Julius vs. Nature

So as I’m sitting here in my new southeast Iowa home preparing to write out a “mini-story,” and I see this flying bug. At first I was just like “oh well,” according to Joe and Terry, “this is the only place to live worse than Africa…you just gotta learn to live with that shit.” As I examined the bug more closely, I saw that it was black and yellow, which in my mind is never good if that bad boy is flyin’. I’m like “it’s either a wasp or a yellow jacket…one way or the other, he’s gotta go.” So in a mild panic, I casually but jittery-bodied and minded grab my backpack by the top handle with all five of my fingers flexed to almost the point of being cramped; and I swing the weapon I’m wielding in a flurry probably four good times over the wingspan of the current threat to intellectual security, and the square foot of cement surrounding what I’d hoped to be its corpse…

But rigor mortis had not set in quite yet! This beast is crawlin’ around like a boxer that had taken a few measly jabs to the nose. “Frick!” I thought I was panicking before…?? I’m not a vibrator on full throttle! Not only can he walk, but he/she is in flight! So now I’m lookin’ around to see if there is anything I can defend myself with…first things first; “a slap to the ground for you,” “Whop!” I slap the invader so hard his imprint could’ve been left on my hand after knocking him to the ground. Okay, he’s back on the ground, and I’m armed with an ink-pen, and only an ink-pen…Talk about not taking a knife into a gun-fight. Just something to keep in mind; I keep looking over at this fallen warrior to see if he is still slain, and that song “I Can See Clearly Now” is playing in the background, and the most massaging of breezes is blowing over my neck and shoulders.

My next hope is my “Diet Pepsi” soda bottle, which is tiny. I decide not to kill him, but to simply trap him and eliminate the threat so I can get on with my “metaphoring.” So I put the bottle on top of the critter…the end, right? Nope. No sooner than I begin to turn my head and focus back to my notebook, I see him begin to make the escape from Chateau Diet Pepsi. I throw him back in jail immediately, and he makes his way out before I can unlock the cell…and then it hits me; the notebook!! The joy in finding my Excalibur almost made me forget to slay the dragon. “Whop! Whop! Whop! Whop!” When I looked and beheld, I felt both pity and relief…and then despair.

I remembered back to a science lesson I heard in the hood, or the ghetto that embodied my high school, that if you kill one of those, his boys smell his scent and they come to defend his honor. That’s as far as I’m gonna get…