I want you to think about your worst fear.
What is it? Dying in a plane crash? Being buried alive? Ghosts?
What if your worst fear was realized? What if you awoke to a ghost drifting through your bedroom? What if you were buried alive and – even worse – Ryan Reynolds wasn’t in there with you?
Well, my worst fear came to pass.
The clock rolled to six as Don headed out one morning last week. The kids slept as I curled up in the rec room with Pete and Matt O’Donnell. I waited for my second cup of tea to brew.
The first had been ruined before my first sip. Pete got mulch in it. An inauspicious start if I ever saw one.
Suddenly, Pete darted off the sofa, landing across the room. He was in hunting-dog mode, tracking something running along the rec room carpet.
It was a skink. Not a skunk, as Don’s dad thought my text read. And not a sink, as my neighbor’s son thought my text read.
A skink. As in lizard. As in reptile.
In my house.
My well-known, deep-seated fear of reptiles meant in the blink of an eye I had been transported to hell. Don was gone. It was six in the morning. I had no one to go to for help.
Desperate, I turned to the kids.
Now, Don and I have code names for our kids. The kids do not know their code names because this isn’t the Secret Service. Or even a democracy.
Guns ‘N Roses releases a new album more frequently than I see Don. We learned early in our parenting career that if we needed to discuss sensitive kid matters, we couldn’t always wait until the kids weren’t around.
So, for example, if I tell Don that Silas is scheduled for an intramuscular injection to prevent varicella, Don now knows that particular kid is getting a chickenpox vaccine, likely to be cranky and up all night, and that I’m going to need some Starbucks and will just order pizza for dinner. But the kid is none the wiser until we want them to be the wiser.
Our code names are Titus and Silas. They are static, but I won’t tell you who is who, in the interest of maintaining anonymity.
First, I woke Silas. Silas readily agreed to help. But Silas is ever my kid. Silas wanted to wear gloves before picking up the skink.
I was terrified I would lose track of the skink. If the skink was loose and unobserved in my house, I’d be white-haired insane before Matt O’Donnell could sign off. I needed to grab gloves quickly.
The closest gloves I had for Silas were the gloves Don gave me, which I think are First Lite and therefore probably expensive. This would not stop me from throwing them out once Silas had captured the skink because ew – skink.
I shoved the gloves at Silas and grabbed a Tupperware container. I told Silas their mission was to trap the skink – I’d named him Phillip because I’m watching The Crown and Prince Phillip and skink Phillip are both interloping pains in the ass – then scoop him up and out into the yard.
I grabbed the broom. Phillip had made a dash for the curtain once he saw Pete. I suspected he was hiding beneath it.
I was right. At first, he was coiled so tightly I thought he might be a snake which – now that I’m processing this – would have been worse than Phillip. So Phillip entering my house turns out to be my second worst fear.
I screamed, then held Phillip in place with the broom. I told Silas to trap Phillip with the Tupperware.
But Silas hesitated. I would find out later that I was so hysterical, Silas worried they would drop Phillip, worsening my hysteria.
So I had to trap Phillip.
I don’t even go inside the reptile house at the zoo. I’m supposed to get close enough to Phillip to trap him under Tupperware?
Well, yes. I had no choice. I was sure he would move without the protection of the curtain.
I screamed as I covered Phillip with the Tupperware. My hands shook. Sweat poured down my back.
Now I just had to slide something beneath the Tupperware so I could carry Phillip outside. And here is where I realized my mistake.
The Tupperware I used was a four-inch by four-inch square. I needed something at least that big to slide under the Tupperware. But my carpet – the thick carpet I had so desperately wanted – was too thick. I had to smoosh it down to get something beneath the Tupperware, creating a gap. Phillip made a dash for that gap each time it opened.
I tried many things. So many things. My newspaper was too flimsy. The manila folder? It bowed the further it got beneath the Tupperware, a potential escape route for Phillip. The glass from the picture frame? I couldn’t get it beneath the Tupperware without lifting it high enough for Phillip to get out. Had the Tupperware been smaller, I wouldn’t have had this problem.
“Why don’t you just stab it?” Silas suggested. “Then put it out in the yard as a warning to the other skinks.”
“Like William Wallace?” I asked.
“Who’s William Wallace?” Silas asked. Probably to their ever-living regret because it might be six in the morning, and I might be terrified, but it’s always a good time for a history lesson.
I couldn’t stand to stab the skink, despite my rampant British ancestry. What if Phillip let out a little skink scream? I don’t like him, and I didn’t like him in my house, but I didn’t want to see him dead.
Phillip stopped moving beneath the Tupperware, so I speculated he might be suffocating.
But when I shifted the Tupperware, Silas started running around again.
What a jerk.
