Jiminy Goes For a Swim

August 1st, 2005 Posted in 2005

crick crick crick crick crick crick crick

Oh, for the love of — a cricket. A cricket had somehow smuggled itself into my apartment. I didn’t know how the shrill little wing-rubbing bastard could have gotten in. (I live on the ninth floor. Last I checked, crickets can’t jump that high.) But he was here nonetheless, uninvited, and he was singing his little cricket balls off.

I immediately got up and tried to follow the noise — at which point, natch, it stopped. I think crickets must study at the same schools mosquitoes do.

So I sat on the edge of my bed and waited. Sure enough, crick crick crick crick crick crick crick — a cricket mating call, in my apartment, doing nothing at all to find this thing a mate but annoying the Jesus out of me. Once again, the second I moved to locate the cricket and stomp him into a flat cricket-shaped pancake, he stopped making noise.

I sat down to watch a Radiohead concert on MTV. Midway through Idioteque, I found myself wondering why on Earth the drummer was making such an odd drumbeat — something along the lines of DUMP duddaduddaDUM duddadudda crick crick crick crick crick crick crick crick. Say, wait a minute.

I sat up straight on my couch and listened. This time the cricket didn’t stop, but instead darted out from under the couch and scuttled across the floor.

Ho ho. I’d been closer than I’d thought. The poor dumb clod had panicked and revealed his position. Endgame. This bitch cricket was mine.

I grabbed a frying pan — not particularly because it was the obvious tool for the job, so much as decades of sitcom-watching have schooled me in the weapon of choice when you mean business. If I’d had curlers in my hair and a face mask on, I might well have been Janet mistaking Jack for a burglar on Three’s Company.

But I’m digressing into sexual fantasy. I quickly scooted down on all fours, hunting after the little bastard Predator-style (assuming for the moment Predator stalked Arnold Schwarzenegger through sweaty Central American jungles in his underwear, with a frying pan), scanning the underside of the coffee table for movement and/or heat sources like a stone cold pan-wielding motherfucking killer.

Sensing my approach, the cricket jumped again, this time at me, and at my face. Longtime readers of JP.com will be aware of my knack for apparently giving off pheremones that tell any remotely gross creature to instinctively lunge for my face. Selfsame readers might well remember my well-honed survival instincts in situations like these, in that I shriek like a small pig-tailed girl and maybe cry a little.

I shrieked like a small pig-tailed girl and maybe cried a little. “Blagh! Cricket on the face! Cricket on the face!” I stood up immediately up started wiping at my face like Shemp. I’m not frightened of bugs. I have nothing against bugs. But “not frightened of bugs” and “not minding it when bugs attach themselves to your cheek, perhaps with the intent to lay eggs in you” are different arguments entirely.

At least I knew how he’d gotten into my apartment. With jumping abilities like that, he could have made it to a balcony on the 30th floor.

Plan B: I hurriedly put a sandal on, watching the cricket out of the corner of my eye so he didn’t scuttle off out of view, and then ran after him with the intent to squash with extreme prejudice. Lunge at my face, would he? Why, I oughtta… The only thing he’d be lunging at in a minute would be the gates of Heaven. And he’d HAVE to lunge at them too. As if Saint Peter’d open the doors to a cricket.

I went for a dramatic pro-wrestling style ring stomp, which proved to be my undoing — the excessive prepwork gave the cricket ample heads-up to scuttle off under a nearby shirt on the floor. Damn it, why couldn’t I be cleaner?

I pulled up the shirt and he was off again, this time making a break for a wall, the poor dumb doomed bastard. I had him. I don’t care how resourceful this cricket was — there was no means of escape through a solid wall. I watched him futiley race towards the wall, cross over to my closet door and scoot under it into my closet. Shit.

I opened the closet. A giant pile of clothes I’d purchased over the years but never worn sat in the center of it like some wounded mythical creature: half cotton, half polyester. There’d be no way to find him now. And even if I did want to wade knee-deep into old clothes, I’d get no guarantee there wouldn’t be another spirited cricket-jump at my face.

I slammed the door angrily, hoping I’d at least given it a headache, and went to bed with the horrible dawning realization that someday, far off in the future, I would be on some hot date somewhere, reach for the salt, and a dead cricket would fall out of my shirtsleeve.

Stupid cricket.

11:00 PM:
crick crick crick crick crick crick crick

1:00 AM:
crick crick crick crick crick crick crick

“SHUT UP!”

crick crick crick crick ha ha ha crick crick crick crick crick crick crick crick

2:00 AM:
crick crick crick crick man, the acoustics in here are great crick crick crick crick

7:00 AM:
I woke up from fitful cricket-interrupted sleep and got ready for work. I’d showered, shaved, had a quick breakfast, ironed my clothes, and was just adjusting my tie in the mirror when the cricket chimed in again.

But this time not from the closet. He’d moved in the night. I walked around my apartment trying to locate the sound.

crick crick crick crick CRICK CRICK CRICK.

Was it coming from my shoe mat? Was he under my shoe mat? My pessimism kicked in. Wait. Was he IN one of my shoes? Ugh. That was even worse! I prayed he wasn’t in my work shoes. I had to put those on to go to work. I couldn’t believe the moxie on this thing. This was the most annoying cricket on the surface of Earth.

I picked up one of my work shoes and delicately whisked it off to the bathroom, where I proceeded to bang it against the lip of the toilet. Nothing came out. I banged it against the toilet a few more times to be absolutely positive.

Nothing. I replaced the shoe and grabbed the other one, whisking it quickly off to the toilet. I banged it against the side, and out popped an enormous cricket.

Jesus! I can’t believe it was actually in my shoe! I was going to put that shoe ON! What if he hadn’t cricked? Ughghghgh! I would have — ughghghghgh!

The cricket thrashed around in the water. I half expected him to act like an action movie villain and make one last desperate leap at my face when I least expected it. But he was going nowhere.

This was the cricket that’d kept me up all night, buried himself in my clothes and made me look and feel like an idiot for twelve hours. This little bug with more of a reflex mechanism than a brain had been consistently outsmarting me all night. I had never been more angry with an insect.

“You’re going for a swim, Jiminy.”

crick crick crick crick crick crick crick FLUSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH