My Terrifying 30-Minute 3:00 a.m. Standoff

I'm the type of person who likes to do everything late at night. I pay the price when it's time to get up in the morning, but I'm a night owl who (who, who, who) loves to stay up late and really concentrate on what I'm doing with no other distractions. It's fantastic when there truly ARE no other distractions.

One recent night, I finally decided to hit the hay at about 2:45 a.m., but decided I'd be smart by taking my shower before bed – thereby maximizing sleep time when the later morning rolls around. I made my way upstairs into the bedroom and quietly moved, in the complete darkness, to the bathroom. Thus began what was to be the most terrifying night of my life to date.

As you know, we recently moved to the South. The cost of living is cheaper, the weather is better, and you really get maximum value for your money in terms of gross insect poundage. When I turned on the light in the bathroom, what I saw frightened me beyond compare. A palmetto bug the size of a traditional seedless hamburger bun skittered across the counter and parked itself right into the crevice between the sink faucet and the wall.

If you are unfamiliar with what a palmetto bug is, consider yourself lucky. Think: big, disgusting cockroach. Then think: hold big and shiny magnifying glass over said cockroach. Now, put the two images together and imagine that huge disturbing result sitting on your counter. In fact, it's such a large insect that you have to worry about how to best dispose of its guts when it's finally smashed. That, my friends, is the palmetto bug -- the most horrific, nasty-looking, vulgar insect that I've seen to date in Georgia.

Given his clearly pre-planned tactical position, and my complete and utter terror at seeing an insect this huge in my own living space, the clock began to tick on what became a late-night, thirty-minute standoff between bug and man.

In case you haven't yet realized, I am not a 'bug person'. I wince at the mere thought of them. If I encounter a standard-issue spider inside the house, for example, I will immediately find ANYTHING else to do – and exaggerate the importance of getting said thing done, rather than deal with the creepy crawler myself. (e.g., Me to wife: "Sorry, honey, can you get that spider? I'm, uh, working on solving the mystery of the den's light switch. I know it's been 15 years since anyone has seen it operate anything, but I think tonight - right now, in fact - seems high time for me to finally figure it out. Insect spray, by the way, is in the kitchen cabinet. Thanks honey.").

So, back to the horror of my recent run-in with the bug. This gargantuan, pre-historic, six-legged demon is taunting me from the counter, making my entire body convulse in fear. Add to that the realization that, not 10 feet away, lies my sleeping wife - oblivious to my being the main character in the horror movie being acted out on the other side of the wall. I could try to wake her up, I reason, and ask for her help. But my wife is not one to be happy when awakened in the middle of the night. My stomach tenses up more as I realize I have to actually take care of this myself. I recognize that if I try to kill this thing and fail, I will scream. But, if I try to kill it and am successful, I will probably scream anyway. And if said screams awaken my wife, she will surely unleash the Power of Grayskull on me.

As time passes, I literally stand frozen, part of me fearing for my life, another part of me wondering how I could possibly muster up the nerve to use the latest issue of Games magazine, found on top of the toilet tank, to smash this creature back to the hell from whence it came.

In an ideal world, I would have had a heavy clear container of some kind handy so I could just place it over the bug in question, and perhaps by some stroke of luck, God's most disturbing creature would asphyxiate by morning. The trick with this method is, you'd have to place a brick, a file cabinet or the living room couch on top of the container so that the bigger bugs can't simply walk across the room, dragging the container with them (picture the scene from the fine cultural phenomenon known as the television show "Cops" - where a hoodlum runs through yards until he finds a plastic kiddy pool to hide beneath. Then said hoodlum skitters across the yard to safety -- still under cover, pool and all). My palmetto bug seemed pretty capable of re-creating that scene based on the size of his pecs alone.

So, a few minutes have passed at this point, and I still find myself petrified and motionless, staring at my six-legged nemesis. It's at times like this when you tend to feel every little change in atmospheric pressure around your body. Every nerve ending in your body tickles with the fearful thought of something touching you, landing on you or crawling on you. This is what psychologists refer to as "a HUGE deal." I stand fearing for my life with that creepy feeling that something is on me.

As an aside, it is at this point when I relish the idea of someday going back to NY just so I can deal with insects of the right scale. Given their size here in Georgia, they should come with a warning, or be required to have a State-certified, onboard lighting safety system.

Back to the horror I'm living….

I'm so jumpy at this point, flinching and swatting at every part of my body which feels that ghastly tickle sensation. Then, there it is! On the back of my calf (side note: if you ever want to know what a palmetto bug probably feels like on the back of your calf, just take the corner of a paper towel and rub it gently on the area.)

