I once had a girlfriend who was probably the most fearless woman I’ve ever known but the first time she encountered a cicada infestation she collapsed. This was a woman who at five years old decided to shimmy 20 feet up a light pole, sit at the top, and wave to the passing cars. When I asked her if any of her parents found out, she said her mother, used to such things, came to the pole and wearily asked her to come down.
She also told me that, also at the age of five, when she found out some guy was picking on her older brother, she marched to his house to beat him up. I have forgotten the outcome of that one.
Once, in Branson, Missouri, she wanted to go on a ride that you’d have to pay me a lot of money to go on. It consisted of two very tall metal poles, each attached to an elastic band. The bands were attached to a spherical metal framework.
Two people sat in the seats in the framework, were strapped in with their hands crossed over their chests (ready-made for a pine box, in my opinion) and shot probably a good 50 feet into the air, while the metal ball spun crazily and the people screamed.
I told her I was not going on this! She really wanted to and was disappointed that I would not. I did some fun reckless things, mostly when I was a teenager, but this ride was way beyond my pay grade. But she liked these things.
Yet the first time there was a cicada infestation in her area she fell to pieces. Cicadas are scary-looking little beasts, but they are completely harmless. These were the black kind with the red eyes, and they buzzed horribly. But they are completely harmless.
You couldn’t convince my girlfriend of that, though. The fact there were hundreds of millions of these things almost caused her to have a stroke. Her house was covered with them. They flew at her and dive-bombed her, and it just utterly freaked her out.
Here was the ritual to get her from the car to the house. She wore a sweatshirt with a hood, and she’d pull the hood tight over her head, and cinch the drawstring tight. If that wasn’t funny enough, she also had a flyswatter which she waved in front of her fact while she ran shrieking from the car to the house.
My job was to run behind her to make sure no cicadas landed on her. “Bob! Bob! Is there a cicada on me?!?!?”
“No, there’re no cicadas on you.”
“Are you lying to me?!?!?”
“No, I am not lying to you. There are no cicadas on you.”
Finally she would fly into the house and slam the door behind us. Then my next job was to go outside and sweep the cicadas off the windows, the front of the house and the porch. She was just completely hysterical about the existence of these things.
Bugs don’t bother me, except for wasps. I don’t even mind bees, which are cute. I don’t like spiders, but don’t have a problem as long as they don’t hurl themselves on me. I don’t even mind snakes and once petted a ribbon snake in my front yard.
But how in the world can this mostly-fearless woman be so afraid of an utterly harmless bug is a question to which I have no answer. But almost all girls are just terrified to bugs. And mice, for that matter.
Of course, I never mention her reaction to her. But there’s about another seven years to the next outbreak in her area, so she’s going to throw a fit again.