Scarred for Life

You may not know this, but there is a serious bedbug problem in this country. To spare you the grotesque details, people spread them around mostly through their luggage and staying in hotels. College campuses are a natural breeding grounds for this bedbug epidemic because there are high percentages of students living within close quarters.

I have heard from colleagues about bedbug problems on their campuses. On some level I knew it was a matter of time before we had a problem as well. Sure enough, not one week into the new school year, and we had a very small outbreak in a room.

Turns out the student who brought them had been traveling and staying in hotels. The perfect storm situation for breeding bedbugs. Fortunately, we were able to identify and isolate the problem quickly. Only one room was affected, which makes this a very minor case.

Minor case or not, we needed to do some staff training to ensure that any future bedbug outbreaks would be handled just as well. So this last week, the unavoidable happened: I had to sit through a 2-hour presentation on bedbugs.

To be clear, I hate all things bugs and ew. I was never the little girl who was fascinated by bugs. I may not be overly girly, but I do scream and get the heebie geebies about bugs. That's one of the reasons I got a cat - she handles the bugs while I hide on the bed. Don't judge me.

During this dreaded presentation, I had to endure enlarged images of bedbugs (barf), and passing around samples of dead bedbugs (awful). As the presentation dragged on (and on and on), I found myself scrunching down more and more in my chair. My wonderful colleagues picked up on my discomfort quickly, and did their best to aleviate my fears with such pleasnatries as: "I hear Dallas has a huge bedbug problem." and "I think bedbugs can live for weeks on you after you travel before you can really tell."

Thanks. Very helpful, people. If anyone needs me, I'll be living out of my bathtub.