So I just KNOW there's something touching my calf very lightly and I immediately freak out, swatting at this imagined thing as hard as I can – accidentally catapulting the decorative trash can clear across the bathroom in the process. RANG-TANG-TANG!!!!

So much for keeping quiet. The fancy metal trash can with the red flowers on the side sails across the floor and hits the side of the tub with a piercingly loud CLANG. Mental check on wife: still oblivious and sound asleep. Whew!

Taking account of the situation about 20 minutes in: I still have a stubborn mutant insect on my counter. There are now countless empty paper cups, wrappers, and other bathroom trash items strewn across the floor. I still have not managed to use the toilet or take a shower. And I have to be up for work in less than four hours. An increasingly impossible checklist to complete.

I finally get to a point where I need to release some of the 24 oz. of water I drank earlier in the evening. While the bug was comfortable under the cover of his secluded faucet, I knew I couldn't find a way to crush his spirit and his exoskeleton. I just couldn't find the guts to expose HIS – especially since I didn't have a clear shot. I finally had to make my move (away from the bug, but a move nonetheless). I relieve myself for what seems like just 15 seconds. When I came back over to check on my enemy's position, I find to my horror that the sonofabitch is GONE!

All that time - a half hour of complete insanity, and he disappears the second I turn my back! How did he know I was gone? I mean, I understand any animal in fear will take the easiest escape, but this is a palmetto bug. Last I heard, they don't have reasoning skills.

Now I start picking up things from the counter with my fingertips, peeking under them, and then flinging them across the room in fear that he could be hiding beneath or behind virtually anything. Now I'm completely freaked out because he's disappeared. I'm looking everywhere: ceiling, floor, walls. Nothing. Nowhere. He is gone. GONE!

In the meantime, the bathroom is completely ransacked. It's quite literally a reflection of my complete and utter failure to dispose of this demon bug in an efficient and tidy manner. The bathroom's about as much a mess as the dilemma in which I now find myself.

Now I have to try to figure out if I'm just giving up (which I kind of already did upon first seeing this disgusting insect), or if I should continue to look for him. I have several things against me:

• I clearly can't stand the sight of a bug,
• I have a huge mess to clean up now,
• I still need to take a shower,
• It's approaching 3:30 in the morning, and
• While I'd like to resolve the situation, I know that I firmly do not WANT to find this thing again.

Finally I decided the best course of action would be to take my shower in the kids' bathroom and to close the bathroom doors in the master bedroom. The logic of knowing that this pest came from outside the house to use my bathroom without the courtesy of asking does not enter my mind as I secure the bathroom door, knowing full well that he cannot possibly penetrate the one-inch gap between the floor and the bottom of the door.

My uneventful shower in the kids' bathroom was relaxing enough to get me into bed thinking hard about not thinking about the bug.

To add a bit of color to this story, I am not a small man. I have what some consider an imposing-tough-guy-native-New-Yorker look, and I came down to Georgia with no fear. The irony is that I was brought to my knees by a native Georgian less than half my size. It's got a similar storyline as the movie Deliverance, only this was scarier. The native in my story deserved a death sentence - if only because anyone with more than two legs who enters my house without an invite is entitled to die. Hey, I make the rules. I just can't believe what a liberal I am when it comes to actually enforcing them.

Because I lost this standoff, I will keep my eyes peeled, wondering what story that cockroach kin is telling HIS wife as he works his glutes on the elliptical machine. Bug: "I saw another one, Gladys. This time it was male, nearly naked, and swatting around the room like a woman."

The next time around I won't be so kind (yes I will), scared (um, not even fooling myself here), or willing to spend the time to wait for him to make the first move (right, like I'll be the one that takes the offensive). The next time around, I'll be able to finally live up to the macho version of the story that I told MY wife this time:

"Oh, it was no big deal, just a palmetto bug. I smashed it, flushed it and went back to bed."

The Bible Belt Loops North

I've officially been a Bible Belt resident for approximately two months. As long as I don't mind driving for 40 days and 40 nights to find a synagogue (and I don't), it's fine. What I left behind in New York was the melting pot of religion, culture, dining, acceptance, stress, costly parking, foul-smelling public transportation and skyscrapers that throw bricks off their faces at pedestrians like kids throw water balloons out a second-story window in the 'burbs. Boy do I miss it.

