Once upon a time, when Papa was just a little boy,
his family moved from the sea-side city of Huntington Beach all the way out into the too-dry desert of the Antelope Valley, the hardly-a-small-city of Lancaster, and a sublet of Lancaster, hardly-a-small-town of Quartz Hill. Grandpa and Grandma Medvee had moved there first, and Dougie's family was following, and they'd live only one small mile away from the grandparents. At four years of age, moving from the congested city to the far-flung country isn't bad at all, it is a wonderful adventure. Everything is new.
Especially the ants. In the city, the only specimen a poor boy child could ever find were these tiny shriveled red ant things you needed a magnifying glass to see (and they gave horrible bites). But out here in the country the ants were bloated huge, and black. These black ants had to be ten times the size of the red ants in the city. And there were red ants, too, only not the microscopic kind found back in the city. These red ants were truly scary. If the black ants could be compared to black bears, then the country red ants would have to be compared to Grizzly bears.The red ants were mean. And you could almost see them smile when they bit you. They seemed to like biting children almost as much as they liked to bite the black ants in half.The black ants were nice. Kind of like how black bears are nice in comparison to grizzly bears.And the red ants and black ants were constantly in a state of war. They travel miles and miles to fight each other. That would be miles in ant speak. In the measurement of humans, their nests might be sometimes ten feet apart. But no distance was too great to keep them from slugging it out, they just did not buy into this whole diversity thing, which hadn't yet been invented back in the 1960s. Ants just don't know how to get along, and they work at it, not getting along, pretty much the same way people do (or don't).Dougie, at four years of age, figured it out fairly quickly, the whole lay of the land and the niceties and meanities of ants. It doesn't take a four-year-old long to figure out that red ants pack a wallop in their massive jaws, and that black ants don't bite, even if you demand that they do sink their jaws in, their little jaws just don't seem to be into the endeavor, they just find absolutely no joy in fighting, they prefer peace to the administration of bites (even in ant wars, they never pick the fights with the red ants, but only respond when their fellows are being bitten half by red invaders). And it doesn't take a four-year-old long to figure out that if you put ants of varying colors into an old gallon-size apple juice jug with an inch of sand at the bottom, that you can have a desktop war machine in your possession.Hours of sheer absorbed delight. (Yes, it sounds mean to an adult, but kids certainly have a natural talent for doing things that are mean, albeit innocently, if that makes any sense.) Oh the battles. Oh the wars. Fifty black ants will beat ten red ants. But ten red ants will pulverize twenty black ants. Oh the science. Oh the experimentation. Oh the Nazi mindset of a four-year-old (I won't even mention picking off red ants with a BB gun, which just too easily calls to mind Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List demoniacally wielding his rifle).Dougie loved practical jokes. And sadly, most of these jokes and pranks fell upon his two-year-old sister, Pammy. It was only natural, since she was the only person he knew that was younger than himself. His big sister Donna usually figured out the pranks before they "got" her, and could devilishly turn the pranks back upon the prankster (which pranksters rarely appreciate). And Pammy was especially fun to prank, or "punk" as it is called today, because although each and every two-year-old is gullible (Dougie remembered well when he was the victim of such a prank, involving an over-protective he-sheep), but poor Pammy was especially gullible, probably because the nicest people are the most trusting, and the more trusting people are, the more naughty people are willing to take advantage of that trust.But soon after moving out to the desert Dougie decided to pull a prank of the worst kind upon his poor, trusting sister. The prank didn't begin as mean-spirited, although the end results would seem so. He first thought it would be funny if he could convince his baby sister to allow ants to crawl on her arms and legs."Pammy," Dougie told his poor unsuspecting sister, "Did you know that if you let the ants crawl on you, they'll give you candy?"She stared at him with wide, enchanted eyes. "They will?" All innocence.He situated her with feet planted on either side of a black ant nest (yes, yes, I know, I know, what a rascal, what a naughty fellow, you think he would have learned from the tricks people pulled upon him that some tricks just aren't nice to pull on others). Soon the ants were crawling up her legs."Your arms too," Dougie told her (I know, I know, is there no limit to his diabolic mercilessness?).Pammy, excited, enchanted, hopeful and utterly nice, and sweet, and all the things that little girls are supposed to be, soon had black ants crawling all over her arms. With ants covering her arms and legs Pammy trustingly looked at her big brother (her supposed protector, a strong male who should be looking out for his baby sister, shielding her from the dangers of country life)."Where's the candy?" she asked with eyes full of hope.Then suddenly the look on her face changed. She looked horrified. she began to dance and wiggle.Dougie froze. Oops. He didn't intend THIS, did he?"They're biting me!" Pammy cried.To his credit (okay, small, small credit, like a credit card received in the mail with a $200 max) Dougie leaped forward and began brushing the biting ants off his sister. Pammy was too horrified to cry, as yet. Here she had been expecting CANDY (for goodness' sake) and these little critters were BITING her!Cleared of ants, assured that it was okay, and apology after apology breaking from Dougie, Pammy finally wailed. And she did "crying" almost as well as her older brother. And yes, he got in trouble, yes he got a spanking, yes he heard several lectures about how he was older, that he was BOY (for goodness' sake), and that he was supposed to look out for his sister, he was supposed to protect her.And he was sorry to play such a joke on his sister. The memory of it lives long and fresh in his mind, even until this day, and although the first part of the idea can still make him begin to snicker, the overall picture yet makes him feel ill. What a terrible thing to do to your little sister.At least it wasn't the red ants, he consoles himself. At least it wasn't the red ants.All Stories © 2009 Douglas Christian Larsen
important - FIGHT THE FLU WITH HERBS - important
