Tonight, there is a fly in our house.
I …. .. am fairly certain… it may be the progeny of Satan himself. Or… at the very least… a distant relative of Mariah Carey. This insect is not only sly, he is sinister and malicious. In the entirety of this large house, that little wretch insists on badgering us to no end. I have retrieved the flyswatter. There may be an end in his near future.
Remarkably enough, as I sat down to write this evening, I check my news feeds. One of the top scientific stories for the day is about insects.
Those people who do studies have surmised this. They say… no amount of housecleaning will turn your home into a bug-free oasis. Well, I think most of us could have come up with that one on our own.
But they continue. More than 600 types of insects, spiders and centipedes live in most American homes. They went around and collected dust samples… from 700 different homes across the country. Then, they analyzed bug DNA in those dust samples.
I can hear it now. Ding. Dong. (A few moments pass.) “Honey. Who was at the door?” “Oh, it was some guy named Randall. He was collecting bug dust.” “Did you give him some of the big dust bunnies from under the bed?” “Nah. I just swabbed a little from the corner of the kitchen.”
Another night in America.
From the article: “That’s an incredible range of diversity from just a tiny swab of house dust,” said study author Anne Madden, a postdoctoral researcher at North Carolina State University. The investigators did find a greater diversity of bugs in rural homes, those with basements and those with cats or dogs. “Greater diversity does not necessarily mean greater abundance.”
There you have it.
If I swat the fly… I am going to put him in a little envelope, and mail him to Miss Madden down at NCSU. And I’ll write her a little note about my theory concerning his lineage.
Now… that would be something to study.
But the fact of the matter is…. I’m probably wrong about the Satan thing. That little fly could be near-sighted, or maybe he is just a crappy flyer. It could be that he has arthritis of the wings. What if he is just distracted? Maybe one of his 600 offspring is going off to college… or something. Who knows why he keeps dive bombing me.
We can’t know.
He’s probably just having a thing. It is true about people too. Sometimes… the people in our life might seem a little distant, or lopsided, or angry, or even…. annoying. They probably aren’t the son of Satan, or even trying to send us a message.
Maybe they are just going through a thing. And. We all have our things… from time to time. I know I do.
If we can just remember that we are all in this together. We might do well…. to be a little slower to grab the swatter. Instead, we could try opening a door… and giving them a little more room to fly.
…. … ……
Okay. Here’s the thing. Forget the last part I just wrote. That little Beast-Boy just buzzed me again. Right now. This house ain’t big enough for the two of us.
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
― C.G. Jung
“Sometimes it takes a good fall to really know where you stand”
― Hayley Williams
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one…just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald