Saturday, March 15, 2008

The Adventures of Missionary Man


In the wee hours of the night (2 a.m. to be exact), I’m laying wide awake in my bed, paralyzed with fear… something is making a skritchy, skritchy, skritch sound and running from one side of my bedroom to the other. I’m lying as still and as quiet as possible. I’m thinking, “Maybe it will go away. Do I really want it to go away? It might go to Sarah’s room if it leaves my room.” And I’m remembering the stories from class today… stories about rats. First, Matt said that he had a rat run across his foot while watching TV last night. That ramped Dixi up and she told us a story of when she fell asleep on the beach and woke up with a rat on her face licking her lips (she fell asleep eating cake… I’m thinking there was something stronger than cake involved). Then Matt told us about the time their family friends found a really ugly, scruffy puppy on the beach and took it home, only to have it kill their cats, get wounded in the process, which caused an emergency vet visit, at which they were told that this was not a really ugly, scruffy dog… it was a giant ship rat! (I’m thinking that they might have had a drinking problem, too.)

So anyway, I worked my “lie really still and quiet plan” for about 15 minutes, listening to the skritchy, skritching and thinking about rats. Then I realized that Billy was awake, too. He asked, “Why are you awake?”. To which I answered, “I think there is a rat in our room.” He said, “I know. I’ve been listening to it, too.” So we lay there for a few more minutes. Then mild mannered Clark Kent (I mean, Billy) crawled to the end of the bed and said, “Get ready to turn on the lights. NOW!!!” I flipped on the lights, and much to my surprise, Missionary Man had jumped out of bed, attacked a pair of jeans on my floor, grabbed a near-by flip flop, and was viciously attacking the skritchy, skritch sound. He then threw his hands up into the air in victory (hitting our 7 foot ceiling in the process) and proclaimed the deed “done”. I had been saved from the evil that lurked in my bedroom by my hero, my knight in plaid pajama pants and Spam-A-Lot t-shirt.

Returning to his mild mannered self, Missionary Man crawled back into bed, donned his earbuds and fell asleep listening to a Dallas Willard podcast. My hero!

Stay tuned for more exciting episodes with Missionary Man… coming to a neighborhood near you…

By the way – the skritchy, skritchy, skritch sound was actually a nuclear-sized cockroach. I have no doubt that it could have killed us all if given the chance… you never know.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

AHHH! What a great guy :-) And glad that the nuclear sized cockroach made it's final demise - they really don't need to exist!

Randi said...

EW... It's like a creepy disgusting round of "Would you rather..?"

Would you rather: have a large rat or a large cockroach running around your bedroom floor?


Gives me the willies!!!!!!! blech!!

Sean Moore said...

I always knew Billie was a hero. Hope everything is going well for you guys, I'm praying for you. I just got back from Cuba for the second time, it was pretty cool.