The setting: The kitchen of a house in Jackson, Mississippi.
The people: Three nonprofit interns.
The time: 10:07pm.
The story: I was sitting in our kitchen, still wearing the clothes I wore to work today. I was concentrating on ignoring the itches and bumps on my ankles and arms, and the especially annoying one on my left palm, when I notice Jon, my roommate, ceasing to type on his laptop.
I looked up. He stood up.
He unbuckled his pants and I didn’t even try to look away. We’re way past looking away. Our level of roommateness have reached levels I never even imagined.
With his pants around his ankle, Jon has now started to jerk his legs wildly, yelling “I FELT ONE! I FELT ONE!”
And I watched him hop up and down in place, his yarmulke slipping, now sitting lopsided on his head, his legs still jerking in a wild attempt to dismount an unseen parasite. I started to snicker.
Disgruntled and yelling expletives, he pulled his pants back up. “That was not funny. I felt one on me, man, I felt one on me.”
I would have laughed again if I didn’t detect the sheer desperation in his voice. It was all too familiar. I caught his eyes and notice the familiarly wild expression I saw mine in the mirror this morning.
Fleas have attacked our house.
You see, Jon never signed up for a flea attack. Jon is a nice, college-aged Jewish boy from Massachusetts who only deserves good things to happen to him. He is in Jackson, Mississippi to serve as an intern at a local nonprofit organization. He came here to do honest work. He is here to help perserve Jewish history in the southern United States. He loves Bruce Springsteen, only eats fair trade bananas, and has cooked dinner for his Jackson roommates at least once. He lets us borrow his copy of “The Confederacy of Dunces” and always reminds us that every time we listen to T-Pain, somewhere a kitten dies. Jon is a wonderful, thoughtful person.
Does Jon deserve having to suffer through unbuckling his pants and dancing his funny dance in front of the roommate he’s known for two months, simply because he thought he felt a flea on him?
Chorus: No.
But danced his funny dance, Jon did. As he and I looked into each other’s wild, tired eyes in our flea-infested kitchen, I realized I’ve never understood him better. You see, on top of the general itchiness and grossness that comes with a flea attack, there’s also that indignation that stupid little insects have invaded your personal territory. That’s why, without hesitation, Jon unbuckled his pants in his effort to thwart that phantom flea. That’s why, as I put on my sock this morning and noticed a flea on it, I shrieked expletives that I would personally find very offensive on an ordinary day and felt like I needed to learn how to shoot a gun so I could kill! kill! killllll! the fleas.
—
Anyway, none of us in this house know how to deal with fleas. We’re renting this duplex for the summer, and the owners of the house (who have since left Mississippi for Colorado, after living with us for about two weeks at the beginning of the summer) have an adorable, 12-year-old female yellow lab and Husky mix named Caedie.
That bitch.
We loved the dog, but had we known she would leave a nation of angry fleas in her wake, I probably would have welcomed her in my bedroom a little less. But we’re dealing with our little problem now–we sprinkled the house with diatomaceous earth, which is supposed to dehydrate the fleas and kill them. I’ve never felt so much joy out of the prospective death of another living being, but I think the constant itchiness have driven me slightly mad.
Wish us luck.