Knock Knock Jokes and Bedbugs

Knock knock? Who’s there? You make me sick-that was the punch line! This was a knock knock joke that I recently endured which was not a joke. It was meant to tell me off & be cruel. Any guesses as to who did this? Jack is the answer. Knock knock jokes have always been one of Jack’s things. None of them are ever funny nor do they make sense, but since I am his parent, I laugh. It’s pretty hard to tell me a joke & get me to laugh. I’ve fake laughed many a time at foolish jokes men would tell to try to impress me. Mind you these men that were trying to impress me & my co-workers were practically on their deathbeds! As a preteen, I worked at a place where old men hung out sometimes. They thought telling dirty jokes to a 13 year old was cool I suppose, I was grossed out but laughed reluctantly at their crudeness. Where was #metoo when I was young? The men were in their 50’s-60’s (deathbed to a preteen) & had children of their own. I cringed when they came around. Now over 30 years later, my life has circled back to jokes, but the knock knock kind. Although Jack’s jokes are clean, this particular knock knock joke Jack told was meant to hurt me. Jokes have never been humorous to me, I prefer real-life situations. I’m the kind of girl that laughs at a funeral (it’s in a song but a true story), the girl that laughs at 2am in bed when the house is completely silent, the girl that can’t hold it together in public because something someone is doing gets me totally tickled. Natural humor, that’s what makes me laugh. The reason Jack told me this joke was totally ridiculous. Lee left a dollar bill on the counter that the end had been torn off. Immediately, Jack became intrigued with it, wondering if the bank would accept it. Instead of taking our word for it that the money could be used again, Jack calls the bank & asks the teller whether or not they would accept a torn dollar bill. They told him they would have to see it. I was then instructed by Jack to take the dollar to the bank. To get the $1 off his mind, I told him when I got home that I used the dollar at the gas station for gas. Jack got very upset stating that the $1 was his. He said that Lee usually gives him dollars from The Berry Patch-this is not true. Of course following the news of me using the dollar, he calls Lee to fuss at him for not giving him the money. Not knowing how to correctly express his anger, he told me the knock knock joke to hurt my feelings & that’s exactly what he did. He may not of known how to convey his emotions, but he got the point across that he was upset with me. Words do cut like a knife, especially when they come from your kids. It’s amazing how something as simple as a dollar bill can cause so many problems. We are usually smarter than that & not leave money or anything unusual out in plain sight. Lesson learned!

Make sure to watch the short video of a caregiver that has concocted a comical plan on how to manage being a caregiver to her husband, this woman is my spirit sister: https://youtu.be/5i8GnYzRmFg. Her plan is simple, well thought out, & sounds like it would be effective! Wait for the cartoon part of the video to come up, hilarious!

If you think I have bad luck, let me just tell you how good my luck actually is. I think about this everyday! I have always been a very private person up until I started writing blogs about our journey with Jack, so telling this is big! I try to be so clean, not have excess junk, don’t eat in my bed, & so forth. In mid-November, I found a bug in mine & Lee’s bed. This bug was shaped like an apple seed. The horror I felt at that very moment. Do you know what bug is shaped like an apple seed? A bed bug! My heart sank, I prayed & pleaded with God to protect our home from a takeover. I quickly placed the bug in a sealed jar & inspected our whole room, under the mattress, on the baseboards, everywhere-I am still doing this to this very day. Voicing my bedbug theory to my husband, he did what husbands do, “that ain’t no bedbug” I was told. Anything wives say, they don’t believe us. This is proof that women are always right, here’s how. The bug sat in the sealed jar through Christmas & New Year’s still alive, remember it was placed in the jar in mid-November. No food, no air, nothing but the cold glass. Finally, I had to know for sure. I drove the apple seed to our county extension office for definite confirmation. A few days later, it was confirmed that apple seed was definitely a bedbug. I have not seen any more bugs since & have frantically searched day & night everyday, even with it being the end of January I am still looking. I want to think we escaped the wrath of a bedbug takeover. I’ve read about & heard the nightmares about becoming infested with bedbugs. Not really certain where on earth it came from, I have speculations but of course none of them can be confirmed. It could of came out of a QVC or Amazon package, an article of clothing I purchased, I really don’t know & that is scary! As a little girl, I was the poster child for lice. Again, my parents & sister like myself are all neat, tidy, & very organized people. In elementary school, I was friends with all, this was before junior high when clicks were formed, I was part of all friend groups. I still wanted to be part of all friend groups throughout school, but learned quickly that’s not the way it was. I hung around all different types of kids & genuinely loved being around everyone. I know my Mama will die when she reads that I’m writing about our lice ordeals. There were friends of mine whose parents did not treat the whole house like my Mama & Daddy did, they only treated the child’s head. If you want to get rid of those suckers, the whole house along with everyone’s head had to be smothered in RID (lice shampoo) & everything else had to be washed in the hottest of water & smothered in plastic! Then my Mama would make the embarrassing phone calls to inform anyone that was in contact with me, that I had lice. Lice treatment was a BIG deal at our house. My poor parents would work all day & come home to work endlessly to ensure we got rid (pun intended) of them. Curtains, stuffed animals, comforters, quilts, pillows, baby dolls, were thrown in plastic bags to sit for a week or so to kill any lingering lice. There were times I’m sure my Mama thought about tying one of those plastic bags around her own head when she discovered I had lice! Looking my head for lice became an obsession for my Mama that I loathed. I had tons & tons of hair. There were times I had slick, straight hair & other times that my hair was like nighttime drama queen, Donna Mills-this was the hair I obtained when I rode the school bus to the beauty parlor for a perm, remember, this was the 80’s, big hair was the thing. However the saddest moment came when I was in 3rd grade. Not only did I have one of the worst teachers I think in history of teaching, my Mama made me go to that same country beauty parlor & get all my gorgeous Donna Mills hair cut completely off. I was mortified! Not only was I super duper skinny (before it was a in thing), I had huge teeth that I hadn’t yet grown into, then to add to it, I had the ugliest hair in the school! Third grade was the absolute worse school year ever. Just something else to be picked on about! I don’t blame my Mama for this extreme decision, I would of done the same if that were Ava. To keep Ava from making us go through the lice scare on top of everything else we deal with, she was pretreated daily with a lice deterrent. We avoided lice throughout Ava’s school years (knock on wood), I felt like we had won the lottery & now after all these years of prevention & protection, I find a bedbug in our home. With all this said, I feel like I have some sort of luck, two months have passed & no more bedbugs have been spotted. Thank you Lord!!!

On this particular journey, I have learned that bedbugs & Jack have a lot in common, they both are resilient as all get out. They can both not eat or drink for weeks on end & not use the bathroom for that long lol. Nothing gets them down, they both are the toughest beings on earth-stronger than the Terminator. The lottery is up to nearly $400 million, I’ve got to get me a ticket, but if you see me at the store don’t tell me a joke, my jaws are tired of fake laughing. Who out there really likes jokes any way? Tell me a funny story instead, one that will make me laugh at 2am when everyone is asleep, Lee loves that!

Author: dravetsyndromeblog

44 year old Mama of three kids, wife of a farmer, & business owner. View all posts by dravetsyndromeblog