Anyway, last week confirmed my belief that it was a good idea that we moved when we did. While we (the new Southern 'we') have ownership of the Bible-thumping loonies, in a place where everyone and his brother is an ordained minister of some sort, New York is somehow paying the price for being so open.

Being really far from Kansas, Long Island isn't exactly the first place you think of when you hear the word tornado. However, this past week, Dorothy and the gang decided to pay Islip Terrace a visit. Truthfully, if Long Island did have a flat, plainsy, Kansas-like area, Islip Terrace is it. Islip Terrace – and the entire South Shore of Long Island, for that matter – is a barren wasteland of flatness, strip malls and slightly-too-expensive housing. We North Shore types only do two things on the South Shore: 1) go to concerts at Jones Beach, and 2) use it as a cut-through to get to the Belt Parkway.

Back to the point: Islip Terrace apparently did something to piss off Mother Nature. As the region experienced the most violent rainstorm of the past century, a handful of Islip Terrace residents got the rare opportunity to see Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt speed past to try to get their crystals into the vortex of the tornado that opened a hefty can of whoop-ass on the town. Trees three feet wide snapped as easily as Daniel-son's leg in the final scene of The Karate Kid; a shed became dislodged from its foundation and wound up fully in a neighbor's yard (imagine the scene: "See, Mike? I told you I'd get my sawzall back from you one way or another."); and cars experienced damage that I'm sure will be a bitch to explain to the insurance company ("Well, Mr. Adjustor… I can't REALLY explain why the interior of the Taurus is sprouting saplings.)

At least nobody was hurt, and more importantly, Mrs. Cheever's beloved, hand-made wooden tulips escaped unscathed, even as they sat in the window box outside her living room, next to the mammoth tree that took out the power lines that once delivered electricity to the entire town of Islip.

And then there was the rain. THE RAIN! Seeing the pictures of the flooding reminded me of the time I spent in China. China, it should be noted, is a third-world country. They have virtually no infrastructure, including proper drainage, to deal with many of the daily problems they are faced with. When it rained there, everything flooded big-time, and bicycle-ridden men were hard up to deliver food orders to the local Jewish population. (Cultural note: Chinese food in China isn't the same as in the U.S. They use normal containers – not those ridiculous square boxes with the rickety wire handles.) Ironically, after looking at the Long Island pictures, I found myself hungry about an hour later.

What's not so surprising about Long Islanders is that, as evidenced by the photos, they don't seem to care that other cars are literally floating away in several feet of water. There's always some jackass in a four-wheel-drive (usually some wussy-type truck like a Honda CR-V) who just knows his vehicle was made for this exact situation and guns it into the temporary river delta - only to be the next putz calling for help from his brother-in-law that lives nearby and has a boat. These are the same people who fail to realize that it doesn't matter how many wheels you have driving when you're on ice.

As I understand it, the Island has dried out somewhat, and everything is back to normal. Everything, that is, except the sandbox in the Lembeck's backyard, which is now full of wet sand because SOMEONE forgot to put the lid on it before it rained.

To add insult to injury, New York City decided that same day that it needed some attention and immediately exploded. Well, it exploded in midtown. Apparently, people walking through Manhattan aren't jittery enough about potential terrorism. No, the street decided to add to their daily anxiety by spontaneously exploding in the heart of rush hour. A non-terrorist explosion, it caused a powerful steam geyser to spray up into the air. Keep in mind, steam flows freely in the underbelly of the City. The Indians obviously never realized the potential in steam and decided to sell the entire island, Empire State Building and all, to the white man for a West Virginia state quarter, a few nylon fibers and a George Forman Grill.

As New York heals, many devout locals there are seeking help from the Bible to make sense of it all. If they are able to find peace and understanding through it all, more power to them. In the meantime, I have to go warm up my car. Rosh Hashana is coming in a short 52 days and I can't be late for services.

Give Me Independence or Give Me Death

We only had two near-death experiences at our house this past July 4. Both involved children, but only one was prompted by an adult. Thankfully everyone survived. Everyone, that is, but the frog that was found belly up in the pool skimmer.

Since we just moved into this house toward the end of June, Independence Day gave us the perfect excuse to host our first party. First off, this house was seemingly built for parties. The layout is such that Caligula (12 AD – 41 AD) himself used it as the inspiration for his Roman Bath. For those of you who don't know the story of Caligula, it involves a psychotic Roman ruler who was known for his extreme extravagance, eccentricity, depravity and cruelty. He is widely recognized for having been the very first person to utter the words "You're Fired" on national network TV. But I digress...

