My parents are visiting. They're getting on pretty well with The Boyfriend, which is good, but it is a bit distressing how people can bond by telling embarrassing stories about the person who serves as their mutual connection.

This morning, The Boyfriend asked my mother, "Has he always been such a princess?" To my dismay, my mother nodded her head and said, "Yup."

And then last night, The Boyfriend was treated to The Bat Story. When I was younger, my parents moved into a big, old, falling-down house (they wanted to experience the joy of do-it-yourself renovation) that was built around the turn of the century. The roof was in particularly poor repair and all sorts of critters - squirrels, starlings, and even bats - would get in through the eaves and nest in the attic. My bedroom was on the third floor of the house, which was a later addition carved out of the attic. It was kind of cool to have sloping wall/ceilings and definitely cool to be the only person in the family sleeping on the floor; but the disadvantage was that I was the first contact for any of these attic-dwelling critters that got lost on its way to the outside.

One night when I was thirteen, I was awakened at about five in the morning by strange thumps and crashes and loud metallic clicking sounds. I turned on the light and saw one of my parents' cats sitting on the floor, lashing its tail and staring intently into space. Suddenly, a flapping black blur flew through the air - the cat leapt up and swung frantically at it, crashing into as it fell back to the floor. Each time the cat lunged, the bat issued a strange metallic chittering in protest. I think I probably squealed in terror, but if I did, it was so high that only the bat noticed.

I shooed the cat out of the room and turned on all the lights (under the assumption that the bat would think it was daytime and go to sleep). I sat up in my bed, wedged into the corner of the room, clutching a bed sheet. Every time the bat approached my corner of the room, I'd shut my eyes, turn my face away, and frantically wave the sheet in the air (I was such a butch child). Eventually the bat (which was probably exausted from its time as a cat toy) did indeed settle down and perch hanging from a doorframe. When my father finally got up for work at about six, I went to him to take care of the scary bat for me.

This ended up happening about once a year throughout my teen years. It did eventually become routine enough that I could evict the bat all by myself (the secret: put an empty margarine tub over it after it's settled down and slip the lid underneath), but I really was a scaredy-cat that first time.