“Nonna, Nonna,” she cried out excitedly as she vaulted onto my lap. “Look, I catched a ‘widdle’ cold and now this color comes right out of my nose!” she marveled, inviting me to inspect the contents of her used tissue. I declined her gracious offer and, instead, deposited the tissue in the trash and promptly washed and sanitized my hands.
Neither CDC scientists nor nuclear waste crews could have followed stricter safety protocols than I, yet by nightfall I felt an unwelcome but undeniable burning in my throat, coupled with an insuppressible urge to cough. Hoping to nip the kid germs in the bud, I downed a shot of Nyquil, slathered on enough eucalyptus rub to attract a koala bear, and crawled under the covers.
Around 3:00 a.m., my mad coughing fit woke my dog Harper who, at first, merely grumbled his annoyance at the rude intrusion into his slumber and then full out retaliated against it by whining incessantly for an unscheduled potty break.
His endless howling was impossible to ignore even in my Nyquil stupor, so I surrendered and got up to let him out. When I opened my mouth to call him, the hoarse croaking that came out—like Carol Channing meets Freddy Kreuger—startled even me. But creature-of-habit Harper, who requires written notice if I’m going to part my hair on the opposite side, was completely unnerved by my new voice. He backed up, cocked his head, and began barking at me as if I were from Mars.
I finally convinced him it was still me, his Earthling mom, and I was just shooing him out the patio door when another violent coughing attack struck and knocked me off balance. I fell, knee first, smack on the sharp metal threshold, at which point a jumbo-jet-sized palmetto bug—yes, the odious Eurycotis Floridana—skittered past me through the open door.
Horrified and croak-shrieking furiously enough to rupture at least one of my swollen vocal cords, I scrambled to my feet and grabbed the bug spray. The vile beast scurried under the couch, so I aimed the spray nozzle under one end and fired away. The thing came sputtering out, dazed but refusing to die, so I blasted it again and again, eventually drowning the hideous creature in a puddle of noxious liquid. (Not to mention, possibly scarring my lungs with the fumes and short-circuiting an electrical outlet with the overspray.) I then disposed of the body—blech—feeling not a whit of remorse, but several whits of revulsion.
Victory secured, I let Harper in and took my throbbing knee, burning throat, and hacking, wheezing, altogether miserable self back to bed. Oh, my little Tessie Toodle, I thought, dozing off, please love me just a “widdle” bit less because right now, kiddo, you’re killing me.