Blog Number 406

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

All God's Creatures Great and Small, Created Equal One and All!

So says the text on the side of a little bug cage shaped like a mailbox that my daughter made / decorated in church today.  Like most crafts that she makes on Sunday's, it did not make it all the way home without a little damage but it remained pretty much in tact.  She commented that she might catch butterflies or maybe lightning bugs and place them in this little cage.  We admired it and then we moved on.

Fast forward until tonight.  After watch the first 2 episodes of season one of The Muppet Show (that I got off of ebay for $15.01 shipped) we had about an hour until the kid's bedtime.  We decided to play a little Uno to finish the weekend.  About 4 hands in, the wife noticed a small bug crawling across the table and then quickly flicked it with her finger.  The bug did not go far however as it hit the above bug catcher with a thud.  The daughter (not a big fans of bugs in general) was watching this event with great interest.  The bug catcher was closest to her actually.  The wife suggested that the daughter use her craft for its intended purpose.  With almost no time elapsing, the daughter picked up the craft and stated emphatically, "No, let's use it to kill it!"  Crunch, one of God's Creatures (equal one and all) was dead.

It took us some time to stop laughing (the wife and I at the cruel irony of it all and the kids just laughing at us laughing).  When we were able to speak again, the wife reminded me of another recent incident with a bug only this time inside of our van.  I was driving (somewhere, I don't remember where) and there was a lightning bug in the car.  These things are quite harmless and don't even dart around a lot so they are not even annoying.  Anyway, the wife caught the bug and then rolled down the window and shooed the bug outside.  She thought she was doing a good deed and had we not been going 55 mph I would have agreed with her.  I pointed out that going from 0 to 55 in 0.0 seconds was probably a little beyond the design of this poor bug's wings.  To top it all off, in less than a minute we were stopped at a stop light (where she could have let the bug out safe and sound).

After retelling this story to the kids it was again a few minutes before we could speak coherently again.  Tears were wiped away from laughing until we cried and we moved on with our game of Uno (I lost).  As I mark off this day on the calendar hanging on the wall next to my computer I say goodbye to my 30's.  They say you are only as old as you feel and I think I still feel 14.  I think my mirror is a liar (a convincing liar but a liar nonetheless).  No, I am still that young teenager that likes 80's hair band metal and pop, that likes playing Dig Dug, Pac Man, Donkey Kong and all those great games, still that kid that thinks it would be cool to spend the night at a friend's house and order pizza and stay up until 3 am playing Atari Bowling, in short, I am still the same person that I was 25 or so years ago only (hopefully) a little wiser and more grateful for what he has.  So I am not shedding a tear for the passing of this decade of my life and I am just going to end this night like any normal night (with a blog and a little quiet time with the wife after the kids go to bed).  See ya on the other side...

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon