Last night was an important night. A watershed moment in my life’s story. A hero’s journey. Monumental. Epic. You see, last night I became something greater than myself through the transformative power of the toddler mind. At the start of the evening, I was nothing more than I was the day before, or the day before that. However, by the end of it – by the time the sun slipped beneath the horizon and the moon shone bright in the nighttime sky – I had become Legend.
It all started when we got Trey back from his father’s visitation. He often returns with curious scratches and bites that his dad attributes to “a boy being a boy”. There has to be a bit more to it than that though, since Trey’s gender does not change when he returns home to us. He’s still a boy, obviously, and he still wants to roughhouse and explore, but he doesn’t seem to pick up quite so many insect bites at home as he does when he’s at his dad’s for a few days, every other weekend. Maybe it’s something to do with the insects we have here versus the ones he has there. Our insects are city bugs, I guess. Perhaps they’re just too sophisticated to bite toddlers. Then again, maybe it’s something more to do with us training vigilant eyes upon the kiddo and keeping him out of harm’s way as compared to letting him stand in ant mounds. It’s hard to say, really…
For whatever the reason, Trey came back from his father’s extended summer visitation with his first phobia: he’s become absolutely terrified of bugs. When we got him back, we noticed that his little toes were covered – and I do mean covered – in tiny little bumps that we assumed were the work of angry ants biting at his piggies, although an alternate hypothesis involves the vampiric bloodsucking of fleas. There’s no way to be certain, but the end result is the same: Trey goes completely bugfuck crazy when he spies any tiny little thing with more than two legs. Please understand my use of terms here, for I do not choose them lightly. The child literally breaks into a type of hysteria and fear typically reserved for the last victim in a horror movie, the last one standing, who’s had to watch atomic powered giant killer mutant cockroaches eat every single living person on the planet – and now they’re looking at him with hungry eyes and wildly gyrating antennae. He loses his freaking mind!
Fortunately, we don’t have much of a bug problem at our house. The occasional junebug may (will) attack you during the summer if you’re anywhere near a light source, or if you’re just abnormally pale and reflect light like a homing beacon to the accursed things, and sometimes there are dragonflies and regular flies. But that’s all typically outside. Inside, on the other hand, our silent guardian stalks the rooms and corridors of our palatial estate, hunting for new insectoid victims to murder. His name is Spooky, and he’s a homicidal lunatic when it comes to stalking and slaying insects, arachnids, and reptiles. To call him a house cat would be to mislead you into thinking he is a fat and docile thing, spoiled by years of canned food and sunbeam naps – and, to an extent, that would be an accurate description. However, whenever some small creature makes the tragic mistake of darting or zooming about in Spooky’s eye-line, some primeval force possesses him, and he won’t rest until his claws run gooey with critter viscera.
So, we don’t really have a bug problem at our house. However, sometimes Mother Nature gets one past us, and a bug of some sort makes it inside and past the watchful and psychotic eyes of our cat. Just such an interloper made it into Trey’s room last night, which triggered my glorious transformation. He was sitting in his room and eating a special prize of McDonald’s chicken nuggets (they are a special prize because he loves them, but since they could in no way be considered actual food, he rarely gets them from us) from a plastic Mickey Mouse plate he’d set down on the floor in front of his television. Normally, we either go out to eat at a restaurant, or we eat at the dining room table at home. On some special nights, after a particularly hard day, or when he’s been well-behaved in extraordinary situations (last night, he patiently walked around the mall with Brittany and myself, as we did Wedding Things in boring stores), he gets to eat a special treat in his room and watch anything he wants. Naturally, he chose Thomas And Friends last night, and was happily munching down his NottaFood when tragedy struck. He saw…A FLY!
He immediately began screaming and crying, and crawled up Brittany with such speed and dexterity, I thought I was bearing witness to the true origin of Spider-Man. At first, we didn’t know what he was reacting to, but he quickly clued us in as he started pointing at the air and waggling his finger in zig-zaggy motions as he shouted, “A fly! A fly! It gonna get me!” I jumped up and went into the kitchen.
I came back into his room armed with a blue plastic flyswatter I’ve since christened Excalibur. However, flies are notoriously dodgy wretches, and I wasn’t exactly dressed for stealth. My Ninja gear is at the cleaners until Friday, so I had to make due with what I was already wearing. Of course, it might have been less to do with my attire, and more to do with Trey flipping the frak (yes, I’m a geek) out whenever the damnable pest would land and stop long enough for me to take a swat at it.
Each time I swatted and missed, the accursed little Musca domestica would take off and disappear against the background. My eyes, I suspect, are getting too old to detect the faintest movement of the tiniest of things against the cluttered backdrop of a three-year-old’s toy filled room. It took Trey’s younger eyes to spot the thing, which would send him into a panic, but give me a general direction in which to look. Once I knew roughly where it was buzzing about, I could track it until it landed. Unfortunately, if the fly landed anywhere near Trey, he would panic and begin pressing himself into Brittany’s lap so fiercely, he might as well have been trying to burrow his way back inside the warm safety of her womb. This raucous would disturb the fly, and it would take off again and start zigging and zagging until I lost track of it, and Trey would have to play spotter again. The cycle repeats.
