Immigrant Song

I feel bad. I feel like an asshole. I am an asshole a lot of the time, although I don't proudly wear my asshole badge like a narcissist. Instead, I get a new asshole tattoo on my conscious and try to not be another asshole or a bigger asshole the next time. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

I hate earwigs. I find them repulsive. I'm convinced that H.R. Giger modeled the Xenomorph after an earwig. They look terrifying, with their shiny black exoskeletons and pincers. Also, when I was an adolescent, I stayed with my family at my grandmother's one summer and the place was infested with them. One dropped from the ceiling into my hair while I was in bed, and ever since the sight of an earwig gives me goosebumps and an urge to eliminate the earwig from my environment. With extreme prejudice.

Earwigs, even though their weird name conjures fear, at least in me, are pretty chill insects. They tend to hide in the dark and stay out of the way for the most part. They're not wasps, which are the winged sociopaths of the insect kingdom (and which physically pose a threat to me, because I'm allergic to them). Earwigs are just scary-looking dudes.

Which is why I feel so bad for killing two earwigs today.

I have the same morning routine: wake up, smoke a square, hopefully deliver the mail, shower, get dressed, head to work.

But while I was sitting on the toilet this morning, square newly lit, I saw an earwig and had a conversation with myself:

One might mean there are more. Kill him and hope there aren't any more.I took a mop and mashed the bug into the corner of the shower until I was sure it was dead.

Then I sat back down on the toilet to finish smoking my morning cigarette.

But the earwig moved again. And again. It appeared to have overcome my assault. It writhed from the corner from whence I had intended to crush it, and it started to climb up the wall tile.

I was reminded of my Dachshund, Reggie, another long, diminutive creature, and I started rooting for this insect which I had tried to kill. It was making its way up the wall again, and I felt so terrible for trying to murder such a tenacious guy! I wanted this earwig to live!

Then my alarm went off and I had to go to work and I turned the shower on and flushed the earwig down the drain.

And when I came home after work, there was another earwig. A smaller one. I mushed it with a paper towel and flushed it down the toilet.

I feel bad.

Going to binge watch Fringe on Netflix.