## the garage

Post by cuffguy85 » Tue Aug 11, 2009 4:53 am

I just remembered this one, because I just saw one of the little critters that visited me on this particular event.
I was probably 9 or 10 when this happened. I can't remember most of the details so I'll just kinda wing it.
It was about a quarter of the way into the school year. I was at a friend's house after school and someone had the idea of playing capture the flag. We broke into two teams, and each team was allowed to take captives. There were 6 of us; a couple names I remember, a couple I forget, so we'll call my friends Danny, Cody, Matt, Martin, and Kyle. I was on a team with Danny and Kyle, while Martin, Cody and Matt were on the other team. Our base was Kyle's backyard, while their base was Matt's garage. Matt and Danny were brothers, by the way.
So I'm roaming about one of the upstairs bedrooms at Matt and Danny's house, looking for the flag (we kept the flag close to the base, not at it). Matt jumps out of the closet and handgags me. According to our rules, once you were grabbed, you had to surrender, so I did. Matt proceeded to tie my hands behind my back with a shoestring, and led me downstairs and to the garage. He opened the door and I heard a bunch of crickets scatter. The light in the garage was very dim, as it had a flourescent bulb that was dying out. This garage had a support beam right in the middle of it. He took me to the beam, untied my hands, and retied them behind the pole. I was ordered to sit down. He walked over to a bench and grabbed some duct tape, and wrapped the tape around the shoestring that bound my wrists, then proceeded to wrap tape around my feet, put about 4 strips on my mouth, and ultimately taped my upper body to the pole. He told me to have fun and walked out of the garage.
I heard the crickets begin to escape from their hiding places. As I said before, this garage was very dim, so I couldn't see much. One of them had found it's way over to me, and it hopped up on my knee.
It wasn't your average cricket.
Now I know that each region has it's undesirable insect of choice, your roaches, your palmetto bugs and whatnot. Let me explain to you a little about what he have here in this part of the east coast. They're called camel crickets, or cave crickets. They like cool, dark, moist places, like garages and basements. They have a body shaped like a bean, tall pointed legs, beady black eyes, and they're brown and black striped, similar to a yellow jacket. Just imagine the illegitimate love child between a spider and a cricket and you've got one of these little buggers. They're the most disgusting looking bug I've ever seen. However, like many bugs, they're more afraid of you then you are of them, and they try to hop away from you. The thing is, when they think they're hopping away, they're really hopping at you. And they're hopping 3 feet in the air.
And this garage was infested with them.
Once I realized the predicament I was in I began frantically trying to free myself. I was screaming like a mad man into the tape but to no avail. More of them started crawling from the woodwork. The one on my knee hopped on my chest. It was lookin at me. I screamed as best I could, and it hopped back onto the ground, thank god. I started looking around, I could see 15, maybe 20 of them, and that's just what I could see through the dim light. There had to be more, probably close to a hundred. I started frantically pulling at my wrists, trying to find the end of the tape.
I guess the sweat from my struggling was enough to lubricate my wrists enough to get me to pull one through. I pulled the tape and string from my other hand, and reached up and tore the tape at my chest, then at my feet. I didn't even bother taking off the gag, I just wanted out. I got up and ran to the door, stepping on a few on the way. I ran out of the garage and out of the house. Two had followed me, on my leg. I shook them off and ran for my own base. To my delight, there was Matt, tied to the tree at our base.
I couldn't find any of the camel crickets (not that I would have touched one had I found it), but I did find some regular crickets, and I put them on him, while explaining to him what had happened to me in his garage. He wasn't too happy about it, but at this point I didn't care. Fair is fair, and I don't think I got even, in the least.
I can't remember how the rest of the day went, but I know that I protested that garage as ever being anybody's base again.