Yesterday morn, I awoke with an uber puffy eye. Think Quasimodo the Hunchback of Notre Dame puffy. That's right, I couldn't see s**t because my eyelid was swollen shut. You see it's warming here in NYC and with the heat come open windows. And with open windows, come the mosquitoes.
As I groped my way to the kitchen unable to see much of anything, my roommate Erin came to help me find the fridge. Marveling at my eye, she said that as a kid growing up in Kentucky, she knew her summers had started when she'd get a bug bite as big as mine. Her bites were so puffy, her older brother would laugh at her. She shuddered just thinking of it.
Though we had less mosquitoes the mountains of western North Carolina where I grew up, the altitude didn't stop them entirely. I too used to get humdinger skeeter bites and spider bites. Boy how I hated the bugs.
Now here I was, many years later in a concrete jungle, far from the "nature" which surrounded me as a child, and still getting bit by darn bugs. And with a bag of frozen pees to my eye, pissed as hell, I slowly began to smile. Man can try to dominate the earth, control it until it yells "Uncle" (we're doing a pretty good job, hello Global Warming and species extinction.) But ultimately, green will grow up through the sidewalk cracks, mold will creep along the sides of buildings, and mosquitoes will bite your eyelids. With that in mind, I left the kitchen ready to face the day with one proud eye shut. And then I ran into a door.
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