I’m still shaking.

It all started the other day when I climbed into the shower and started to soap up my entire body. (Those of you who know me may turn their heads now and retch at the thought of my chubby soaped-up body. I understand.)

Then I reached for my shampoo bottle and shampooed my beard and mustache. Those of you who have hair on your head may be amused that a man with a shaved head would shampoo his beard and mustache. I happen to find it reassuring to touch my head every morning and feel hair in my hand, albeit just a puny little beard and what many woman find to be a creepy mustache.

Now, with my beard and mustache filled with soap, I reached for the conditioner. That’s when I saw it. The world’s largest water bug had been attached to the back of the conditioner container, and now he was flapping his disgusting wings and coming towards me. I heard a woman screaming: “E… E…E…EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Later I realized the woman I heard screaming was me. I have no idea how, but in less than a blink of the eye I was out of the shower. Did I fly over the shower stall? I checked the glass door of the shower to make sure I hadn’t crashed through it. It was in one piece.

I must have thrown the conditioner container—it was on the other side of the bathroom.

I watched the giant water bug drowning and doing what looked like a backstroke in the shower water.

I would swear from looking at him with his wings flapping that he had a first-class section and a coach section.

I watched the now-drowned water bug, which was way too big to go down the drain for a fitting funeral at sea. As I walked out, I told my wonderful housekeeper Rene about my terrible experience.

Rene, who has something nice to say about everyone, just shook her head and said, “You are such a coward.”

I thought of the last time a little critter frightened me this much was years ago in my home in New York City. I was in my bedroom stretched out in bed wearing only a pair of orange boxer shorts—not a pretty sight. It was a Sunday morning. My wife, the beautiful Judy Licht, had gone out for an hour and left me with explicit instructions to be dressed and ready to go out for brunch when she came home.

Now I turned on the bed to face the open bedroom door and a streak went out into the hallway and disappeared into a bunch of bags Judy had left strewn all over the hallway.

“What is that?” I wondered.

Then from between two bags it emerged. A mouse. “AHHHHHH!!!” I screamed. Say “mouse” to me and I’m able to jump onto a 10-foot-high table like they do in all those cartoons. The mouse, only 20 feet away, was just sitting on the hallway carpet and I swear it was staring at me.

This is tough to admit, but at that point the mouse stared me down. I averted my eyes. I was no match for him. From 20 feet away he could smell my fear. I have no doubt that establishing mastery over a fat guy wearing orange shorts is a very macho thing in his mouse world, and I’ll bet he was enjoying watching me back down.

“AHHHHHH,” I screamed again.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. Slowly I crawled on the bed to the phone and called on the intercom to my son J.T., who was upstairs in his bed, in his shorts.

“J.T.,” I whispered. “There’s a mouse down here.”

“Ahhhhhh,” he said. “That’s disgusting.”

“The ‘chicken’ apple doesn’t fall far from the ‘chicken’ tree,” I thought with a sense of pride.

Judy came home, took one look at me and said, “You’re not dressed!”

“Good call, Sherlock! There’s a mouse in the hall—I’m afraid of it.”

Let me put it this way: Of all the un-romantic things a man could tell a woman, admitting a fear of a mouse is at the top of the list. I would imagine it would take between five and 10 years for a woman to see a man as a romantic sexual hero after he admits to fearing a mouse.

“Where is he? I’ll get him,” Judy said in a macho way that really irritated me. “How … how … how … can you be such a wimp?” she snarled, looking for the mouse, which had disappeared. That’s when I drew myself to my full six-foot height and mustered as much dignity as a man wearing only orange shorts could muster and I said, “You listen here, it takes a real man to admit he’s afraid of a mouse.”

Let me add water bugs are now right up there with mice as things that I’m afraid of. Whether it’s a giant water bug or a small mouse, that “real man” stuff is overrated.