Who needs calendars or thermometers? I can always tell the season by looking at my arms and legs. It’s getting warmer now and I’m breaking out in the telltale signs of spring and summer– red bumps here and there.
The bugs are back and they want me. Especially the mosquitoes.
You’ll notice me at any outdoor gathering. I’m the one surrounded by swarms of insects, swatting at them, breaking out in small hives, suffering. Someone will have set out a completely ineffectual deterrent — like some candle that’s supposed to chase off the bugs. Ha. They find me every time.
“Oh, are there mosquitoes around?” someone will ask, kindly, in a concerned voice, as I continue my pathetic, random, useless swatting behavior and occasional twitching and scratching. “I haven’t noticed any.”
Of course this person hasn’t noticed any mosquitoes. That’s because I’m around — the human mosquito magnet, the queen of the insect ball.
Even more tragic and disfiguring, I have some kind of allergy to insect bites. They swell, they redden, they ooze. Believe me, it’s hard to maintain any dignity in life when when you’re swinging at tiny creatures and your limbs are swollen with oozing welts and you look like some kind of medieval figure out of the plague years who needs to be stamped with the words, “Quarantine, then dispose of the body quickly. Incineration preferred.”
I’ve taken the advice — don’t wear perfume, don’t wear lotion with any kind of odor, don’t expose skin — and it doesn’t matter. In the insect population, I’ve found what everybody in the world is allegedly looking for: unconditional love. With or without perfumes or lotions, it makes no difference. Those little six-legged creatures with stingers love me for myself.
