The short story:
Brad Paisley is a liar.
The long story:
I've been hiking for what -- fifteen, twenty years now? It wasn't part of my childhood, but ever since I got a summer job as a camp counselor in Colorado, I've loved hiking. And how many ticks have I gotten on me in those fifteen, twenty years? Exactly zero.
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| Kevin, Jenny, and Adam . . . getting infested. |
Jenny declared she was going to the bathroom to take her clothes off for a more thorough investigation. I thought that was a little over the top, but after she'd been gone for five minutes, I got bored and went in to do the same.
"Ew, there's one on my bra!" I hollered over the stall dividers. Then I pulled down my pants.
"Aaaaah! There are three on my underwear!" So much for over the top. Yikes! I plucked each one off my undergarments and dropped them into the toilet. Then I pulled down my underwear, starting to get a little freaked out . . . and for good reason: a tick was crawling toward my privatest of private areas. Yuuuhhuuhuhhh. I flicked that sucker off and got totally naked in the Ice Age Nature Center bathroom. Holy cow. From zero in a lifetime to six in one hour?
I couldn't see any more, so I got redressed, stomped out, and declared we'd be doing tick checks the minute we got home.
Kevin didn't want to. He thought I was crazy when I dragged him into the bathroom and commanded he get naked (in a totally non-hot, non-sexual way). I stripped everything off again and told him to check me. After approximately three seconds -- THREE SECONDS! -- he muttered that I was fine.
"LOOK CLOSER!" I barked. "YOU COULDN'T HAVE EVEN LOOKED AT MY WHOLE BODY YET."
"You're fine," he said again, this time after ten seconds. Sigh.
"Alright, let me check you," I commanded.
"I think you're over-doing it a little," he complained as I thoroughly inspected every inch of him. I told him to turn around, and pretty soon he let out a howl I'm pretty sure half the lake could hear.
"I doubt there are any ticks in there!" he yelled, jerking his buttcheeks away from me.
"They like warm, dark places!" I argued. He huffily started putting on his clothes. I got the giggles so bad I actually snorted. Twice.
Back upstairs, Adam asked if we were in the clear.
"Yes . . . but I'm pretty sure I know now what happens on your first day in prison," Kevin whined.
Obviously his check of me was half-hearted, since I found a tick two hours later when I went to the bathroom.
"KEVIN!" I screamed out the bathroom door. The door opens out onto the lake, right where Kevin, Adam, and Jenny were on the dock. "There's another one, and this one's not coming off! It's already attached! Help me!"
Jenny snapped a picture of me peering out from behind the door, my uncovered half hidden.
He's gonna need matches, I thought, waiting for him to come in. Isn't that how you get ticks off? Burn them? Holy crap, he's gonna start my pubic hair on fire. And we are far, far away from a hospital.
About the time I was ready to launch into hysteria, Kevin came in, squeezed the head of the tick that had implanted itself in my dark, warm upper inner thigh, and plucked it off. Phew. Crisis averted.
The next day, I handed him a comb and made him check my hair again.
The day after that, I made him do another full-body search.
"You're being ridiculous," he said.
"Would you rather do this now or take care of my ever-degenerating body for the rest of my life when I get Lyme's disease?" I countered.
Brad Paisley? You suck and you're a liar. There is absolutely nothing hot about checking for ticks.
This is hilarious. But getting Lyme Disease is not. Good Job Tiff. I totally support your search.
ReplyDeleteYep. Ticks like warm dark places. My advisor at UNI was a world renowned ectoparasitologist. This means he has species of mites that live on birds in caves in South America named after him, etc. Every time in the field, we had to scour creatures for ticks, mites, lice, hippoboscids, etc. You get over the creep factor after a few days of this.
ReplyDelete