The party started without a hitch. Drinks flowed freely, kids and the aforementioned former amphibians floated in the pool, lawn darts streamed through the air – aaaaaahh, summertime in the South.

Now, I confess, I'm well-known for being the uncle that flips kids off their rafts in the pool, bumps them in when they're standing on the edge – that sort of thing. In other words, it never really comes as a surprise if some random kid winds up unexpectedly underwater when good 'ole Uncle Scott is around.

So picture the scene: a ten-year-old kid, let's call him "Humberto" for confidentiality's sake, is floating on a tube in the pool, and has been pretty much all day long. Humberto keeps passing comments all day about how small the pool is, how shallow it is, how nobody could drown in it, etc., etc., etc. Essentially, Humberto is at once enjoying the soothing effects of floating in the pool AND mocking the pool for its size, shape, depth, color – even its purported inability to drown people. This, my friends, is what we "writers" call "foreshadowing," or, a process by which part of the story's anatomy is purposefully cut away by an overpaid rabbi from Westchester.

Having had just about enough of this kid's anti-aquatic taunts, I waited until just the right moment to plan my counter-attack. As he floated by me while sitting on top of a tube, he floated by throwing out another pool-related taunt. Just as he passed, I dove under, came up in front of him and flipped him backwards into the water that "couldn't drown anyone." His terrified screams of "NO! NO! NO!" were met by deaf ears as I had finally scored a point back on behalf of my beloved backyard summertime haven.

Figuring I had taught him a lesson, I found myself laughing inside. Until three nanoseconds later, I hear my sister screaming from the pool's edge, "HE CAN'T SWIM! HE CAN'T SWIM!" It took me about a half a second to be under the water, grab him and pull him to safety as he latched onto my body as tightly as an angry boa constrictor might. The terrified look on Humberto's face and the claw marks on my back were testament to the fact that my sister was indeed telling the truth.

My first thought was, "Holy shit, I almost drowned a kid at my very first pool party." My second thought was, "Why didn't anyone tell me that this TEN YEAR OLD KID who has been in the pool all day doesn't know how to swim?"

As soon as Humberto hit the patio, his bathing suit came off with all the swiftness of a Let's Make a Deal contestant trying to win $50 from Monty Hall. Humberto was fine by the end of the day – just a little shaken up. As a last note, I should point out that approximately two hours later, Humberto came back outside and admitted that while his life flashed before his eyes, it was actually "fun." Why I oughta….!

Which brings me to the next exciting adventure of our death-defying party. Just after dinner, the barbecue was simmering down from its red-hot red-meat-scorching glory and the adults were all unbuttoning their top buttons. Which reminds me, if anyone's considering a move to the Bible Belt, good pizza and Chinese take-out aren't the only things you can't find in the south. Again I digress....

The Popsicles were handed out as each kid fought over who would get the last red one in the box. (Note: it's always helpful to have an adult who's willing to take the fall on that one and eat the last red one themselves.) As the children all ran around, Popsicles sticking out of their mouths and scissors in hands, "Barney" decided to approach me as I sat at the post-dinner poker table. Folding a pair of nines to what I was sure was a made two-pair (I was correct, incidentally), Barney asked what I was doing. "Losing!," I snapped, scaring the tip off the Popsicle into his inhaling mouth.

The initial shock was just that: Barney, looking at me wide-eyed for about two seconds before he began turning blue, made a mad dash for the house. I immediately ran after him, yelling his name and hoping to God that the Heimlich Maneuver wasn't just something I had heard about on last season's 'Dancing With The Stars.' Right on my heels was Humberto's dad Louie. I grabbed Barney and flipped him around. Just as I was about to administer the very maneuver whose posters I always laugh at in restaurants, Barney began crying. Once I heard that cry, I knew that he would be fine – and I realized I had left my poker chips unattended. I had no idea what was happening. But I needed to get this resolved as quickly as possible to get back to my stack.

If I didn't know any better, I would have gotten all 'My Name Is Earl' on everyone's ass and gone the karma route. I mean, I try to kill someone's kid in my pool – and almost immediately thereafter, my own kid tries to off himself with a purple superhero Popsicle. Aaaaahh, the joys of summertime fun. I just chalked it up to coincidence and a healthy lack of parenting on my part.

After everyone escaped death without incident, we all retired to the front yard to see the pyrotechnic craptacular that twenty bucks buys you at a supermarket. After all, it was Independence Day. What's July 4th without some rinky-dink little fireworks show that is almost as impressive as a lit cigar, only they smell worse? What do you expect from the local supermarket? I can only suggest that a single Macy's firework shell has more firepower in it than the entire display of "fireworks" they sell at Publix. But how can I complain? I didn't even purchase any fireworks this year. At least a friend brought some.

