Bob the Bugman
For real. That's his name. Although he looks less like a "Bob," than the cartoon vegetable and the cartoon construction worker combined! Think more along the lines of, "Tom Petty meets Larry Byrd." Yeah...that would be a pretty accurate description; a very tall and not-as-scary-looking Tom Petty with large, black tattoos covering his forearms.
Bob comes to kill our spiders and now our roaches...which is not surprising if you know our history of how bugs literally smell and track us down wherever we move...
After the recent "attack of the flying roach the size of a June Bug" incident in our master bathroom the other night, Shaun wanted to know why snakes and spiders leave me unfazed but roaches send me into hysterics...he was quickly sorry he asked because I responded by recounting my entire roach-history for him; one crawling out of my babydoll's hair over my hand when I was little, squashing one barefoot on wooden stairs with a pop of white guts, my mom sliding her foot into one at the toe of her slipper, my dad smashing one on his forehead while playing checkers at the beach...and I think he got the picture.
The morning after the incident, we called Bob. Now, while it only took my husband 5 whaps(!!!) to kill that monster of a roach, Bob is nevertheless in close rankings on my hero-list because there's nothing like a man lugging a huge, silver scuba tank of poison when roaches are on the loose.
And the following is Bob's dialogue with Evan upon this latest visit:
Evan: What's that? (jabbing his finger into the man's inky forearm.)
Bob: That's a mistake.
Evan: Did you draw that on your arm with a marker?
Bob: No...someone else drew that on my arm with a really sharp marker...you don't ever want to...
It was at this point in the conversation, right when Bob was on the verge of teaching Evan an important life-lesson, that I decided to jump in and RUIN it by enthusiastically reminding Evan of the tattoo he got at swim class, and would he like to go and put it on.
So there I am, rubbing it onto his arm and thinking, "What are you doing, you IDIOT?! Do you enjoy corrupting your 3 year old child? Bob the Bugman has twice the sense you have! And he inhales bug chemicals all day!"
This leads me to bring you current with how things stand between Bob and the McDonnell Family; while Bob is very appreciated and revered in our household, he find us to be--well--senseless...and quite probably dysfunctional, as well.
I'll have to let it go because as long as he kills the roaches, I'll happily remain the dead-beat mom I so readily made myself out to be.
It's the least I can do.
