I can be reasonably tough . I didn’t shed a tear when I broke off the corner of my elbow in 7th grade or when my lower back decided to spontaneously decombust, I have no qualms about telling the jerk at the bar to stop calling me “sweetie,” and I’ll look a burly deliveryman in the eye and insist that no, the original price he quoted me was definitely not $250. But when it comes to insects, I’m a mewling, spineless mess of a human being.

I’m not sure what it is about bugs that causes this regression. Mice I’m fine with — you catch the little guys in a jar and let them loose outside. Even snakes aren’t a problem; at age 5 I watched my mother don tall rubber boots and work gloves to do battle with a copperhead that had taken up residence in our garage. Even though she shut the door and told me to stay in the house, I could hear the banging and frantic slithering as she destroyed the hapless reptile with a snow shovel. Lessons learned that day: Snakes are dispensable, and don’t fuck with my mother.

Still, there’s something about bugs that leaves me a mess. The multiple legs, the ability to climb walls, the slimy little exoskeletons — they send me to pieces. It would be embarrassing if it wasn’t so typical.

So when I wake up one gorgeous morning, throw back the covers and sling my legs over the bed to find a waterbug staring at me from the bedroom floor, the hissy fit that ensues is epic. The thing is hideous — at least three inches long, feces brown, with antennae straight out of a horror film — a true Kafka-esque abomination of nature. When Cat marches over to bat it across the floor, I shriek at her to get away. My next instinct is to do what I always do in these situations: Plead with Boyfriend to go take care of it. Oh wait, shit — never mind.

“Alright,” I tell myself after a few minutes of mental decomposing. “You aren’t going to camp out in bed until it plops over and dies of natural causes. Nothing to do but kill the bastard.”

I try to distract myself from the task at hand, wondering where it came from, how it got up to the fifth floor, whether there are any more in the building (or in my bedroom!). Stewing in these thoughts is actually worse than taking action, so I leap out of the other side of the bed and creep out the door, leaving Cat to stand guard over the doomed captive.

After outfitting myself in hiking boots and a raincoat — to make sure no bugness can touch any part of my body — I scan the bookshelf for the biggest volume I can find. Damn the Internet for making it unnecessary to own a dictionary. A second later, I have it: Bill Clinton’s “My Life” — a solid 960+ pages of bug-murdering goodness.

Armed and outfitted, I step into the bedroom ready for battle. The doomed creature is in the same spot as before, looking a little forlorn as Cat baits it with her paw.

CRASH! I fling the book straight at my opponent, and the noise sends Cat flying. Wounded but still alive, the bug starts crawling, looking for safety, heading for the worst possible place: under the bed. Desperate to keep it from reaching the protected solace of my boxes and storage bins, I grab anything I can find and start flinging it — candles, an alarm clock, an old address book. The clock delivers the death blow, as far as I can tell. Without stopping to ponder the brutality of my kill, I leap into the kitchen, unwrap an entire roll of paper towels and create a three-inch thick cocoon to scoop up the body, to ensure that I never actually have to feel it or get any part of my skin too close to its oozing guts (which are no doubt filled with flesh-eating bacteria). The towel wad, with bug corpse enclosed, goes into a plastic bag, which goes into another plastic bag, which I tie with a double knot and deposit outside my door.

There! That wasn’t so hard! After a little mopping, dusting, vacuuming, and floor resurfacing, it’ll be like it was never there! I can do this — I can deal with shit on my own. No need to fall apart or go to pieces.

Though maybe it would be best if I have the raincoat cleaned. And the boots – maybe they should go into a storage bag full of Raid for a few months.

As for me, time for a long, scalding shower — and maybe a couple Valium.