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by Bill Drury

Here’s a little beddy-bye bedtime tidbit tip for you: whatever you do, do not, under any circumstances whatsoever watch the Discovery Channel before you go to bed if the subject has to do anything with bugs or assorted creepy crawling critters.

Entomologically speaking, an hour of nonstop close-ups of bug faces, some complete with upwards of seven trillion pairs of eyeballs all staring at you, has the remarkable tendency to stick in the back of your mind, especially when you are in bed, at night, in the dark.  

Picture it: there you are minding your own business, tucked nicely under your covers, all snug and comfy cozy waiting for the Sand Man to show up. You think you’re asleep; you’re completely convinced of it. Beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt, you are 100% sure that you are napping. You look asleep.  You sound asleep. You’re acting asleep. You are sleeping just like someone that is asleep.  f someone where to look into a textbook on sleeping, your picture would be there snoozing soundly. And if you were to be given a polygraph test, it would reveal that you do in fact think you’re sound asleep.

But your not; your brain is wide-awake still thinking about BUGS!  And as a result, the slightest sensation of anything brushing up against your skin, including a dust particle, will result in the fire department having to surgically remove you from the ceiling.

So anyway, this is exactly what happened to me last Tuesday evening—after a night full of Discover bug watching, Army Ants to be exact, billions of them, ants everywhere. And after a full hour of Army Ant Antics, though I thought the dial in my brain was set on “sleep mode,” it was actually set on “BUG ALERT MODE!”  And at three in the morning my wife was about to find out just how dangerous the “BUG ALERT MODE” brain setting can be.

Everything was quiet, not an Army Ant to be found. Then, suddenly, out of nowhere my wife, while adjusting the covers, inadvertently and innocently brushed her hand up against my cheek.

Now, under your normal garden-variety circumstances, by which I mean having NOT watched an episode on Army Ants, I would have either not felt her lightly brush against my cheek or if I had felt it, and if it did tickle me, I would have gently rubbed my cheek, removed the tickle, and then rolled over and gone back to sleep.

But this was not the case, for with bedbugs on the brain, it was a whole different situation requiring a whole different set of reactions all violent in nature. When her hand gently brushed my cheek, my brain said to my body, “a giant man-eating army ant has you by your face!  KILL IT!  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

So I gently grabbed her arm and flung her across the bedroom where she landed upside down against the far wall. One minute she was napping blissfully and the next, performing a handstand in the corner with one arm stretched five feet longer than the other.

Well, lemme tell you, the woman was not happy. Needless to say, I’ve been banned from watching the Discovery Channel during “Bug Week.” But I’m still allowed to watch “Shark Week.” That is until my wife softly touches me again, in bed, at night, in the dark, and I grab her by the hair and throw her out the closest window thinking a Great White has swam into the bed and was attempting to bite me in half.

Bill Drury is a humor columnist for The Carriage Towne News.  Write to him c/o The Carriage Towne News, P.O. Box 100 , Kingston , NH 03848 or email him at: Drury1234@Verizon.Net

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