This is Rose, a friend of 'Simkaye', speaking. I'm not sure if I've maybe reviewed on your stories...? Probably not. Anyways, I'm just posting this for 'Simkaye', because she asked me to. I just fixed it up, checking her grammar and such. Just note that in the beginning and end, the italics of the author's notes are me speaking, and the font that is not is what 'Simkaye' wrote in advance. Well... enjoy.

Hi Everyone! A funny oneshot I made with Rose based on something hilarious that happened to my mom when she was in college. She told me this story a few days ago when I wasn't feeling well and had to stay in bed. Even though I was kind of feeling down and sick, she made me laugh, and I hope that you guys do too!

Chippettes don't belong to me, and neither does Miss Miller. (But I want them to be...)
*Takes Miss Miller and the Chippettes home with her*

I've heard that for some people, becoming an adult is something that happens gradually, imperceptibly, over time. Others, like me, have one defining moment when adulthood smacks us upside the head and says, "This is it!"

It happened to me while I was away at college. Being a sophomore. I'd already had more than a year's worth of practice at doing my own laundry, paying my own phone bills, and dragging myself out of bed to get to my 8:30 A.M. classes on time. All in all, I felt pretty grown up and responsible, as if I knew what it meant to be an adult. That was before the moth fiasco.

My roommate and I had noticed our dorm room was being shared by a sprinkling of tiny, pale moths, each no more than a centimeter long. It seemed there were always one or two little moths fluttering around the room, and while in the beginning, I thought their presence was sort of quaint, it soon became annoying. I found myself smashing a lot of little moths with my textbooks. Heartless, perhaps, but it's hard to study with bugs whizzing by your nose.

One day, after my roommate had gone to class and I was trying to study at my desk, I noticed a moth that had been rude enough to invite at least four of its friends to my room without asking. Exasperated, I got up to see if I could find a crack in the wall or some other place where the moths might be finding their way into the room. I wandered around, checking in back of furniture, studying window ledges, and finally, opening my desk drawers.

When I yanked open the bottom drawers, I discovered the kind of horror that would give anyone nightmares. There, nestled inside what had once been a fresh-from-the-tree, whole coconut – yes, I said coconut – was a colony of squirming moth larvae. Dozens of slimy-looking, worm-like creatures oozed out of cracks in the coconut from all directions. They writhed beside moths in various stages of metamorphosis, from semi-shelled pupae that looked like greasy pill capsules to sticky-winged juvenile moths coated in films of mucus. As the larvae wiggled through the layers of slime, and the larger moths crawled past them, I stood horrified.

Vaguely, I remembered Miss Miller sending me the coconut and some plastic leis with the suggestion that I host a beach party in my dorm room. Thinking that the idea was cute but too lazy to follow through, I had tossed the coconut in my drawer and forgotten about it. Big mistake.

A mucus-coated moth gained its strength, fluttering out of the drawer toward my face. Have you ever had a nightmare where you couldn't scream? This was like that. I was so freaked out I could hardly move, let alone scream. I staggered backward and tried not to hyperventilate.

I had to get this thing out of my room and fast, but there was no one there to help me. No parents, no authority figures, not even my roommate. Why did this have to be me? If it were anyone else, it wouldn't have been a problem. Eleanor would shake her head and throw it out the window, cursing under her breath. Jeanette would probably find it so "Fascinating!" and so "Interesting!" and that she would just "have to show it to Simon!" She would probably have some rubber gloves or something to pick it up and take it with her. Too bad I didn't.

My first urge was to leave the dorm until I could locate the nearest adult, drag the person into my room, point at the mass of wriggling slime, and scream, but the scary truth was that I was going to have to handle this by myself.

I stood there panting, my eyes glazed. There was an extra-large garbage can in the community area of my dorm floor, but getting the 'hive' from my room to the garbage can was going to require picking the thing up and taking it all the way down the hall and through the lobby.

I can do this, I thought. I have to do this. A mantra formed in my mind, and I said it out loud. "I'm mature, I'm an adult, I can handle this. I had to actually hear the words to make them real. "I'm mature, I'm an adult, I can handle this," I repeated as I walked to my door and propped it open in preparation for the sprint I was about to make. "I'm mature, I'm an adult, I can handle this," I repeated as I crouched close to the colony of writhing worms. I put my hands near either side of the coconut and managed to pick it up with only my ten long fingernails touching its decaying shell. My breathing was quick and panicky. I whimpered as I peeled the coconut away from the pool of sticky bug-and-fruit goo coating my desk drawer.

I stood up and held the thing at arm's length, trying to avoid the larvae crawling near my fingers and the tiny moths flitting around my face.

"I'm mature, I'm an adult, I can handle this!" I practically yelled as I ran out my door and down the hall. "I'm mature, I'm an adult, I can handle this!"

I was lucky that day: No one saw the crazy girl sprinting down the hall toward the garbage can, yelling, "I'm mature, I'm an adult, I can handle this!" and waving around a coconut full of larvae. No one herd her screech, "I'm mature, I'm an adult, I can handle this!" as she threw the ball of bugs into the garbage can like it was a glob of molten lava. No one listened to her mumble, "I'm mature, I'm an adult, I can handle this," as she used wet paper towels to scrape a layer of slime from her desk drawer.

That, however, was the point. I'd done it myself.

The experience taught me more than just to never leave a fresh coconut unattended. Taking on that swarm of squirming and crawling and flying bugs by myself – and living through it – made me realize that maybe I was mature. Maybe I was an adult. Most important, whatever it was, maybe I could handle it. I'm not saying that nothing ever scared me again, but when you've delt with something that gross, the rest of life's little emergencies tend to fall into a very comforting perspective.

Hope you liked it! It was short, but funny, right? At least a little... More gross. :'D
Well, review, please! No flames, please, though!

-Simkaye

I have nothing else to say, but I hope you liked it as well.