Parasitaphobia

A bed bug scare at my sister's school has made her paranoid and given her a crippling fear that bed bugs are in her room. She claims her bed is infested with bed bugs and other gross bugs and forced my mom to wash her sheets, vacuum her room, and inspect her mattress thoroughly for any signs of these bugs.

There was nothing.

The funniest part is to get my mom to do all this, she threatened to sleep in the bathtub. And she was serious. Until I told her about how spiders like to fall in there and can't get out. She said she didn't believe me, but still added, "well, I'll find somewhere else to sleep then!"

Halloween just passed, and one of my friends left a fake moustache at my house. I decided to leave it on Amy's pillow for her to find before she went to bed that night. To me, it looked like a furry caterpillar.

I found it later that Amy thought the same thing. She told me she thought it was a worm and stared at it for a few minutes, but didn't see it move. Still not sure, she went up close and blew on it, but still nothing. Carefully, she poked it quickly and it flipped over to reveal the sticky padded backside.

Realizing that it wasn't a worm, she decided to be clever and try to scare my mom with it. (I had told my mom prior to this about my plan to ensure my mom wasn't grossed out in case Amy complained to her). Amy threw the moustache on my mom and said something like, "Mom! There's a worm!"

My mom saw it, recognized it, and quickly said, "Oh, ok," then proceeded to put the moustache on. Amy, however, thought she was going to eat it and stood there dumbfounded until she realized she had gotten tricked twice.