Creepy crawlers are the one bad thing about summer. Picture this, you’re laying out tanning at your local swimming pool. You hear a quiet buzz. Your eyes open and you become anxious as the buzzing grows louder. Then, a bee is in your face, flying around you. What do you do?

Step One: Bug spray.

Don’t even get me started on mosquitoes. Everyone knows how annoying they are during the summer. You can’t even enjoy sitting outside to watch the sunset because they bite you and cause you to itch all over! They’re probably the most annoying bug of the summer. So, good job mosquitoes, you win most obnoxious!!!

Step Two: Get the hell out of my face, man!

Just the other day, my mom and I were getting mail out of our mailbox. She had some letters to put back into the mailbox to send out. We soon came to find out that our entire mailbox was covered in ants. We had to take letters and magazines out one by one and dust the pesky bugs off. Of course, they got all over us, causing us to wipe them off vigorously. They also carried food into the mailbox somehow, making a huge mess.

Step Three: Swatting away.

Last summer I went to a waterfall in Tullahoma, TN with my friend. On the hike back to the car, a horsefly started flying around us. You’d think after a while, it’d go away. NOPE. This horsefly followed us all the way back to the car. I couldn’t get away from it and we couldn’t kill it either. My friend was slapping me with a wet t-shirt to get this horsefly to die! If we stopped walking for even a second, we’d get bit by it. It hurt too! I almost had a panic attack because the horsefly was like, attacking me. I literally almost started crying.

Step Four: Use others as a personal shield. Better them than you, am I right?

Another time, the same friend and I were riding in my parents John Deere Gator. We were trying to ride up the side of the hill by my house. We didn’t make it five minutes before turning around because spiders were swarming us. They had webs made across the trail so we drove through a handful of spider webs. My friend is scared of spiders like I am scared of bees and wasps. She absolutely hates them and she’s not the type to get scared easily. She was hiding behind me. I was her shield. She made me turn around after over ten spiders were crawling all over the Gator.

Step Five: Flailing your arms and running away like the 5-year-old we know you are.

Wasps and bees scare me the most. I’ve always been scared of them. No, not scared, terrified. I’ve never been stung, so you see why I have a fear of them. If you want to see me run like no other, put a wasp or bee around me. I could probably win a cross country race if a wasp was chasing me. People always tell me, “They sense your fear and will sting you if you freak out.” The way I see it? If I get away from them fast enough, they’ll stay away somewhat.

Step Six: Stop, drop, and roll! This is not a drill!

Just get out of there! From what I've seen, if you mess with bugs, they mess with you right back. This causes panic, fear, running, and screaming. In general, to avoid this mess you've now gotten into by trying to hit a spider off the wall, just leave it alone. Make someone else kill it and be put in harms way. Back to step four, better someone else than you!

Step Seven: Scream and cry!

When my mother was little, she went camping outside with her sister and her cousins. They just set up a tent in the back of my great-grandmothers back yard. It was all fun and games until the moment they woke up in the morning. They awoke to slugs covering the inside of their tent and their sleeping bags. My mom describes it as a “slimy apocalypse.”

Step Eight: Go inside any building and stay there for the rest of your life, because all bugs are out to get you in the end.

Sure, catching fireflies with mason jars in the mid-summer nights is fun. Fireflies are pretty and don’t bite or anything. They just look cool lighting up together in a jar. It’s like a little flashlight for a while. Those are the cute bugs, others, not so much.

Bugs, I seriously don’t want you around me. You sting, bite, fly, crawl, and are an all around pest. You make people scream and run from you. I get that some of you (like bumblebees) may be cute to some, but not me.

As you see, I have some traumatic stories that have happened to my family and me with bugs. My stories aren’t like Peter Parker getting bitten by a spider and transforming into Spiderman. We weren't that fortunate! Needless to say, bugs are not my friends. We do not get along. So to the bugs of summer: I’m not asking, stay away from me or you will be killed!