The other night I had a standoff with a mosquito.
I won. The fact that it bit me means nothing. Every warrior has a few wounds.
I was sitting in my room calmly doing homework (okay, reading a magazine, but since I want to be a journalist, it's essentially the same thing) when I heard a high pitched buzzing that sounded like a competition between Lucille Ball and a lawn mower. I looked up in horror and saw the biggest mosquito I had ever seen knocking itself against my wall.
It was the size of a half dollar.
"Holy..." I screamed, leaping out of my seat and flinging Vogue at the wall. The mosquito dodged the magazine as skillfully as a ballet dancer.
"Get out!" I yelled.
"Bzz, bzzz," it said. "Make me."
"Look," I said, lowering my voice conspiratorially. "I can't make you leave and you know it. You're too high up for me to reach. Just please, leave?"
"Ha ha," it said, sticking its stinger out at me. "Bzz."
"Fine," I said. "Two can play this game."
I left the room and tiptoed around the suite's common area, pretending to clean and watching MTV reruns to distract the mosquito. Every five minutes or so, I went on tiptoe and peered into my room to see if the mosquito had flown away, died, or gotten stuck in an old Starbucks cup. But every time I looked, it was still making camp.
At 4 a.m. I couldn't take ads for Girls gone Wild anymore. I decided if I was this tired, the mosquito must be tired. I shook out the sheets and then carefully wrapped myself up like a mummy so that the mosquito could not get int. Haha, mosquito thing, try and bite me now, I thought. Sucker.
I woke up with a bite on my nose.
The thing had obviously tried to hit me when I was down. It had cheated. Oh, it was war.
The next day, the mosquito and I stared at each other once again. Faced with a standoff, I did what any normal strategist, such as Napoleon or Custer would do. I called my dad.
"Can you come kill a bug for me?" I whispered.
"Why are you whispering?" he said.
"It might hear me," I squeaked.
"Bzzz!" said the mosquito. "I have you now, Luke Skywalker."
"I'm three thousand miles away," said my father. "Why don't you kill it?"
"But that would be wrong." I said. "I couldn't kill it."
"You were going to let me kill it."
"That's entirely different."
My friend walked in a few hours later to see me huddled in the corner wearing every piece of clothing I own and waving a carved stick. "What are you doing?" she asked.
"Intimidation," I told her. I lowered my voice, because it was listening.
She looked at me curiously.
"That evil mosquito bit my nose," I told her.
"Is that all?" she asked. Then she killed it. She'd definitely the man of the suite.
I could not believe that my opponent was gone. It was a wonderful thing, but still, my victory seemed empty. Perhaps it was because I had let my friend fight my battle for me. Then I spied a giant spider crawling down my wall.
I looked toward my suitemate.
"If there were no spiders then imagine how many mosquitos we'd have," said my friend, soothingly. "Spiders are our friends."
Tell that to the maniacal black eight legged poison saber with too shiny eyes dangling from the ceiling, rubbing its front legs together. It can't wait to take a piece out of my nose.
"I bet it's a black widow," I said.
"It's a daddy long legs," said my friend. What does she know? Just because she grew up in Upstate New York she thinks she knows everything about nature.
Alexandra Toumanoff '06 is a political science concentrator.
