Insects and Internets

It’s an Internet world I live in. I pay my bills, plan my trips and find out all of my most interesting tidbits here. I basically have no other input source, as I rarely watch TV or listen to the FM radio and I haven’t read a newspaper since I was last on the job search. I have the Internet on my lap when I’m at home, it’s my workspace when I’m playing, and running through my phone all of the other times. I’ve even fallen in love here…

But the Internet is just intangible. That’s all it is. Provided, it’s a whole lot of intangibles all conveniently placed in seemingly one spot that can be accessed from nearly everywhere I go, but still, the only thing I ever feel are the cold clackety keys under my fingers as they make plasticy noises back at me as I tried to manipulate my way through it all.

It’s summertime, almost, the snow is gone and the green is plush. A host of crickets plays me out of work and one lone cricketeer in my basement keeps me company while washing clothes. He plays me the sweetest song, every time, and I know he’s exactly where I am, inside on a gorgeous summer day. I wonder why he doesn’t just hop himself up out of the heating duct he plays from and join his outsider friends.

Maybe he has none. Maybe he’s a cricket from Chautauqua County who spent his life playing with grasshoppers but moved here to Erie for a more lucrative business opportunity and hasn’t been able to find time or the drive to go out and hook up with some fellow cricketeers. Maybe he has no idea how to associate with them. It’s hard for a cricket to find new friends when he was so attached to the ones he had before.

Or maybe he’s just lost the will to go outside. Perhaps he’s responsible for some younger crickets or maybe he’s adopted some larvae and now he sits in the warmth of the heating duct tending to them, because if he doesn’t, who will? A cricket shouldn’t just make more crickets and then run off to live his own life, now should he?

Or maybe the warmth of the heating duct is precisely what’s keeping him there. For all I know he may have no idea that it’s summertime, only remembering how bitter the outside world in winter is and after finding this cozy warm spot, he’s tucked himself in as tight as possible and doesn’t dare brave leaving it.

Whatever the crickets reasons, I hope he finds a way to get out there soon. At least before he grows too big to fit between the vent cracks anymore and he’s forced to live out the rest of his life there in that tinny cage.

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