Why I hate crickets

Today my office-mate, Trish, misheard something I said, and she thought I said "cricket." I cannot for the life of me remember what I had actually said, which is too bad because I do remember that it was funny. Anyway, her mishearing me did trigger a memory.

My sophomore year I had no intention of going to homecoming. None of my close friends were going, and I definitely didn't have anybody to go with that year. (I was probably too busy mooning over one of my friends' boyfriends. I had a tendency to fall for unavailable guys that year). As it turned out, though, my brother, Steven, was nominated for Homecoming King (lest you think that I was also even remotely popular, let me assure you that I was not.), and I began to feel more and more obligated to go. (I felt this obligation because my brother and I were actually reasonably close in high school, which may be surprising to people who only know me on my blog as I rarely talk about him. It's not like we dislike each other now, we just aren't as close and don't see each other as often, and he never reads my blog*, so I feel okay writing all this here). So, I decided to go to Homecoming.

My friend, Linda loaned me a dress, and I went. I'm thinking I went with Rhonda, which is interesting since now she is married to Steven. After the dance a large group of us went to a restaurant. Now, I should mention that this was Homecoming season, so early October-ish. Early October in the Dallas area is cricket season. Swarms and swarms of crickets. So many crickets that the football stadium reeks of dead crickets. I do not exaggerate. It's pretty bad. So there we were, a group of about ten to fifteen obnoxiously loud teenagers at T.G.I. Fridays late at night.

I felt something itchy on my leg. But I just kind of shook my leg and the itch went away. I felt something itchy on my stomach, and at this point I knew that this was a real something. So I said, "Something is inside my dress." Rhonda said, "It's me. I'm in your dress." (She didn't mean that in any sort of weird way, just in a silly way. You would have to know Teenager Rhonda pretty well to get it). I said, "No. I'm serious." She said, "I'm serious. It's me." Then I started kind of fanning my dress from the front, and what do you know? A cricket came flying out of the top. And in my panic to GETITOFFMEGETITOFFME the cricket flew down my back. Meanwhile, my friend, Erin, was sitting next to me, and she was also freaking out and trying to help me remove the cricket. At some point the cricket disappeared and all was well.

There were some people at a table near us who began making fun of the freaking out. Maybe it was justified, but at the time it sure felt rude. And everyone was astounded when generally-quietly-opinionated Erin said loudly to them, "Well, imagine how you would feel if YOU had a cricket in your dress."

And that's the story of the cricket. Anyone want to hear the story from that same year when a guy took me out on a bet?

*Oh, do you read my blog, Steve? Hi!