponging around your face as you are taking a drunk piss. So, naturally, I fall out the bathroom door, screaming, still pissing, making a mess all over myself and the floor. My roommate's bedroom was the door right next to the bathroom door and I was hoping he would rescue me. Instead he says, "What's going on?" "What's going on?!?!? I'M BEING ATTACKED BY A HUGE FLYING SPIDER ROACH AND I'M ABOUT TO DIE AND YOU NEED TO SAVE ME!" I hear nothing from him. And then, a muffled moaning from his shitty computer speakers. He's fapping. He's fucking fapping while I'm about 2 seconds from being killed. I pull up my pants and, about 4 octaves higher than my already annoyingly female voice, "There's a huge bug flying around in the bathroom." Silence. "Well where is it?" "In the bathroom." "Okay..." I give up. I headed downstairs to take a valium, chain smoke a couple cigarettes, continue drinking, and tell all my internet buddies about my adventure. 10 minutes pass. My heart beat has returned to normal. And then I hear, thump thump BANG SMASH… CRASH SLAM! I race upstairs to find my roomie, in his tight little Hulk briefs, still with a semi from the fap session, sitting on the floor looking terrified. I chastise myself for leaving my phone downstairs. That would be a photo.
He looks up at me and says "I found your bug." After a lot of nervous laughter, a mission for a cup and a notecard, a lot of psyching ourselves up, two shots of vodka each, and an embarrassingly large amount of squealing we brave the bathroom. A couple of tries and a lot of screeching and we've managed to capture the thing. This cup is a normal sized plastic cup. Fuck everything about this thing. Apparently, it's a cricket. Or the Cloverfield monster. So now we are both still dressed in nighttime clothes. For him, shirtless with superhero briefs. For me, a pair of bootyshorts and a white wifebeater. Now that we have it captured we have to do something with it. Still not thinking clearly and embarrassingly focused on screeching, we hop / run out the front door of our apartment, down the hallway, outside the apartment building and onto a very busy NYC street. We hesitate to let the crowd of drunks walk by us and promptly throw the bug, cup and notecard as far as we possibly can. Once the dust had settled, we were standing on the street, half naked, realizing neither of us had grabbed our keys. TL;DR: my roomie and I are pussies & I met the cloverfield monster
I think that is actually a spider cricket, which is a special kind of awfully terrifying.
In the last home we lived in there were many spider crickets. They're actually very docile and do their best to avoid people. They can jump really high, which is startling at first because you think it's a spider. Anyways, nothing to be afraid of.
Seeing that cute little cricket in the glass definitely makes me wonder how such a small, passive creature could stir anyone to fall off their toilet and pee all over themselves ;-) Pretty funny.
How about a Six-Legged Giant Black Beetle? http://hubski.com/pub?id=15669
My votes for cliffelam, sorry greedo he posted first. How did they both get through mk? Aren't they both from npr?
I lived in Cambridge a couple of years. Folks referred to it as "The People's Republic of Cambridge", which was somewhat fitting. Now I live in Ann Arbor, which isn't much more to the right. Ann Arbor is sometimes called "21 square miles, surrounded by reality." It's easy to have a socially liberal town when a huge college is pumping cash into the place.
Funny political story - Chapel Hill and Carrboro are contiguous small towns clustered around UNC-CH. They both are in Orange County. The cities are wealthy, the county is poor. Got that fixed in your head? At one point Jessie Jackson won Chapel Hill (which was 99% white) and lost Orange County (which was 75% black). Jessie Helms (not the same thing as Jessie Jackson) once said of the North Carolina Zoo - Why build that, put a fence around Chapel Hill and charge admission. And, my final favorite came when Carrboro (which is land locked and gets about 75% of its power from the local Nuke) voted to become a nuclear free zone, specifically excluding all nuclear navy vessels. -XC