Rebecca vs. a mosquito

Perhaps I'm just emotional from the process of beginning a new stage of my life, but I just had a very emotional exerpience with a mosquito.

He was in the bathroom and I had seen him before. I thought maybe my dad had taken care of him, but there he was again, sitting on a cabinet up on the wall. Mom was making me kill it myself since I had to be able to do it in my new apartment. I took a shower in the other bathroom. But I went back to kill the bug.

I hit him with a shoe and he flew into the bathtub, which caused me to scream and I think run from the bathroom. I went back in.

I don't know how long I stood there or how many attempts I made to scoop him up in toilet paper, but I began to tear up. I would bend to get him, then I'd stand back up again. His legs were long and I was scared they were going to touch me if I scooped him up.

Finally I smacked him again with the shoe, saw him looking quite smashed, screamed and ran out of the bathroom. When I went back in I just started crying. I was afraid to scoop his dead mosquito body up because I thought he might not really be dead and one of those legs would touch me. Finally I flushed him in the toilet.

There was a leg left in the tub. I leaned my elbows on the sink counter and cried some more. Then I flushed the leg.

Mom clapped for me and told me I did a good job. By this time I was on the computer and she asked me if I had cried. When I told her I had and she asked why, I started crying again and told her I hated bugs.

I'm doing better now.

The crazy thing is, when I was in my apartment on Chicago's West Side and thought someone was breaking in upstairs, I don't remember crying; I was rather calm. Yet, that mosquito scared the mess out of me.

Go figure.