Walking Ben to school in a downpour (or, in Ben's lingo, a pourdown) this morning, I discovered the sidewalk was adorned with stretching and squirming earthworms flushed out of the mud. How many might I have squished before I realized they were there? Poor worms. Once I saw them, I was careful to step around them, clearing my worm karma à la "My Name Is Earl." You see, when I was 4 or 5 years old, I once collected worms on a rainy day. I plucked the worms out of their puddly milieu and put them in the pocket of my raincoat. And what a raincoat it was! A clear vinyl shell showing the fabric liner with pretty pink flowers. I do not recall whether the pockets were clear and revealed their contents to the casual observer, or if my mother had to wait for the smell of dried-up worms to waft out of the jacket before she knew there was some cleaning to do.
Worm karma? Worma.
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5 comments:
Man... I guess I owe a few worms a steak dinner...
Sounds like the perfect day to go fishing!
There's something about worms that is so humble and unassuming. They inspire me to compassion, too. I remember trying to save as many as I could on my way to school (but just moving them out of the street, not pocketing them -- that's kind of icky). So I think my worma is ok.
I was thinking about the worms of my childhood this morning too as I sidestepped many worms. In what was probably my first foray into science a friend and I conducted many experiments trying to determine the ideal living conditions for a worm. The conclusion-leave 'em in the dirt. Everything we tried to 'improve' it with, killed 'em. My worm karma may need some work...
Variation on a theme: cousins and sister collected scores of sea cucumbers and put them all in tidal pools, then left. As the tide went out, the poor things would have dried up and died, so I went around trying to restore them all back to the freedom of the ocean. Sea cucumbers get pretty darn gross after the 10th, 11th, etc. Plus they squirt when you pick them up and you never know if they'll get you or not!
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