“Mom, WHAT’S THAT?”
I looked over my left shoulder from my position at the dinner table. I arched my eyebrows quizzically at Josh. I followed his right arm, outstretched toward a point on the crumb-laden pattern on the travertine.
I blinked and realized my glasses were on the island. And even if they were on my head, they were probably smudged so bad from little fingerprints that I’d be better off looking through a coke bottle smeared with vaseline.
I looked hard at the ground; searching for what concerned my firstborn. I mean, what was I supposed to see? I saw the crumbs… completely unremarkable. The floor looked like that on every day ending in “Y.”
And then I spotted it. A tiny moving thing.
The boys bolted out of their seats. And I knew that any chiding from mom about “sit in your seats and eat your dinner” would not make a hill of beans difference at that point.
They all crowded around the little black dot.
“MOM!,” Josh exclaimed with delight. “It’s a tiny beetle!”
“GAH!,” proclaimed Sammy with absolute relief. “I WAS LOOKING FOR THAT!!!!”
He picked up the little beetle, grabbed a small shell from our kitchen island and gently put the little beetle inside. Then returned to the table.
Like you, I have so many questions.
- How long has the beetle been here?
- Is Sammy charging the beetle rent? Because if so he is subletting space for which he, himself does not own. And I need my cut of that.
- Is the beetle actually renting the shell from another animal who went on vacation?
- Has the beetle been displaced by this crazy housing market?
- Maybe the beetle would like something bigger but this is all he can afford at the moment.
- The beetle down the street has a Tesla. Maybe this beetle has his priorities firmly rooted in appreciating assets and is saving for more square footage to find the beetle of his dreams and start a little beetle family.
Dear little beetle. I know you have hopes and dreams too. And they probably didn’t involve three faces staring down at you from your path of wandering the veins in the travertine and squealing with little beetle-y delight every time you came across a wayward crumb.
Thank you for entertaining us during dinner and you can stay as long as you want. Take your plate in when you’re finished, flush the toilet when you go and run like mad when those boys sit down. I won’t tell you what has happened to their other “pets….,” but the stories generally don’t end with “Happily Ever After.”
Love, Mom
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An American humorist, writer and author. When boiling down the chicken soup of life, she finds those golden, fried nuggets of truth & writes them long after the kids go to bed.
