Except my story stars my husband, not me, because I would NEVER embarrass myself the way I'm about to embarrass him. **
When we first moved to Charleston, we lived in an apartment complex that had a slight Palmetto bug problem. Now, for those who don't know what a palmetto bug is, let me explain it this way...
Palmetto Bug is to Cockroach as Skateboard is to a Matchbox Car.
Ok, well, if that doesn't explain it well enough, you can go look at the ugly little buggers here, but I won't put a real picture up on my blog.
Why? Because my husband is almost positively reading this, and I wouldn't do that to him.
You see, my husband is fearless when it comes to most things: spiders, snakes, leopards, serial killers, taxes....But when it comes to Palmetto bugs....well....
They make him squeal like John Cage.
We'd been living at this apartment for about 2 months, and every time a Palmetto bug made its way onto our living room rug, Brian would squeal, I would grab a glass and a magazine, and I would scoop up the little bugger and flush him away, thereby saving my husband from the icky insect.
Now let me reference the SIZE of these bugs by saying that I couldn't use regular drinking glasses to catch these things. I had to use a designated wide-mouth margarita glass. And sometimes, their antennae STILL didn't fit inside. THAT'S how big they were.
One quiet summer night, I was curled up on the couch reading a book. My husband disappeared for his nightly "constitutional." The crickets were chirping, the warm summer breeze was blowing through the sliding glass door, and I was thoroughly engrossed in the book. Suddenly, piercing the night air came my husband's warning call...
"SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
Which was immediately followed by...
THUMP. Pause.
And there may have been a string of curse words that would make a sailor blush.
I drop my book and, without hesitation, grab the margarita glass kept handy for such emergencies, and race toward the bathroom. As I turn the corner, this is what I see:
I jam the upturned margarita glass over the corpse (just to be sure) and turn to see my hubby, in a seated position on the throne, with his pants around his ankles, breathing so hard you'd have thought he'd just finished the Boston Marathon. His cheeks were the color of ash, his eyes were as wide as my margarita glass, and you could hear the sound of his heart thudding in his chest.
"Honey, what happened?"
"I reached for the toilet paper, and it was ON THE ROLL. It was LOOKING AT ME! It was WATCHING ME POOP!"
"Did you touch it?"
"Briefly. Then I just threw it."
And he had. Along with the toilet paper roll. He'd tossed bug and TP out the bathroom door, across the hallway, and into the wall.
It looked like a mini crime scene.
I should've busted out the yellow tape. And drawn a chalk outline.
To be fair, my husband has saved me from MANY spiders, big and small. But, I could never blog about that, because even cute cartoon-y spiders wig me out. So I couldn't do my signature Photoshop interpretation of events. And what fun would that be?
**Dear B, You are my sun and my light, my heart and my soul, my smile and my happy ever after....not good enough? Ok, I'll cook your favorite meal. No? How about, I promise to do your laundry for a week? Wait, I already do that. Ok then, be mad that I wrote a blog about an embarrassing moment in your life. But everyone else will laugh. You'll see. Love, A PS: If you REALLY wanna be mad at someone, blame Al, cuz she started it.
