Chirky

From the time I was seven years old, I lived in the country. My friends always
called our house "the farm" because it sat on about twenty acres of land, though
we didn't have any chickens, cattle, pigs, or even a garden.

I take that back: we did have a garden, albeit it small. I remember the long
hours I spent weeding in it (by force of a mother who was trying to teach me
"responsibility"), running through the corn stalks, and snapping off sugar peas
to eat. Oddly enough, I now love to weed – it's relaxing to me; however, I can't
keep a plant alive to save my life. Good thing I have Roger around…he always
remembers to water them for me.

When we first moved into our house, it had been vacant for several months. The
earth had "taken over" our house, and we would frequently find scorpions
crawling through our brown, orange, and cream shag carpet. Yes, orange.

Being in the country, we made games out of many things that others would find …
abnormal. For example, we would sit on the stairs, or on a chair, and see who
could find a scorpion first. I usually always found them, because I have an
innate disdain for creepy crawling things. I would focus my attention on one
small section of carpet, make sure nothing was moving within it, and then
continue to stare at it until I saw something move out of my peripheral vision.

Since the scorpions were brown, and they blended in with the carpet, I regarded
my ability as a special talent. I would easily list it on my resume if I
actually thought it would get me somewhere.

I would scream for mom, or dad, whoever was closest, to retrieve the scorpion
and dispose of it immediately. They would, which included the death of the
despicable creature, and I would go back to playing my game. I generally didn't
find more than one when I played, but it was always a fun distraction for me.

Though it has been nearly twenty years since I played this game, I still have
the eye of an eagle. I can find a miniscule bug without ever looking for it,
even chiggers crawling on my skin. And if you know the size of a chigger (about
the size of a period), and that it blends in with your skin, you know that I've
got a great eye for bugs.

Consequently, this is the reason that Roger is unable to lightly touch my arms,
what he calls "caressing," without me swatting his fingers away. To me, it feels
like a bug crawling around on my arm. Maybe next time I should just douse his
hand with 100% DEET.