Our first party at the new house sure was fun. In between trying to make sure that everyone stayed alive, we did manage to drink, eat and have a pretty good time. The seafood cheese dip was outstanding, the homemade salsa someone brought was terrific and my sister is no longer welcome at my parties if she is going to bring ice pops. If anyone is free, I think we're going to be having a Labor Day party, too. Just don't forget the life preserver.

Telephone Fun

Settling into a new house sure can be rife with interesting and unexpected events. Case in point: our new telephone number.

Initially, we had our telephone connected by Comcast as part of a triple-play package. It turns out Comcast is a company that wrote the book on how NOT to handle customer service. But that's a story that will be told in another blog entry -- after my television service is completely hooked up and working. Judging by the way it's been going, this may not happen for a long time. But I digress...

After the debacle with Comcast was finally ended, we elected to turn to BellSouth for telephone service. They issued us a new (easy to remember) telephone number, and it's been great - except for all the calls requesting pizza delivery.

As I sit writing this entry, the phone has rung twice with people looking for Papa John's Pizza - a third-rate pizza delivery service akin to Domino's, but with less panache and Italian integrity. At first, we thought we were given their old number, but a quick internet search turned up a single-digit difference between us.

The fun of this is that we do not get upset, we do not shout at the callers and we do not tell them they've misdialed. Rather, we have decided to answer the phone "Good Afternoon, Papa John's" every time the caller ID shows us a name we don't recognize. It's funny how many people just believe you. To date, we've taken orders for:

• 22 large plain pizzas
• 19 large pizzas with some sort of topping
• 53 medium pies
• all sorts of side dishes and drinks

I believe you really need to embrace it when you are faced with a situation like this. There's no real way to fix it without changing your telephone number. So in the meantime, I've been calling Papa John's to see if they're getting my calls.

The First Wheelie - and I Dumped it

So I finally did my first wheelie on a motorized vehicle. Unfortunately, I also dumped it in the process. I get the feeling you're not supposed to let off the clutch so fast when you're riding a lawnmower.

Homeownership has its ups and downs. (Oh! Someone give this guy a rimshot!)

Waffle House

If you've driven through the South, you may have noticed that there is a Waffle House on virtually every corner. In suburban Atlanta alone, statistics show that there are more Waffle Houses than street lights.

I've never actually BEEN to a Waffle House, but I've seen more of them in the past two weeks than I saw snowflakes in the New York blizzard of '96. Now, I don't have anything against waffles; I rather enjoy a good waffle every now and then. I do, however, have something against gritty-looking, dingy, roadside roach motels that serve what some stereotypically classify as "food," and whose wait staff (I'm arbitrarily going out on a limb here) generally have more nipples than they have teeth.

Though I've tried my hardest to sway them, my kids are dying to go to a Waffle House. We have other options here, including IHOP, Denny's and Cracker Barrell (another place I've never been, but only heard good things about. Future blog entry, I'm sure), so why would we choose the grittiness of such an apparent roadside hazard whose food, and I'm guessing at this point, would probably cause me to experience the equivalent of labor pains? I'm just not sure I want to dine anywhere that requires me to kick off the gastronomic experience with a Maalox aperitif.

What's worse is that there are so many of these restaurants (term used loosely) here that the kids have actually started counting how many they see. This is not a good thing. I now have to listen to someone scream "WAFFLE HOUSE!!!!" every time we need to run to the market.

While I'm on the subject, I have a bone to pick... Was every Waffle House built in 1972? You look inside and it's like a scene out of Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange.' Big paper globe lights of every size, grease stains on the walls, polyester-clad wait staff. How did a chain of low-end eateries become so ubiquitous with that kind of decor? And, hey... has anyone ever heard the term 'corporate logo'???? I mean, it's one thing to have a single store and a low budget, but when you have 35,000 locations within a 10-square-mile area, I think you can afford to throw a few bucks at a design student for something more than non-descript letters on individual square backgrounds that Vanna White herself would be proud to turn. I've even heard that some Waffle Houses have Wi-Fi access!

I realize I'm new to the area, and that some of the local establishments in my old neck of the woods may have seemed questionable (The Shack, anyone?), but I'm pretty sure I won't be hitting a Waffle House anytime soon. Unless I can get the kids to agree to count something else. I know where there are a few Hooters around here.