Theme Thursday...........POLKA DOTS

The Polka Dot Dance!!!

I sat in the chair holding my two year old daughter, only my toes were touching the floor. I would lift one set of toes off the ground and then the other. I was doing this non-stop. There was no way that I could stop. I looked across the room at my husband, he was holding our nine month old daughter and he just seemed oblivious as to what was going on. Did he not see them? They were everywhere. Polka Dots that were moving constantly. He just kept talking to our ex-neighbors.

We no longer lived in the Field Houses. They only contained two bedrooms, and after our youngest daughter had been born, the military had transferred us to a three bedroom four-plex on a nearby Fort. We were blessed to have moved to larger housing. I had not minded living in the Field, it was a very small group of housing units left on what had once been a small Air Force Base in the Panama Canal Zone. This was what once made us a part of a small tight knit community.

We had seen "Bill" (I cannot remember their real names) at the Commisary and he had invited us to come visit, because his wife "Lisa" had just had a new baby a few weeks before. So the following weekend was scheduled for us to come visit, and here we sat. Well I barely sat, due to the fact that I was lifting my rear end off the chair in between lifting my toes off the floor.

Lisa sat nearby me and she also acted like nothing was going on around us. Please let me clairify that we were not close to this couple. They had only moved into the Field a few months before we moved out, but they had seemed friendly enough. In between all of my movements I was trying to ask her about the newborn baby boy. She said the baby was asleep in the children's room. Their two year old daughter was running around and playing on the floor. It was as if she too did not see them on the floor.

Then I noticed the daughter was actually playing with them. I almost vomited. I just wanted to get out of their place as quickly as possible. We continued to chit chat while waiting for the baby to wake up.

Finally the baby cried, he was awake. She asked me if I wanted to come back and see the baby before she brought him out for my husband to see. I told her that would be great. I knew the sooner I saw the baby the sooner I would be able to get out of there.

We walked down the hallway and went into the bedroom. And there in the crib lay the baby. The Polka Dots were crawling on the baby and ugh, some of them were crawling around the babies mouth. He actually had bite marks from where they had been eating away at the formula left around his mouth. I almost cried and just held my daughter tighter. She had been fussing because she had wanted to get off of my lap to play with Bill and Lisa's little girl. She too did not seem to have a problem with all of them crawling around on the floor. But there was no way I was putting her down with all those Polka Dots. So we patiently waited while she changed the baby's diaper, watching her flick the Polka Dots off.

I could not pretend anymore and asked Lisa if it did not bother her that the Polka Dot's were biting the baby. She said that yes it bothered her but there was nothing she could do about it. That was such a cop out, there was always something that could be done to get rid of them. Yes, the Polka Dots ruled the country, and they were everywhere, but you could control them up to a point and keep as many out of your housing unit as possible. She thought I was crazy and said that no one could get rid of the Polka Dots. By now I knew that not everything was actually working "upstairs" with this couple.

She asked me if I wanted to go to the kitchen with her while she made the baby a new bottle. So I followed her, holding my daughter even closer. I think I almost passed out with what I saw in her kitchen. Piles and piles of dirty dishes, Polka Dots crawling all over them, feasting on all the leftovers left on each dirty dish. There were so many Polka Dots crawling around that they almost looked like a solid mass instead of Polka Dots. It was all I could do to not vomit, but then I knew if I did that the Polka Dots would just enjoy another feast. One can only take so much. I asked her why she was not washing her dishes. It was a "Cardinal Rule" amongst us down there to immediately wash any dirty dishes. This was one way to limit how many Polka Dots would come into your housing unit. She said she was too tired to wash them and there were so many that she felt overwhelmed with the thought of doing them all. I do not think she had any clean dishes in her cupboards. She asked me if I wanted something to drink, I politely declined.

By now the situation could no longer be ignored. We went back into the living room where my husband was sitting and now he was flicking the Polka Dots off of his pant legs and moving around almost as much as I had been. I could see the look in his eyes that said; "Let's get out of here ASAP!" But I could not stop myself from asking them why they were tolerating these living conditions and had they not heard of "Raid" bug spray. They said that it did not work, and now that their baby had been born, they too would soon be moved into a larger housing unit. Being the caring person that I am I explained to them that if they took the baby to the Doctors and showed the bites all over his body from the Polka Dots, that the military would quickly move them to temporary housing. They said they had never thought about that, and they would check into it.

So now my husband was up and moving towards the door and that was our cue to leave. We took one last look and could still see hundreds of Polka Dots crawling all over the walls and furniture. There could have possibly been thousands of Polka Dots there.

The Polka Dots were still trying to crawl up our legs and so we were standing there doing the Polka Dot Dance. You lift your right leg up and give it a shake, then you lift your left leg up and also give it a shake, you hop from side to side and shake your head to get the little Polka Dot buggers out of your hair, for they were also falling off the ceilings. You then circle around so your partner can take their hands and flick them on your body while checking for any stray Polka Dotters. Shivering is an optional move.

And that is how the Polka Dot Dance was invented!!!!

As a footnote, this is really a true story from when we were down in the Panama Canal Zone. The couple went to the doctors, inspectors came to their place and were shocked at what they found. The military moved them out immediately and put a tent around their housing unit with all their stuff still inside. The tent stayed on for, I think it was almost two weeks, so as to also kill any newly hatched cockroaches. We saw the couple one time at the Commisary a few months after that had happened and they said they were very happy with their new place. Their new place had a built in dishwasher. I think the housing people made a wise choice in making sure she had a dishwasher. And their place had so many cockroaches that everything inside looked like it was polka dotted, only all the polka dots moved. Just imagine all the Polka Dots in the picture above crawling everywhere and the amount of dots tripled per square foot. I pray I never have to see anything like that again for the rest of my life. We never saw that couple again.

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