3 pets: The bug

My brother learned the word ‘arachnid’ before I did (something that stings to this day).

When he was 15, he brought home a scorpion.
Words he used to describe the creature were:
Cool
Harmless
Arachnid (“Insects have six legs stoopid”)
Baby

Words I used to describe my brother:
Sicko
Wacko
Psycho (“You know any words that don’t end with an ‘O’?” “SHUT UP!”)
Dead

It was a tense time for our family.
We just moved into a house I hated, my mom just started her own business and we missed her terribly, my dad wouldn’t stop playing Anne Murray…
Last thing we needed was a scorpion in the household as a fucking pet.

My parents, after failing to get through my brother a.k.a. Wacko’s skull, decided to let my brother keep the creature. Their logic being as far as acts of teen rebellion went, scorpions weren’t as bad as say, drugs or being a Jehovah’s Witness.

I presented several plausible, well-argued scenarios, mostly ending in our death.
But nooooooo, they wouldn’t listen.

One day my mom noticed what she thought were clumps of coconut shavings on the kitchen counter. She picked them up with her fingers. The shavings separated, then began to crawl up her hand in a swarm.

Turns out mom wasn’t the only female with kids in the house.