Ants In My Pants

“There’s a bug on my leg!” said Becca.

“There’s no bug on your leg,” I said confidently.

“Are you SURE?”

“Absotively,” I said.

My 12-year-old goddaughter, Becca, and I were on the shores of Lake Martin. I was unloading groceries into an old cabin.

Becca had used her white cane to navigate into the yard while I unloaded. She was wearing her swimsuit, standing in the grass, listening to nature.

I was certain there were no bugs on her because there are NEVER bugs on Becca, although she is always insisting there are.

Becca does not like bugs. She is more afraid of bugs than, say, the threat of nuclear war.

She is constantly searching for invisible bug life on her person; perpetually feeling herself with both hands; occasionally freaking out whenever she happens to detect, for example, a raised freckle.

“There is DEFINITELY a bug on my leg.”

The stupidity of Becca’s godfather is staggering. Because when I inspected Becca’s legs, there was a bug.

Actually, there was more than just “a bug.” There were maybe millions of ants swarming her legs. She was standing atop an anthill.

Becca’s calves were covered in tiny black dots. The ants were crawling up her thighs, burrowing into her shoes. There were ants all the way up to her waist.

And so it was, the middle-aged man, who has never had a child of his own, who has no earthly clue what it means to be parental, who still watches “SpongeBob SquarePants” and eats red-white-and-blue popsicles, started swatting the child’s legs with a towel.

I removed her shoes and socks and brushed the ants away. Soon, Becca was free of bugs, but a million ants had found their way onto the middle-aged fool.

Throngs of ants were crawling on my arms and hands and neck and armpits and even—seriously—into my underwear. And they were the biting kind.

Becca sprang into full-blown rescue mode. She used both hands to swat ants from my body. “Get off him, ants!” she was screaming.

And although this child cannot see, although she had no idea what was happening, she was coming to my aid the best she could, yelling at the ants, beating me harder than a Persian rug.

And in the throes of this minor catastrophe, it sounded like Becca was about to cry. Not because the ants were attacking her. But because they were attacking me.

When it was all over, Becca incurred 11 ant bites. Whereas I sustained somewhere around 2,893. We hugged each other, standing on the sidewalk, surrounded by fallen groceries.

Then we started laughing. I don’t know why. But whenever you hear a kid laugh, it makes you laugh.

“I told you there was a bug,” she said.

“I’m sorry. I should’ve listened.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. I should listen better. Thanks for looking out for me, Becca.”

The child hugged me tighter. “Oh, Sean, what would you ever do without me?”

I don’t even want to think about it.