Toe Pinchers and Other Exotic Pets

Grace, fearless before the sea and its sea creatures.

My five-year-old daughter Grace is terrified of bugs. I mean, the horror goes so deep that if she even sees an ant from 10 feet away or a fruit fly in the same domicile, she screams bloody murder.

Because of this total and absolute terror, she has developed an uncanny ability to spot the smallest of insects in the largest of rooms. Grace's eyes scan the horizon upon entry into any new environment. Like sophisticated radar technology known only to one small blond child and the United States Navy, Grace's eyes dart around the perimeter scanning for any discernible creature with multiple legs, wings or hard-shelled body armor. One teeny tiny gnat tucked in the upper quadrants of a cathedral ceiling, and Grace is quick to sound the alarm:

"BUG! BUG! BUG!"

And then she screams and shoots like a bullet out of the room.

My husband and I have marveled at her ability. She's really got a sharp eye, that one. We both wonder if there will be any employable skill that could evolve from this. Jeweler? Microscopic scientist? Atom-splitter?

Recently, we took our little Bug Hunter to South Carolina for a family vacation. We were mainly looking for a place with warm swimming pools and warm ocean waters. Being from Michigan, we were tired of visiting lakes that left our children with blue lips and shivering bodies. We wanted warmth! We wanted sun! We wanted both sandy beaches and chlorine! We wanted it all!

Sure, in the back of my mind, I wondered if South Carolina had bugs like Florida. But we were going to a fancy Golf Resort. This wasn't our usual rustic vacation so I had high hopes. When we unlocked the door to our cottage on stilts, it was immaculate and new. All surfaces were shiny. And so it was that we continued our bug-free existence for many days.

I thought South Carolina was in every way superior to Florida. You had palm trees, warm ocean waters, sandy beaches and … no bugs! Why had I ever even bothered with Florida when South Carolina existed? I couldn't believe my ignorance.

Late one night, around 3:45 a.m., I heard a piercing scream that shook the walls of our cottage and all the palm trees that surrounded it. I stumbled from my room to my daughter's, where I found her pointing at the wall, yelling:

"BUG BUG BUG!"

"Grace, you can't keep screaming your head off every time you see a bug," I mumbled and picked her up. "Now where is this bug you're so afraid of…"

"There!" she pointed at the wall and tried to launch herself further away from the wall in question.

I turned to observe what I thought had to be some sort of electrical device or appliance affixed to the wall that I had not previously noticed. It was close to the television set that was attached to the wall, so my weary head surmised that it must be related to the big-screen TV. Perhaps a cable box or the WIFI router?

I scrunched my eyes up and tried to focus in the dark.

It suddenly dawned on me that this was no electrical device.

This was a Volkswagen bus parked on the hotel wall.

I hoofed it out of there, my daughter and I clinging to each other in mutual terror, through the living room and back into my own bed, where I deposited my daughter next to my husband.

"WE HAVE A SITUATION," I announced, loudly, launching him out of the bed.

"What situation? A bug?" He twisted his boxers around his waist and prepared to do battle.

"That, Sir, is no bug."

He sighed as if I was being ridiculous and disappeared into the dark. I waited to hear the THUMP as he crushed the enormous jungle beast into the wall.

Instead, he slid back into bed.

"Listen to me carefully," he began.

My eyes widened in the dark.

"I did not K.I.L.L. I.T." He spelled the words so the small child shivering next to me would not understand.

"Why???" I gasped.

"It's too F.U.C.K.I.N.G. E.N.O.R.M.O.U.S."

"You have to K.I.L.L. I.T.!" I said.

"With what?"

"Your S.H.O.E.?"

"You have got to be kidding me."

"A broom?"

"I'd need an M-80 to K.I.L.L. that thing."

I snickered.

He snickered.

"I saw a fly swatter in the laundry room," he offered.

I snorted.

"Maybe you could C.A.T.C.H. I.T.?"

"With what?!?"

"A C.U.P.?"

"Are you H.I.G.H.?"

"She could keep it as a P.E.T."

"You are S.I.C.K."

"Seriously. What do we tell her?" I said.

"We tell her I K.I.L.L.E.D. it."

"Okay."

"We L.I.E. to her."

"Yes."

Later, as I tried to sleep and not think about the gigantic beast that was living in the room next to me, I noticed the bedroom was lit up by my husband's phone.

"What are you looking at?"

He flashed the screen at me, which was full of enormous black beetle-looking insects.

"It's either a T.O.E. P.I.N.C.H.E.R. or a C.O.C.K.R.O.A.C.H."

"Stop talking to me." I closed my eyes and tried to not think about my bare toes under the thin blanket.

"We'll tell her it's a B.E.E.T.L.E." he said.

"We're certainly not telling her it's called a T.O.E. P.I.N.C.H.E.R. Jesus!"

"Are you talking about the beetle?" a little voice chimed in from the dark.

"No, Baby. We're talking about something else." I said.

"Did Daddy kill it?"

"Yes. Yes he did."

She shivered her little body against mine. And mine shivered back.