Things went on like this for half an hour, until I finally clipped the little bastard with the edge of my mighty swatter. I didn’t manage to kill him with that swat, but I did slow him down. Injured, he made the mistake of trying to escape into the hallway, where Spooky was waiting with fevered claw. However, this was to be my triumph, not the cat’s – so I shoved him out of the way with my foot and moved in for the kill. I called Trey over to watch the slaughter, so that he would know his enemy was vanquished and would bother him no more.
“Squish it!” he shouted, both arms extended with hands pointing tiny index fingers at the pitiable, limping creature. “Squish it, Daddy Kris!”
I drew back my swatter and took careful aim. Slowly, I lined up my strike and gauged the movements of my quarry. I took a deep breath, held it, and brought the awesome power of my swatter down upon the squirming beast. “Ah ha!” I exclaimed, in righteous fury. “Take that!”
Trey looked up at me with huge, thankful eyes. “You squish it!” he cried, before jumping up and down in tiny hops. “You squish da bug for me!”
I withdrew the swatter to find the fly still alive, or at least still twitching. I brought my foot down upon its hideous body, and ground it into the floor beneath my heel. Caught up in the moment and vicariously absorbing some of Trey’s excitement, I raised the swatter above my head and shouted, “I squished it!”
There can be only one!
Trey ran up to me, and I knelt down to accept a giant bear hug. “Thank you, my Daddy Kris! You squish da fly!”
“You’re welcome, my Trey,” I said. I hugged him and patted his back, and told him that the fly wouldn’t bother him anymore.
And it didn’t. It was dead and gone, and all was right with the world. That is, until about 5:00 this morning, when we woke to Trey’s desperate cries for help. I ran down the hall and threw open his door to find him crying on his bed and holding his foot. “I got boo-boo on my Trey’s toes!”
He had apparently been scratching at the bites on his foot, and managed to scratch a little too hard. He broke the skin on one of the bites, which precipitated the crying. I scooped him up and brought him back to our bed, where he proceeded to lay down on top of my chest and smoosh his little head into my neck. He tossed and turned for the rest of the morning, sleeping in short bursts between lying on me or lying on Brittany. On the plus side, he was awake in record time this morning, in a great mood and ready to start the day. I like to think his joy had something to do with knowing that he is living with a true hero, ripped from the pages of comic books or torn from the silver screen. The stuff of magic and legend and epic poetry. Bards and bearded LARPers with questionable hygiene shall forever sing of my majestic deeds, for I am The Mighty FlySlayer. Fear my swat!
Want some books? 'Course ya do!
NOTE:I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.
I'll take care of it.
Humor | Nonfiction Available now from the following retailers
Have you ever lived through an experience that was so humiliating that you wanted to die, but when you tell it to all your friends, they can't stop laughing?
Have you ever made a decision that seemed like a good idea at the time, but you're still living with the hilarious consequences years later?
If so, then grab a snack, get comfortable, and prepare to have all of your own poor life choices seem just a little bit more bearable.
You're welcome.
Short Stories Available now from the following retailers
The nine stories of rage and sadness collected here range from the most intimate of human experiences to the wildest realms of magic and fantasy. The first story is a violent gut-punch to the soul, and the rest of them just hit harder from there.
Those who tough it out will find a book filled with as much hope as despair, a constant contradiction pulling you from one extreme to another.
Life might knock us down, over and over, and will the beat the ever-loving snot out of us from the time we're old enough to give it attitude until the day we finally let it win and stop getting up.
Always get back up.
Gaming | Nonfiction Available now from the following retailers
This isn't just a book. It's a portal to other worlds where there be magic and dragons and hilarious pirates. Okay, not really. But this book is about those portals, except they're called video games.
The Life Bytes series of books take a deep dive into one man's personal journey through childhood into kinda/sorta being a responsible, competent adult as told through the magical lens of whatever video games he was playing at the time.
Part One starts way back in 1975 and meanders down various digital pathways until, oh, around about 1993 or so.
If you're feeling nostalgic for the early days of gaming or if you just want to understand why the gamer in your life loves this hobby so much, take a seat in your favorite comfy chair and crack this bad boy open.
I'll try to not be boring.
Horror Available now from the following retailers
What you are about to read is not a story. There is no beginning, middle, or end.
What follows is nothing more than a series of journal entries involving shadow people, sleep paralysis, and crippling fear. It’s not pretty, it doesn’t follow story logic, and nothing works out well in the end.
The views and opinions expressed on this website, COQUETTING TARRADIDDLES, constitute a work of creative nonfiction, should not be interpreted as factual, and are solely of the individual author of this website, KRISTIAN BLAND, and are not the views of any other individual or organization, or of any individual or organization otherwise affiliated with the author unless explicitly stated within the content of the website.
Publishing Schedule
Coquetting Tarradiddles publishes new essays Whenever I Damn Well Feel Like It, except where prohibited by law.*
*Prices and participation may vary. Always consult a physician before beginning a new reading regimen. Individual results are not guaranteed. If you are pregnant or may become pregnant, do not handle past participles or wayward adverbs. Side effects may include an increase in intelligence followed by overwhelming waves of anger, frustration and rage, irritable bowels and/or various effronteries to good taste and decent folk everywhere. Ask your doctor if Coquetting Tarradiddles is right for you!
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