Reading Jodi's comment reminded me of the dead bee in the latte story she wrote about which then reminded me of my very own I-once-had-an-icky-bug-in-my-mouth story. So here goes.

It was my freshman year in high school. Football season. Most of my friends were in the band (that was a cool thing at my high school! truly!) so more often than not I sat with my parents and my best friend's parents at the games. On one particularly chilly Friday, as me and my family are getting ready to go to the game, my mom gets this brilliant idea. "Let's bring a thermos of hot cocoa to the game!" Great idea Mom! We didn't have any hot cocoa packets in the house so she goes out to our little RV we have parked in the driveway. She finds and brings in two packets of Swiss Miss, we take a few minutes to make it, pour it in the thermos and are ready to go.

Flash forward to the football stadium.

We arrive just as the JV game is starting and set up camp in our usual spot as the best friend's parents have saved us a spot on the bench in front of them. We lay out my old sleeping bag on the aluminum bench to save our asses from completely freezing off. My old sleeping bag is very pink and very cute and no, I'm not the least bit embarrassed to be toting that around in front of all the *gasp* senior boys. Go me. In all honesty, my dad was doing the toting-around-of-the-pink-sleeping-bag, but still! I was walking in the general vicinity of it.

Once we've greeted everyone around us (mostly regulars of course) and feel all settled in, my mom and I break out the hot cocoa. I remember feeling giddy with anticipation. It was a very cold evening and any warmth would help. Yes, granted, it was cold by central California's standards, but still, it was damn cold!!! (Not quite cold enough to deserve four exclamation points, but close.)

So anyway, I'm drinking my hot cocoa from the thermos cup and notice that some of the powder hadn't dissolved all the way. Well darn it! I think to myself, rather perturbed. There are chunks in my hot cocoa! So what do I do next you ask with nervous anticipation? Why, I chew on the little bits of un-dissolved cocoa powder of course! I thought I'd help it with the dissolving process.

I swear, we finished off about half the thermos before we realized that those un-dissolved cocoa powder bits we were swallowing (and in my case: chewing) were, in fact, DEAD BUGS! Yes, that's right. DEAD BUGS!!!!! You know, the kind of tiny little bugs that grow if you leave your flour in the cupboard for too long. Flour and hot cocoa mix. I cannot even begin to convey the level of ickiness I felt upon this most ickiest of discoveries. *shudder* And I can still remember the intense desire I felt to wash my mouth out with soap, really good numbing soap that would clean out any pieces of bug that might be stuck between my teeth. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww! My mom and I rushed down to the concession stand and bought several cups of over priced, watered down soda. Anything that washed out the bug's presence would do!

I hadn't been that grossed out since... well... since the time I almost swallowed a big, huge, gross, green and red fly. Ew ew ew ew. I was really little, but the memory will stick with me forever. We were at my grandparent's old house and I picked up my mom's can of soda, thinking there would be a sip in there for me to steal. Little did I know that the can was almost empty, and presumably had been for a while because while the can sat unattended a big-ass fly had fallen inside and decided to die. And I almost swallowed it! Ew ew ew ew.

Luckily, all that happened was I felt it touch my lips. I thought to myself, ‘What the heck was that?’ then spilled the remaining contents of the soda can on the ground. I freaked out to the max when I saw that shiny, colorful fly laying all dead at my feet. Ewwwww!

And that is my very own I-once-had-an-icky-bug-in-my-mouth story/stories.

Lessons to take away from this post:

1) If you've left a soda can unattended for 5-10 minutes, before you drink from it you need to first inspect it for UFO's (Unidentified Floating Objects)

2) Don't make hot cocoa from a powder packet if you can't remember the last time you bought it. If you decide to go ahead and make it, at least check the mix for anything that doesn't belong, such as BUGS!