The next day, as the full light of morning flooded our room, my husband nudged my elbow. I looked up at him and he pointed at the door wall, along the curtain. An enormous bug sat there and in that moment, deep within me, I felt something die.

My husband lifted his flip flop from the floor and pointed at the bug. I looked down at the sweet little girl nestled against me, sleeping peacefully. I looked back up at my husband nodded. I nodded back.

With a great THWAP! the deed was done and my husband spirited the carcass off, I know not where.

"What was that?" my little angel had opened her eyes.

"It was nothing."

"Did Daddy kill the beetle?"

"Yes. Yes he did."

All I Want For Buddhakamas* Is My Two Front Teeth

When I was ten years old I ran into a wood chair and knocked out my front tooth.

I also cracked the other front tooth, but it didn't fall out or fall apart. The trauma of the impact also killed two of my teeth. As you can imagine, this one childhood accident has resulted in a lot of time in a dentist's chair. There have been lots of surgeries and procedures, and not enough Novocaine.

And now I'm going to a cosmetic dentist on Thursday to deal with an almost thirty-year-old injury.

To say I'm nervous about it is somewhat of an understatement. I know it's high time I do something about the damage that's been done and the dental work that needs replacing. But I've put it off for so long because my phobia is so strong. I don't know how sensitive dentists were to children's pain 30 years ago. Perhaps my dentist was a sadist? I don't know.

Whatever the case, I've preferred to try and hide my smile for years rather than get my teeth fixed. So strong is my phobia that I cover my mouth when I laugh rather than sit in a dentist's chair. But I'm tired of hating my smile and it's time I do something about it. Right?

Funny how this childhood accident has stayed with me for so long. Even when it happened I knew the seriousness of what I'd done. At ten years old, I was well aware that these were my adult teeth and that I could not grow new teeth. I knew I had ruined my smile for life.

Knew it.

At ten years old I learned regret.

I laid in bed and prayed to god to send me back in time so I could re-do that night. I prayed that I could have one more chance to opt out of playing tag or Ghost in the Graveyard or whatever game we were playing in my friend's basement that night.

I wished with my whole heart to go back and change something that I couldn't. The damage was irreversible and I knew it. Oh, how I struggled with it at ten, and how I have struggled with that self-same issue as an adult.

How many other permanent mistakes/changes/events would I experience as the years went by? Life lessons, all of them. I see my son's same heartache when he breaks a toy. He is quick to ask for the Superglue to fix it, and I so understand that desire — that urgent need to fix it.

And then the day will come when he realizes it can't be fixed.

Or maybe it can? Maybe some thirty years later you'll have an opportunity to fix it. If you're brave enough, that is. I guess I've been torn between accepting myself as I am versus fixing what can (and should be) fixed. I don't think fake teeth were meant to last 20 years or so, and if I want my teeth to last for more years, I need to do something about them. So I've been torn between fear of the dentist, the lofty goal of self-acceptance, and the desire to smile and laugh unselfconsciously.

We'll see how badly I want that smile back.

Although I do have some reservations about looking like Matt Dillon's character Healy in There's Something About Mary. You know, when he misunderstands that Mary likes guys with "big teeth" and he gets a bunch of enormous fake teeth installed?

I don't want to look like that.

*Buddhakamas is an entirely made-up holiday (of my own imagining) in order to satisfy my over-the-top love of Santa Claus, Christmas trees and presents.

Going Full Frontal In India

I'd only ever had one massage before in my life. A pool-side massage in Miami.

With my bathing suit on, you see.

I'd only been in India two days and already I was not feeling well at all. I either had the remnants or beginnings of a cold OR my respiratory system had been so clogged up by Delhi's pollution in 48-short hours that I couldn't breathe and all my joints ached from the carbon monoxide build up in my blood.

Besides, my half-Indian friend told me that massages were dirt cheap in India. She said she got one every day she was here. So I booked one. I tried to talk The Boyfriend into getting one too, but he hemmed and hawed and wasn't sure.

"How about I go first and then report back to you?" I suggested.

"Perfect," he agreed.

We both have touch-issues and stranger-danger alerts in our brains, so it was probably best I sally forth. Besides, The Boyfriend's germ phobia was on high alert and I had no idea what an Indian massage parlor would hold in store for him.

"How much should I tip the massage lady?" I asked before I left.

"50 rupees," he replied.

"That's like 75 cents!"

"It's what I read is appropriate," he reminded me.

"Yeah, but you pissed off the airport chauffeur with that nonsense!"

"50 rupees," he repeated. I left but grabbed my wallet just in case.

The salon was appropriately swanky for a five-star hotel in a one-star country. Everyone smiled and nodded sweetly, and I was escorted to a plump, middle-aged woman with a beatific face and a bindi.

She took me to a small, dark room with a massage table and a pot of warming almond oil. 

"Yes, please," she indicated a folded towel resting on the table.

"Should I take off my clothes?"

"Yes, please."

"All of my clothes?"

"Yes, please," she nodded encouragingly. Then she quietly stepped out of the room.

