A Really Bright Idea Whose Time Came Too Early

Some ideas sound like a lot of fun to me. Only when it’s too late do I begin to question my sanity and in turn question how I made the complex series of decisions that have gotten me this far in life. This past weekend was no exception.

As the parent of a Cub Scout, I am frequently presented with opportunities to “bond” with my son. My bonding battle cry consists of 50 percent “gung ho” and 50 percent “mercy.”

I’ve never been much for camping. Growing up we never went camping. In fact, growing up we never went anywhere but to my grandparents’ house in Fort Lauderdale. Given that my sister and I had to share a terrace as our sleeping quarters, the annual pilgrimage to the “South” Bronx typically involved as many insects as camping, but with worse ventilation and a greater risk of being force-fed weird fruits like figs (without the cakey Newton covering) and dates, and Metamucil-flavored tea. Not to mention moth balls.

The point is that camping to me is just another form of self-torture. If I have the means to pay for a climate-controlled room with a clean bed and bathroom I don’t have to seriously argue with myself about getting up to visit in the middle of the night, why would I opt for a tent?

Even more torturous was the Cub Scout camping trip we participated in a few months ago. All the families were to meet at the beginning of a 15-mile bike trail to ride as a group to the campsite. This is possibly the worst idea ever developed by modern man. Though the bike trail was considered “level one,” the better part of the group riding the bikes was apparently at a skill and fitness level that could only be properly measured with carefully placed decimal points.

Adding another layer of “bonding” to that experience, we had the pleasure of dragging our sleeping quarters to a flat piece of land and building a shelter to shield us from the night that had arrived a good hour before we did. If there’s anything worse than setting up a tent, it’s doing it by the light of a campfire.

The next morning held even less appeal as I tried to sit back on the bike seat and realized I would be riding the entire 15 miles back to the car while standing fully upright on my pedals. For the record I also held my entire mid-section several inches from the car seat on the drive home.

I thought the Scouts had finally made a decision with parents like me in mind when they planned an overnight trip to the Fort Discovery science museum in Augusta, GA. We would spend the day exploring the museum, sleep among the exhibits and leave after a few classroom sessions the next morning. This idea, it turns out, was about as bad as the bike ride, only with fewer Constitutional freedoms and inalienable rights.

When we arrived, our tour guide “Eddy” began listing the rules for our stay. He verbally rattled off a list of 62 rules (really!) to a group of Cub Scouts that didn’t hear a word he said. Rules 47 and 48 were the ones that troubled me the most. The doors to the museum would be locked at 8:00 PM, and lights out was at 11. I stifled a sudden urge to pick up a poster tube from the gift shop and start yelling “Attica! Attica!” and began to deal with the fact that I would be a prisoner on lockdown inside a fun, interactive science museum surrounded by dozens of children with all the self-control of a toy poodle whose owners just came back from a two week vacation.

I also noticed that Eddy had a commitment problem. He really liked to use the phrase “pretty much,” and he used it in pretty much every single sentence he said:

Me: Can you please point me to the men’s room?
Eddy: It’s pretty much right around the corner behind that statue of Pythagoras.
Me: Who?
Eddy: Pythagoras. He pretty much invented triangles.
Me: Are you sure it's not a theorem designed to measure the length of the hypotenuse in right triangles?
Eddy: Pretty much.

Among the exhibits that demonstrated important scientific principles, like Bernoulli’s and inertia, we found mind-bending technologies like:

• “The digital character recognition device.” We were instructed to write anything we wanted on a piece of paper using our own handwriting, place it into the device and press the start button. The device was connected to a screen that would display an exact digital version of what we had written. This amazing scientific breakthrough was a standard flatbed scanner;
• “Remote facsimile communication device.” You guessed it. A piece of outdated office machinery most offices outside the Third World don’t use anymore; and
• “MagLev train.” This was interesting technology that would have been more compelling had it not been stuck to the track as if it were welded in place.

During our exploration, we came upon the perfect location to set up camp. This exhibit showed how phosphorescence, when exposed to light, made any shadow cast on it stand out. A glow-in-the-dark wall faced a strobe light that flashed every five seconds, and it was the only exhibit fully enclosed with a black curtain to keep the light out. This would be our overnight home.

Beating the rush, we quickly moved our belongings to our private sanctuary and rolled out our sleeping bags, thus making us the envy of all in attendance. It proved a decent choice until the next morning when the museum was powered up (at 7:00 AM!) and we were awoken by a 10,000 watt flashing alarm clock with a five-second snooze reprieve. This, my wife explained, was our penance for claiming the most private refuge in the entire museum.

I can’t say I’m necessarily looking forward to the next big trip, but I’ll go. At this point I know what to expect:

• Any time I am forced to spend a night in a sleeping bag, my kids will refer to me as Mr. Cranky Pants the next day,
• No matter how many times I do it, I will never understand why anyone would go camping unless they are under duress, and
• No amount of begging before these major planned trips will ever get me out of going on them.
• Pretty much.

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."