Earthworms
It rained heavily on Wednesday night. Thursday was a beautiful day apart from the wind. It was sunny and warm inside the college. It’s so rare nowadays to see a blue sky with puffs of white. I was walking outside around campus, deep in conversation with a friend when she abruptly yelps. About a dozen worms were squirming on the asphalt.
The only time I ever squished a worm, I accidentally only stepped on half of it. I felt so guilty, watching half a worm wriggling around as if it was suffering. It almost looked like it was trying to escape its other half that was stuck on the sidewalk. I cried a lot, then my brother stomped his foot on the rest of it. It made me cry more.
In preschool, I remember how the children in my class would squish worms as if it was hopscotch. They would try to kill one with each hop or step they took. My teacher Marie-Loup saw it once, got upset, and taught as that worms are nice. They eat up all the bad stuff in the earth and poop out good stuff that makes the grass on our soccer field green and healthy. Something along those lines.
Marie-Loup was really sweet and good to us. She was the kind of person I wanted to be, so I always took everything she said to heart. After that lecture, on sunny days that followed rainy ones, I would literally spend entire afternoons picking up worms and putting them back in the grass.
If I didn’t care so much about how other people see me, I probably would have done it on Thursday instead of following my friend hurry back inside.