I wondered if she meant my underpants too. I mean, "clothes" could mean "outerwear" in Hindi. What if I removed all of my clothes including my underpants and she thought I was some sort of Western whore?

I removed all of my clothes and quickly dove under the large towel. I laid there in the semi-darkness and stared at the ceiling. I could hear some sort of workers outside the window next to me. I wondered if Indian women shaved their pubic areas, or if they went full-bush?

After a polite knock at the door, my masseuse returned and quickly set about rubbing the warm oil on her hands. The room was suddenly filled with its sweet scent, and I relaxed. She politely folded the towel up over my calves and proceeded to rub the oil onto my feet and legs.

"Tsk tsk," she said. "Very dry."

"Yes, I know," I replied, apologetically. I closed my eyes wondered how much almond oil my skin would absorb? I was quite certain that little pot wouldn't make it past my knees.

Next she folded the towel again, this time exposing my thighs. I was surprised by how sore my legs were from being folded up like a patio chair on a plane for 16 hours. She folded the towel again, this time just barely covering my ladyparts.

I began to grow uncomfortable.

As she took huge swooping strokes on my upper thighs, my body froze in horror as her fingers grazed me ... there. Oh yes. There. I quickly began to wonder if I was in a "Happy Ending" situation, and wondered if a) would she ask me first and b) would it cost extra?

The matriarchal masseuse kept away at her business-like massaging of my thighs, with the occasional grazing of my, er, privates. (They're called "Private" for a reason, dammit!) I was actually relieved when she gently removed the entire towel from my person and moved on to my torso.

For some reason she covered my face with the towel.

So I lay there, buck naked, save for my face, while a middle-aged woman massaged my breasts. Having not had any massage experience aside from the pool-side, bathing-suit-clad massage, I did not know whether or not this was normal. In fact, I still don't. My arms and legs were stock straight, rigid as a corpse in the freshly fallen Detroit snow. As my masseuse slowly reached down my arms and took huge sweeping strokes up my arms, her breasts would lower and raise over my face, as the top of my head was cradled in her ample belly.

Despite all this, I began to relax. The warm room, the smell of almonds, the steady and consistent pressure of her rubbing all of the tensions and worries out of my body, I began to feel as though I was a naked embryo rocking in my mother's womb.

"Yes, please, mum" my masseuse whispered to me, and I opened one reptilian eye to see what she wanted. She held her hand out and indicated that I should rollover.

Great.

So I rolled over and exposed my white, pilates-free ass to the lesbian-suspect masseuse. Oh she rubbed my thighs, my upper thighs, my ass, my entire ass, yes she rubbed it all. She rubbed it all and I lay there naked as the day I was born, without even a towel to cover my shame-ridden face.

She rubbed it all and I liked it.

When it was over she invited me to enter a shower. I rose, naked and oily, and walked into the waiting shower. I allowed her to adjust the water temperature for me. Yes, I stood naked in a shower with another woman. I'd like to tell you I let her soap me down for the benefit of my story, but alas, she did not.

When I went to sign for the bill, I thrust a fistful of Indian rupees at my masseuse. She bowed and said thank you, mum. It wasn't the 50 rupees The Boyfriend had suggested, but more like the 500 rupees I felt was appropriate after such an intimate encounter.

Of course when I went back to the room and calculated how much 500 rupees was worth in American currency, I was embarrassed to see it was only ten dollars.

Then again, I never did get that Happy Ending.

I DID get to warn The Boyfriend, however. I knew there was no way he was putting his bare ass in the hands of a stranger, that's for sure. Then again, perhaps the promise of a Happy Ending would have swayed him?

Nah.

Why Are They Pushing It In So Far, Mama?

Because I am a procrastinator, I waited until the last possible moment to get my vaccinations for India. I have a few, grievous phobias which cause me to pass out. I've covered this before, but just to recap: Crowds and Needles. The centipede phobia only causes me to scream bloody murder, but I have never lost consciousness at the sight of one. Yet.

So I can only get an appointment at the Passport Health Clinic at 5:30 p.m., which means I have to pick up my four-year-old son first, and take him with me. Now I've gotten much better about shots in my old age, and I'm pretty much fine if I don't see the needle and they don't take blood. I got a Tetnus shot last winter and did not pass out.

I thought everything would be fine.

I sat in the chair and decided to put on a brave face for Cracky. The first shot went in and I didn't even flinch. While the second shot was going in, my son announced:

"I SEE BLOOD!"

It was then that I started to hear the distant train whistle of unconsciousness, and then the roar of the engine took over my entire body.

"I think I'm going down," I announced to the two nurses, who immediately stretched me out on the floor. I awoke with a cold compress stuffed beneath my neck and two worried nurses peering at my face.

"Do you want us to continue, or do you want us to wait until you've fully recovered?" they asked.

"Get it over with," I groggily responded. My son got up from the chair where I think he'd been crying to come watch the proceedings again.

I felt the nurse pinch the flesh on my limp arms to inject the rest of the shots.

"Why are they pushing it in so far, Mama?" my son chimed in.

Note to self: Do not bring son to any future doctor's appointments.