Even worse, he kept running along the sides of the Tupperware, where my hands held it down. I could feel the flick-flick-flick of his body.
Awful.
Silas suggested we poison Phillip. I was beginning to wonder about Silas, but I can only deal with so many crises at a time. I told Silas to Google “skink poison.”
“All I can find is that skinks are poisonous,” Silas said. I screamed again, which is probably why Silas told me they really aren’t poisonous.
“Google ‘skink in house’,” I told Silas.
“It just says that once one gets in, they start getting in all the time,” Silas read.
I screamed again.
I took the phone and texted Don, hoping he would turn around and come home once made aware of my current predicament. I’m not really a damsel-in-distress kind of girl but that day I was goddamn Cinderella.
Don just laughed at me.
I told Silas to text their father that this wasn’t funny.
Instead, Silas texted back that it was, indeed, very funny.
“It’s times like these,” I told Silas “that I really miss able-bodied Indy.”
Indy would have taken care of the skink before George Stephanopoulos was out of make-up. I would have gotten a lot of harrumphing over my fear, but I wouldn’t have a skink in the house.
But Indy can’t drive anymore, and he can’t move as fast as a skink anymore. So I couldn’t turn to Indy for help.
Now, I might not have any luck when it comes to skinks, but I have a ton of luck when it comes to dads. Because Don’s dad loves me as much as my own dad loves me. Maybe more because he didn’t have to live through my Johnny Depp phase, my NKOTB phase, or my bad boyfriend phase.
But I couldn’t call Don’s dad at six in the morning. He’d think Indy was dead. He really likes Indy.
Probably because Indy successfully navigated me out of my Johnny Depp phase, my NKOTB phase, and my bad boyfriend phase into the delightful if herpetophobic daughter-in-law I am today.
I couldn’t call, but texting was an option. I texted Don’s mom, explaining the situation. But she and Don’s dad didn’t see the text until the whole thing was over. I felt like Maverick’s commander in Top Gun when they’re scrambling the jets at the end – everyone could help me in ten minutes, but this thing would be over in two minutes.
Next I thought of my neighbors. Their teenage son was happy to help me in an hour. He thought I was trying to get rid of a sink, thought it was odd I was doing it at six in the morning, but knows I’m obsessive enough to be doing exactly that.
I politely declined.
Yet I sat there for an hour anyway, Phillip trapped beneath the Tupperware. Later, I would realize my fingers were bleeding, sliced by the glass from the picture frame. Aches would permeate muscles held tense for sixty agonizing minutes.
I told Silas to wake Titus. I am severely mocked in my house for my reptile fear. If everyone else is so brave, they can be up before sunrise to eliminate a skink from my rec room.
But the sunrise was, at that moment, exactly my problem. Silas might be my kid, standing there in expensive winter gloves yet still refusing to touch a skink, but they’re also Don’s kid.
Silas stood at the picture window, watching the sunrise. They asked if, before waking Titus, they could grab their iPad to get a picture of the sunrise.
You know, I generally consider myself a lousy parent. But one thing I think I’ve gotten right is my kids’ well-roundedness. Thanks to me, they know who Iron Man is. They know every line in Hamilton. They know that the 5:26 out of Jefferson Station will get them to Jenkintown but never, ever to Glenside.
And thanks to Don, they know how to cast a line, fire a gun, and kick a log to shake out the snakes.
As it turns out, that one success is actually a roaring failure. Silas stood there, wearing winter gloves in August, refusing to touch a skink and marveling at a sunrise.
It didn’t matter anyway. Titus grumbled it was too early, rolled over, and went back to sleep.
I’ll remember that. Christmas is coming. I’ll remember that.
Eventually, I managed to get both the manila folder and the picture-frame glass under the Tupperware. I tossed the whole thing onto the deck, then used the broom to shift the Tupperware, freeing Phillip.
And just like The Crown, he sauntered around my deck like he owned the place.
Don’s parents called me just as I released Phillip. Don’s dad was already dressed, ready to come help. Indy would have done the same, had he been able. I am – fortunately enough – the kid from My Two Dads.
When I filled Don’s dad in on my adventures, he harrumphed at my hysteria, just like Indy did when I told him.
Don’s dad is Backup Indy. I need to think about which one is Paul Reiser, leaving the other one to be Greg Evigan. That’s a tough one.
He’s pretty funny. So maybe Paul Reiser?
The aftermath of Phillip’s home invasion has been difficult. Everything in my peripheral vision is a skink. I live in dread of a second appearance from Phillip. I have Googled “countries without reptiles” as I’ve been looking for an excuse to become a European ex-pat anyway. The only things I’ve found are lists of countries without snakes and this disturbing article from Popular Science.
I’ll continue my search. In the meantime, I keep the back door firmly closed – and locked, just in case.
And I have Paul Reiser on speed dial.