The Great Worm Rescue

Hello again!

A post so soon Brian?

I know, right? I want to change my habits to blog often--for two reasons

1) I like it, I don't know where it will go when I start
and
2) It gets me writing everyday, and thinking about writing everyday
and
3) I made a new years resolution to write everyday that I failed at. (pretend above it says three reasons instead of two reasons)

I meant to write yesterday but I didn't and I felt guilty about it, which is why I am on here now.

brb espresso.

Back. I think espresso was invented by gods. I have no proof, but you can't prove I'm wrong...so...ha!

So lets see I wanted to tell you something what was it...

Yesterday at work I was checking the air on a customer's tires and while I was crouched down by the right rear tire I could see inside the fender well and I saw an earthworm wriggling. It was badly damaged. It must have been driven over, crushed, picked up by the tire and flung into the fender well where it writhed in agony. A memory came then, I couldn't help it.

I was standing in the street by my first home in Gardena (25 mins from Pasadena) California, I must have been five years old or something. It had just rained and the sidewalk was covered in earthworms that had struggled to get out of the ground. The kids of the neighborhood would gather all the worms up and give them to the big kid Allen who was probably 16 or so and he would double dog dare us to eat one from a big mayonnaise jar. I never did. But I helped gather them up. I don't know what he did with them.

That was back story. Here is the memory:

I was gathering the earth worms up because I had just learned from Moms that earthworms were good for her garden, and they didn't breathe water (I had in the past deliberately put them in the water flowing by the curb because I thought I was helping them, saving them, that they needed water) they breathed air.

I spent that whole day gathering up all the earth worms from the water by the curb, the sidewalk and everywhere I could find them that they might get squashed. I carried them back to Moms and she showed me where to place them in her garden--the garden plots were mostly protected from the rain--The worms burrowed into the dry soil quickly. Her plants turned out great that year.

There is a lot in a memory, you know? I had to explain it before I could show it to you. Now that you know all this, let me show you the memory: I'm looking up from all the wriggling brown and gray worms in my hands to look down the street during an overcast day and thinking about how much time I have before they die, whether I can save them all or not.

Can you see them? Criss-crossing one another in my hand, some of them wriggling free and leaping from the pile only to be caught by my other hand and put on top of the worm pile. Can you see them? Their segmented bodies stretching and scrunching, their little hearts (we called it the turtle-neck-part) pumping blood down a long vein down their length.

That's the memory. And it had an emotional ....thing to it... aspect, flavor whatever. I felt guilt. Guilt for my ignorance. I thought I was helping them. I really wanted to help them, to do good and in so doing I doomed them. I learned even then that the lust to do good for others, no matter how small or insignificant, could harm them if I was ignorant.

Maybe that is why I hate not knowing things. Maybe that is just how I am, and the earthworms are my first memory of it. Memory...

Memories aren't just pictures, but imprints on your senses. I can smell that day. Feel the worms wriggling in my hands, their pointed ends probing my palms for fresh earth to burrow into, how it tickled. The pungent smell of hundreds of dead worms run over by cars and rotting in the street carried on the breeze into my face. The feel of a worm rescued too late, that limp, soggy, lifeless feeling that made me sad. If only I was a little faster I thought to myself.

And then the auto inflator beeped to let me know 32 psi had been achieved in the right rear tire. It stopped the memory. The memory probably went on for a second. There is a lot in a second of a memory. I could tell you more even, a lot more.

My younger brother was in tow behind me doing what I did. He didn't ask questions, he understood that this was important work and helped. When the other neighborhood kids came out to ask us what we were doing my younger brother explained to them (he explains things a lot, he is really smart) that the earthworms breathe through their skin, and they breath air, not water and they can regenerate from incredible wounds (all of which had been learned from dad and an earthworm book the night before) and "we have to save them!" We had the whole street being combed by seven kids or so rescuing worms.

After the memory I felt a tickle in my hand and looked down to see no worms in it. I looked at that wriggling worm (I like that word wriggling. I rarely get to use it.) in the fender well. I plucked it from the fender wells fibrous coating and closed my hand around it so the customer couldn't see. Then I walked over to her and talked about the tire pressures being almost perfect, and how much longer the tires should last her, how often she should come back to get them checked for balance, rotation and air, etc the whole time that worm was probing for dry soil in my gloved hand. I could barely feel it. It tickled and I had to repress a smile. I told her to have a nice day. As she drove away I ran behind the store to a big leafy pile of compost that is back there and dropped the worm in it. It probed the leafy dirt like a searching tentacle. It slithered under a leaf, and started digging in the soil.

If I could be silently observed from afar this is what someone would have seen:

"He bent down to attach the air hose to the valve stem and looked at the tire and inside the fender well. The auto-inflator beeped about a second later. He looked at his right hand and plucked an earthworm from the fender well and closed his hand around it. He talked to the customer. After she left he ran behind the building and dropped it on a mound of leafy dirt. He watched it for a second before returning to work."

I could make some sort of pitch for skepticism, ignorance and organizing people to do good here, by simply giving this piece the title of something like, "The trouble with Activism" or "Activists at a young age" or "How activism should look" or "How to help those less fortunate than you." But my intent was not to pitch anything, or attach a moral to the story, but to share a memory I had, so you could reminisce with me.