Jiminy Cricket!!!!

WTH is my deal?!

I have this weird ability to make all things I despise fall in love with me.

Things like my annoying dogs. They always sit beside me or on me. Boys that I was not at all interested in flocked to me, calling me, writing me letters and poems of their undying love, and stalked me. The meaner I was to them, the more they liked it. Birds, which I am deathly afraid of, don't ever come around until I am outside.
And the crickets. Yes, crickets. Not Jiminy type that wear suits and top hats, but the loud flying, stinking kind of crickets.

It all started when we took a family vacation to our family cabin in New Mexico.

My father was the typical male driver, not wanting to stop until we reached our destination. But with four daughters and a wife, he was being forced to stop in every town. About halfway there on our 8 hour trek, he had had enough. He made the new rules. No more stopping until we arrived. We tried everything. We whined. We cried. We held ourselves. We figited while whining. We bounced our legs up and down. Finally three and half hours later, he gave in.

He pulled into a station that was in the middle of nowhere.The kind you see in the movies where killers hang out. The kind that have the bathrooms of the outside. Dad barely had the car rolled to a complete stop, when we all jumped out. Amy was ahead of me with her red dog ears flying in the wind. It was hard to run while I was holding myself, but with my free hand I grabbed the back of her shirt and held her back as I took the lead. The door was shut, I reached the knob and jerked with all my might.

The bathroom had apparently not been used in weeks. When the door was opened and sunlight flooded the dark cave that held the toilet, I was engulfed with a black cloud. A dark cloud of crickets. And they all flew out. Onto me. They covered me. I fell back onto Amy and peed my pants. I almost passed out from fear. I was brushing them off, screaming and crying, about to strip naked right there in the empty parking lot. They were in my hair. They were in my shirt and shorts. Ev.Ry.Where.

Since that traumatic day, I have become an unwilling cricket whisperer. Wherever I am, and there is a cricket within 6 miles of me, they sniff me out and fly on me. Inside or outside. There can be 20 people in the crowd and they hone in on me. They fly right at my face. And I make a total complete fool of myself.

If I hear one in the house, my poor husband will get no rest until that damn thing is dead. If there is one outside, I leave and come inside. I spaz out. I scream and do the ugly face of horror when they fly at me. People try to reason with me and tell me obvious facts such as don't bite, they can't hurt me, even some Asian folklore that they are good luck. Whatever. I ain't buyin'. I have never won the lottery. It's bull shit.

Crickets make me cuss really loudly, even at church in front of my grandmother. People think it is funny to throw them on me. Until I waylay 'em and then they think that it probably wasn't the best idea and not so funny. The thought of a plague of crickets is beyond words. If that ever happens, I will be found unconscious with a knife, a gun, a bottle of pills, none of which will have been used because I would be dead from the top of my skull being blown off from my blood pressure.

I will take my annoying dogs. I will take irritating stalkers. I will even take birds, flying 10 feet around me. Kinda. But I can't do crickets.

I'm off to buy a lottery ticket. Ya never know...