There was a bug flying around the kitchen this afternoon — a big one, that insisted on pounding into the walls and ceiling like a drunken redneck. I freaked out. In fact, I screamed like I was a fifteen-year-old girl at summer camp and the fly was an axe-wielding serial killer. In my defense, it was a wasp.

Thankfully, Mom was there, so I put her to work doing one of the few things she's actually good at: killing insects while I scream, "KILL THE BUG!!!". (Others include cooking dinner and doing my laundry. I'm such a lazy bastard.) Unfortunately, Mom's no pro-basketball player — if there were an anti-basketball sport where it paid to be short, slow, and uncoordinated, Mom would be a first-round draft pick — so she couldn't really do much except watch the wasp fly around the ceiling.

The next few minutes were, ultimately, uneventful, but you wouldn't know that to listen to me. "Mom, Mom, get some hairspray, spray the bug! Mom! Do we have any hairspray?" No, but Mom suggests that we assault the poor insect with a canister of aerosol air freshener, so it can terrorize me in a springtime-fresh kitchen. "No, Mom, we need something sticky!" And no pussy-ass Clairol Herbal Essences crap out of a spritzy plant-watering container; I'm talking full-force flammable compressed spray here. Eventually we settle on a decades-old can of Raid; meanwhile, the bug's trying to get out on the back porch, so Mom figures we'll just help it along a bit and opens the back door.

Now, the wasp's flying around on the porch, Mom's out on the porch following the thing around with our Raid, and I've slammed the back door closed. I've got my weight against it, just in case the wasp develops superpowers and tries to push the door back open. Mom is spraying Raid on the insect, but I'm skeptical: We used to have major yellowjacket issues around our house in the summer, and I'd walk around outside spraying every living thing with Raid. Nothing died. Not even our plants. But Mom's still spraying the life out of this wasp, and after a long, long time, it falls to the ground and all it can do is try to crawl away. From behind the door, I'm still screaming at Mom, "SQUASH IT!"

On our porch, we have a cement brick and a piece of aluminum drainpipe. Guess which one Mom uses to squish the bug. The drainpipe. And she doesn't even use the side of the pipe — she uses the hole. I shout at her like it's Let's Make a Deal: "THE BRICK! USE THE BRICK!" After the longest ten minutes of the day, the wasp, and me, are put out of our misery.

It was a while later before I started thinking what it must have been like for the wasp, especially during those fifteen or so seconds when my mom was spraying it with insecticide. Cause from its point of view, it doesn't know that it's not supposed to be in the kitchen. It's probably wondering, "Why the hell is that kid freaking out all of a sudden? What, is he autistic? God, he's driving me nuts. I've gotta get out of here." Then he's choking and sputtering in this toxic cloud, struggling to get up the energy to fly away or keep its extraneous feet stuck on the wall.... God, what a sad way to die.

Not that I wouldn't do it again should I come across another unfortunate wasp in the house. The lesson here: don't anthropomorphize insects.