Memoirist Idol

The Time I Killed a Butterfly

Overcoming my fear of bugs

I hate bugs. After death, bugs are my biggest fear. And it’s a close second.

My daughters ask me what I’m afraid of and I say nothing because, you know, I want them to know their dad is a tough dude and shit, but they know how much I hate bugs. They see the way I cringe and shiver with the heebie-jeebies when they ask me to hero-up and squash a spider in their basement play area.

My oldest brother isn’t afraid of bugs. We were fixing some electric in my basement a few years ago when he asked me to pull some line through a crawl space.

“Hell no,” I said. “You get in the crawl space. I’ll go upstairs and feed the line.”

“What’s the matter? Afraid you’ll get stuck?”

“No,” I said, although the crawl space is a tight squeeze.

“So then get in there. I’m taller than you. It’ll be awkward for me to fit.”

“Nah, man. There’s probably massive bugs in there.”

He laughed at me and told me to go upstairs and feed the line.

When we were done, I asked if he wasn’t at all afraid of bugs.

“No, not really. Slugs I don’t like so much, but that’s really more about not wanting to step on them. But no, not really.”

I asked what he was afraid of.

He shrugged then said, “Faulty electric burning your house down. C’mon…let’s finish up.”

There are massive bugs in my basement, namely camel crickets. Also known as cave crickets or jumping spiders (they aren’t spiders at all), these bastards are bionic space alien bugs. These things are huge and effing muscular. When they are afraid, they jump at you! And you run!

They are gnarly.

One was once halfway caught on a glue trap in my basement. Changing the laundry, I saw its one side of legs squiggling for freedom. I walked over to put it out of its misery with my foot, but realizing the size of it made me consider the squish factor, so I decided against stepping on it.

Instead, I taunted it.

“Die, fucker,” I said aloud and walked out of the laundry room with a basket of whites in my arm. Yeah, I’m bad-ass.

The next morning I went back to the laundry room to change the wash and what do I see but that halfway stuck demon bug still kicking three quarters of the way across my laundry room floor! It took him all night to crawl ten feet but that big bastard bug was coming to get me!

With a broom, I smacked that beast with such gusto that I broke the broom handle and had to throw it out. Psychopath, I know, but I really hate bugs.

I don’t know where it came from, my fear of bugs. Three older brothers probably did their share of terrifying me. I spent a lot of time playing in a basement that was less than regularly dusted. When I was a kid, I was once served a glass of coke at a restaurant and in the ice cubes I saw a dead bug. No doubt it was a roach. I almost drank that shit. Traumatizing. Ever since then, I will drink clear beverages only at restaurants: water, sprite, or vodka, thank you very much.

The truth, I think, is that my fear of bugs is punitive: I’m tortured because of the cruelty I inflicted on a bug one time when I was a boy.

I was probably eight or nine. Maybe ten. My parents drove a busted up Ford LTD station wagon. The paint was chipped, the hub caps missing, the antenna detached and so on down the list of symptoms experienced by POS cars. I guess I figured one more symptom wouldn’t kill anyone, so I pulled the side bumper from its already loosened end and removed it from the side panel.

About three feet in length and a half inch wide, the metallic strip made a wonderful faux-sword, or better yet epee.

I slashed leaves from trees and flowers from stems. I gave a few slices to the dogwood. I pranced around my backyard, lunging, parrying, and riposting like the Pirates of Penzance when I spied a butterfly loping up and around my dad’s phlox.

I lowered my sword and watched the work of art flutter by.

I don’t know what made me do it. I love nature. I’m not wasn’t a hateful or destructive kid. But I took one quick swing and lopped off the wing of that floating work of art.

Its one wing went south while its other, still attached to its thorax, went north.

Now earthbound, the butterfly was in the grass on its legs, its one arm still uselessly flapping, looking right at me like, “What the fuck, kid?”

I stood and watched.

My older brother came outside with an apple in his hand and stood next to me. He looked from the butterfly, to me, to my sword then back to me. Like some clever gumshoe, he said, “You do that?”

I nodded.

He shook his head in disappointment.

“You’re going to hell, now, kiddo.”

He bit a chunk of his apple and went back inside.

Is it true? Am I really going to hell for that?

Jeez, I hope not.

I am deeply sorry about it. I even confessed to it when I was a kid. I told the priest and he laughed and smiled and said, “We all sin, Michael. Let’s remember to treat all of God’s creation with love. Go say a decade of the Rosary.”

He told me I was forgiven. I’m not sure I felt that way. Decades later, I told my therapist about the butterfly. I told him about the confession and my brother’s mention of hell.

My therapist told me the only hell is the one we put ourselves through with fear and shame. As far as forgiveness is concerned, he said, “If you believe in god, god forgives those who forgive themselves. Forgive that child, ok?”

I thought that sounded pretty good, so I said, ok.

I still have work to do in that way because I still feel bad about that butterfly. I feel like that Ancient Mariner who killed the albatross. I hope my daughters never read this story. They’d be so upset with me.

I do love nature. I conserve as often as I can. I reduce, reuse, recycle. I don’t use any insecticides on my garden or on my lawn. I try my best to avoid unnecessarily killing bugs now. Sometimes I’ll say, “Sorry little guy” before I squish and remove with tissue or paper towel. Sometimes I’ll scoop up in a cup and release outdoors.

But not Cave Crickets. No. Those things gotta die. Baby steps, you know? Overcoming fears ain’t easy!

It’s my pleasure to tag Adam J. Blust and his article “My Father and The Big Lebowski” for this competition. I hope you can read that and more of Adam’s work. He writes with humor, honesty, poignancy and the proper degree of snark. I hope he wins Memoirist Idol! Good luck, Adam and everyone else!

I am very happy to be contributing for KiKi Walter’s Memoirist Idol. Thanks to everybody at The Memoirist for the opportunity.