A couple FFF firsts today. First, a story written in first person. Second, an autobiographical story. Something that happened this afternoon. Bear in mind that both the event and the writing about it were first preceded by only two hours of sleep followed by a flight across country.
PASSENGER
I felt a tickle on my hand and held it up to see a tiny black ant making its way through the almost invisible hairs on the back of my finger. I caught it with the thumb and forefinger of my other hand, grasping it tight enough that it couldn’t escape but light enough so as not to smash it. My first instinct was to roll down the car door and throw it out, but we were on the inner lane of a street awash in traffic and it would surely be ground under a tire out there. I knew in a few moments we would be turning onto a smaller residential street, so I determined to hold onto it until then, where it would be safer.
I realized the ant must have gotten into the car somehow when we were at my mother-in-law’s. There were tiny ants like this all over the place in her driveway area and on the nearby plants.
On the heels of this realization came another one: that preserving the ant’s life could be a cruelty in itself. Ants are members of a body, part of a whole. An ant without its colony would not function well for long, and ants were in fact quite territorial and would kill other ants of the exact same species if they came from another colony. To release it here, miles across town, would be to ensure it would never find its colony again. Never belong again.
I was probably over-anthropomorphizing. I have a tendency to do that. When I was young I used to feel guilty about eating my Cheerios because I thought I was killing them. My mom circumvented this problem by convincing me being eaten fulfilled the Cheerios’ destiny, that it was all they wanted. After that, I made sure no box made it to the trash with an uneaten Cheerio in it.
But over-anthropomorphizing or not, I felt sad. When we turned onto the quieter street, I stuck my finger out the window and blew him off.
I once read that if you took all the ants on Earth and placed them on one side of a scale, and you placed all of humanity on the other, that the ants would weigh more. That’s how many of them there are on this planet. I rarely think about any of them. But for a little while this afternoon I thought about one, and tried to protect it in my own clumsy way.
I wonder where the ant is right now. I wonder what it’s doing, where it’s going. I wonder how long it will live.
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Dear Caleb - You found him! You found Harold! If I’d only known. He’s been missing from the ant colony since Thursday and his fellow ants and I have been quite concerned about him. I must have unknowingly driven away with him when I went to the hair salon. I’ve told them how dangerous it is to get in my car, but Harold has an independent streak that’s worried all of us for some time. When he didn’t answer roll call yesterday morning, a flurry of tiny gasps emanated from my patio, driveway and planters. Perhaps we’ll send out a search party. Do you remember exactly where was it you “blew him off”?
Your worried mother-in-law, who loves you no matter what.
[...] Originally posted 9/7/07 [...]