Jiminy ‘Effing’ Cricket
Chasing the intermittent sound of a cricket chirping in the middle of the night has to be pretty high up on the list of the most frustrating things on the planet.
When I was young, I’d often be woken in the dead of night by the shrill sound of a cricket rubbing his wings together. Despite my small bedroom, locating the exact spot from which the sound was coming was an impossible challenge that made me want to punch a wall.
Even after what seemed like hours of searching underneath every piece of furniture (bed, desk, dresser) and throughout my entire closet, I was rarely able to isolate where the sound was coming from, which, by the way, would shift mid-chirp from one side of the room to the other. As if that little cricket had ventriloquism talent, throwing his chirp voice at will.
Some nights, I’d pull everything out from under my bed (where I stored boxes of notes and cards, giant scrapbooks, and the occasional art project that was too big and cumbersome to fit inside my closet). That damn cricket was under there— but where?
Every time I thought I had pinpointed his whereabouts, his shrill chirp would stop—as if he suddenly knew my cricket radar had honed in on him. I’d freeze mid-movement, praying he would again start playing his midnight anthem so I could move in for the kill. To no avail. I would freeze, sometimes in contorted positions on my hands and knees or mid-stride, until a leg muscle or a toe threatened to spasm from its sudden and prolonged contraction. I’d remain frozen and barely breathing, lest his little cricket ears pick up the sound of my inhale or his sensitive wings feel the breeze of an exhale. I was willing to suffer CO₂ buildup in my bloodstream and painful muscle spasms before surrendering to sleep while that obnoxious insect took up residence in my room.
I’d get so frustrated in my unsuccessful attempt to find him that I’d stomp next door to my sister’s bedroom and wake her, pleading for the company (and an extra set of ears) in my frantic search. She knew my pain. She had spent many a night in the same insanity-inducing hunt inside her room. I knew this because if one of us was sleepless from the orthopterous insect’s serenades, we both were.
By the way, crickets are like ticks. They prefer tight, out-of-the-way places. God forbid they stage their operatic aria in the middle of the room or anywhere in the open. Instead, they do their damage in the space between your box spring and bed frame, a maddening hiding spot that tricks the mind into thinking the little monster is under the bed—but in the name of God, where?! Or he chirpily-chirps his tune from inside the binding of a scrapbook nestled out of reach on the top of the desk hutch, making me believe he has somehow shimmied his way into the suspended ceiling tiles, causing me to want to frantically pull down the entire tile grid in a blind rage.
Two days last week, I was woken to the bane of my childhood slumber— Mr. Jiminy Effing Cricket. And this one, while incredibly loud, only chirped in successions of three counts at any given time— having that silence-before-being-discovered tactic down to a science. He wasn’t the tiny well-dressed cricket from Pinocchio come to serenade me with ‘When You Wish Upon a Star.’ He was a trickster, seemingly come to drive me mad.
I was so disoriented and sleepy one of the two nights last week that I almost broke down and cried upon realizing that the chirping sound was coming from behind 300 of my vinyl albums and that I would most likely have to pull all of them out of the shelves to reveal the tiny nuisance. Instead, upon simultaneously hearing the pack of coyotes yelping their role call in the woods just outside my windows, I walked back to my bedroom, opened a new box of earplugs, lodged them deep inside my ear canals, shut my bedroom door, and slept with a pillow over my head.
The next morning, I texted my sister Julie to let her know that our childhood cricket “friend” had returned after decades of silence. He’s craftier in his mature years, I told her. His tweedle doesn’t drone on in many chirps (the best part of prolonged chirping is that it gives one time to advance toward the tiny cricket echoes). Still, instead, this guy peeps only in a three or four-beat rhythm before going silent for long, infuriating durations. Just enough time for me to be jolted from a deep slumber, to lie there and wonder if that was what I think it was, rolling over and praying it was part of my dream— only to hear three more cricket shrieks before my welling anger causes my heartbeat to become deafening.
I typically utter an enthusiastic “Thank you, God!” or “Good morning, world!” upon naturally waking every morning. For the past two days, I’ve been unable to refrain from spewing the queen mother of all cuss words as I wake to a cricket alarm, rise from my bed and take my first steps in long strides to get into the hallway or the living room to stand (frozen) until that damn cricket belts out his following three notes.
Jiminy, my ‘wish upon a star’ is that from now on, you find adventure somewhere beyond the walls of my condo. It’s a big, beautiful world out there. Grab your top hat and tiny umbrella and have at it, little guy. I’m afraid ‘fate [will not be] so kind’ if you should return.