Mayhem and Murder

When I was 4 years old, I was playing barefoot on my back lawn with my sisters. I was running in the grass and suddenly a crazy pain started throbbing on the bottom of my foot. I had stepped on a wasp and it bit the underside of my fourth toe on my right foot. This was the first time I remembering realizing that bugs can hurt you.

When I was 10, I was at my cousins' house and, dressed for combat, we ventured into the garage to scout out the black widow that they had found the previous day. We shot it with an air soft gun and it exploded a little bit. It exploded a lot, actually.

At 14, I was lying in my bed one night, nearly asleep, when I heard a thump on my ceiling fan directly above my bed. My eyes opened slowly and I looked around, not seeing anything in the dark. I reached over and turned on the light. I leaned over the edge of my bed and started to look for what had hit my fan, and immediately was pelted in the face by a large moth. Naturally, I screamed, and my mother came in to my room accompanied by my sister who was already laughing. I had black moth ick on my face.

I don't like bugs. I don't like crawly things. I especially don't like flying things. And I don't really like to kill any of them. I'll tell you why.

Mosquitoes
Okay, actually, I always kill mosquitoes. Always. Even if I lose track of them, I hang out and wait till I see them (or feel them) again. I may even take a little satisfaction in killing them. In the early summer when we usually have our windows open, the mosquitoes, like, flock to my bedroom at night, and there have been nights where I keep watch for an hour to make sure they're all dead. There's nothing worse than a mosquito in your sheets causing you to wake up to 7 bites on various body places.

Bees
They're scary enough when they're outside and buzzing at you, but when they come inside, it's like you're trapped in a confined space with them, and if you anger them, you're an ever more apparent target. Fly swatters, of course, are handy, but if you miss them, then they're mad and they go on a rampage, you know? Most of the time I just open a window really wide and hope they find their way out eventually.

Spiders
Spiders' bodies are comprised of two parts: a hard, crunchy exoskeleton, and their gooey guts. Consequently, when I think about smashing them, I hear this crunch/splat in my mind that really just makes it impossible for me to smash them, especially if they're on a wall where I have to do it with my hands. Ew. About the only time I will smash a spider is if it's on hard floor and I can drown out the crunch in my mind with the bang of the shoe on my foot.

Flies
Flies are so obnoxious, but I almost feel bad for them. I mean, they only live like a week at most, and usually they get killed before that. But I think about all the freaking eggs they lay and how they lay eggs inside of people's houses and that's nasty so then I don't feel bad.

Bugs in general
It would be scary if there were giants that were, like, 500x your size that hung out in your world. And it would be terrifying to be killed by them. I think of all the ways I've killed bugs--swatter, yard stick smash in the corner of the ceiling, shoes, cup and paper trap, toilet flush... Drowning in the shower, sometimes repeatedly. Get the cat to eat them. Bleach spray.
HOW WOULD IT BE IF ANY OF THAT HAPPENED TO YOU? Oh my. It would be awful.

The best solution to all of this is to live with someone whose thoughts don't include any of these things.  Because when I see a bug and all of those things start cycling through my head, I can say, "Hey, dad, spider," and my mother will come kill it for me while my dad continues to do whatever it is he's doing.