Nina In New York: Something Has Been Bugging Me (It's Bugs)

A lighthearted look at news, events, culture and everyday life in New York. The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
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By Nina Pajak

My two-year-old kid sees bugs in the floorboards.

"Bugggg," she'll say ominously, pointing at a knot in the wood. That's not a bug, I tell her patiently. That's just part of the floor.

"BUGS! I SEE LITTLE BUGS!" she'll shout to me from the living room. I'll run in with a tissue in hand, ready to pretend to be brave, only to find her staring at a few cookie crumbs in the carpet. Or sometimes just nothing at all.

"There's no bug," I'll reassure her.

"Like it," she says, forcefully shaking her head and quivering a little to indicate that she does not, in fact, like it one bit. I can't blame her. I blame myself.

I've been aware of my own bug-related neuroses for a long, long time. And though it's an irritating quality to many of my friends and family, it's relatively harmless (unless you're a bug, of course). But once I had my daughter, I realized that I had to make an effort to hide or downplay my various irrational fears lest I pass them along to her. I don't want her to be crazy like me. Let her be crazy like her. If she was going to develop an issue with some silly thing, let it come from within.

I really did try hard.

When we do see a real bug, sometimes I even let it live (mostly because I'm too afraid to kill it), and give a big, zen speech about how crickets are good luck and spiders are our friends because they kill other bugs.

Sometimes I kill it and try my very hardest to act like it's no big deal, although on the inside I am screaming and want to scratch my arms until my skin falls off. Then we go and read a book about how a worm can be your friend like that's totally normal and something I believe.

In fact, children's literature and popular media are filled with lovable mice, insects, and other vermin, and it's making me realize that I've been wrestling with an internal conflict since I was a little kid. On the one hand, the Disney Corporation has indoctrinated me into believing that mice and other rodents make wonderful pets who are great listeners, snappy dressers, and excellent harmonizers. They can sew dresses and clean and dance and cuddle up on your pillow and they never, ever poop or eat their young. There are books about mice who eat cookies and mice who dance ballet and mice who are astronauts and city explorers.

Eric Carle alone is like an insect propaganda machine. We read his classic books about a larval butterfly eating garbage and a cricket with an identity crisis and a spider with an outrageous work ethic. Don't even get me started on spiders! They get top billing! I must sing about the Itsy Bitsy Spider anywhere between fifty and nine hundred times a day. Aw, an itsy bitsy spider! It's tiny and cute and the very image of perseverance and grit and using one's determination to overcome obstacles regardless of one's size and OH MY GOD IT'S GETTING CLOSER KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT THAT THING IS GOING TO POISON ME AND EAT MY BABIES.

Why don't we sing about the itsy bitsy puppy? Or the itsy bitsy lemur? I'd even take a lizard over an arachnid.

It's all very confusing, and I've suddenly become aware that I may never find peace until I've reconciled this blatant hypocrisy in my life, and now my daughter's life. Based on her reaction to the imaginary bugs in our house, I have a feeling she'd be no more charmed if we were to be visited by a small rodent. And yet, we've watched all the scenes with the mice in Cinderella no fewer than a thousand times in the last month. I love them, too.

This is no way to grow up. How can we love a fictional version of a beast and despise the real one with such venom? It's probably not too late to help my daughter "unlearn" her fear of insects and encourage her to embrace the much more charming mythology she's being fed through her books and shows. But then I'll wind up with one of those kids who insists on bringing creepy animals into the house and keeping them as pets which will inevitably go missing and birth a million hatchlings in our walls. I'm leaving well enough alone.

Nina Pajak is a writer living with her husband, daughter and dog in Queens. Connect with Nina on Twitter!