Goes Buzz in the Night

With the house being so stinkin' hot the later in the day that it gets, I'm finding myself spending a lot of time in the patio in the evenings. However, I'm always by myself, as the hubs refuses to join me, due to his hatred of mosquitoes.

I do understand his feelings. They're irritating. They put me a over the edge when they buzz in my ears. And he gets bit by them.

I don't.

Now, I used to be just like everyone else on the planet and the mosquitoes loved sucking my blood, and I'd swell and slap them and itch. But it's been twelve years since this has been a noticeable problem.

I first noticed this anomaly when I was a camp counselor in 2000. My girls were stuck inside the cabin on a rainy day and were passing the time by counting their mosquito bites.

"I've got 109!"

"I've got 73!"

I took a look at myself and found about 4. Why on earth were the girls being bitten to death but not me? Was it their sweet, young blood? At the ripe, old age of 21 I was no longer attractive to mosquitoes?

Upon further reflection, I decided that I had been cured from mosquitoes. And, while I'm not exactly sure why, I've got a pretty good idea.

Back when I was doing my study-abroad semester in Mexico in 1999, a friend and I decided to take off for a long weekend and visit Taxco. It was April, the height of the dry season, and we opened the windows wide in our hotel room to let in some refreshing, mountain breezes. The windows were open all day, and when we finally got ready for bed that night, we found that we had unwittingly invited just about every mosquito in the northern part of Guerrero in our room.

It was hands-down the most awful night of my life. I didn't sleep a wink. We got bit and buzzed and swollen within an inch of our lives.

However, since then, I can't say that mosquitoes have bothered me too much. Sometimes I see them on my arms and I kill them. They rarely leave a mark, and it's even more rare for those few mosquito bites to itch.

One sleepless night with a bazillion mosquitoes in exchange for a lifetime of being immune to mosquito bites?

I don't think I would have chosen it, but I'm sure glad it happened!

(Not sure what else may now be crawling around in my bloodstream, but let's just not think about that!)