parasite insights: just another typical family dinner

during a rare dinner with just me and my parents, i experienced another one of those moments when i pause and wonder: "how in the world did i survive my childhood?"

mother goose and dad were sitting across me in the restaurant booth and we were getting ready to pay the bill (and by "we were", i mean "i was"). mother was fiddling through her bag to get her senior citizen card for the much-welcome discount.

with her hands still in the bag, she opened her wallet, suddenly let out a low-pitched "gah!" and quickly threw something onto our table. before i could ask what it was, i saw the culprit.

it was a leech ... which was then writhing in slow mo on the tabletop.

a leech.

from her wallet.

inside her bag.

after a few long seconds of disbelief and staring at the hapless invertebrate, my dad smashed it with his table napkin.

mama: maybe that was the leech from this afternoon!*

(apparently – and really quite unsurprisingly, considering this was my family involved – there had been another leech incident in their bedroom earlier on)

... but you killed that one, right?

dad: yes. how did another leech get into your bag???

mama: i don't know. maybe because my bag was beside the window?

(note that the window in question has a screen)

(note, also, that the whole time this conversation was going on, i was just silently watching this exchange of almost unearthly sentences)

mama: (sensing something was amiss or forgetting she had already asked) but you killed the leech you found, right?

dad: well ... i didn't exactly kill it. i just flicked it away.

and now i'm going to stop the story for a moment to point out an important life lesson:

boys and girls, if you want to get rid of small, blood-sucking creatures that are not even supposed to be INDOORS, do not simply "flick them away". FLICKING DOES NOT KILL. nor does it evict such creatures from your room IF YOU FLICK THEM TOWARDS A SCREENED WINDOW.

after dad had successfully gotten rid of the "second" leech, my mother shared a golden afterthought:

"it's a good thing i didn't put it into my mouth."

which broke my silence because i had to shout,

"WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT??!!! why would you put a strange object FROM YOUR WALLET in your mouth???"

"i thought it was food."

how does one argue with this kind of logic? that is the question.

me: even if it were food, you found it inside your wallet. WHY would you eat it?

mama: i didn't want it to go to waste.

props to my mother, the conservationist. who knew?

EPILOGUE:

later on that night, because i couldn't let it go, i asked my mother again why, after finding an unidentified thing in her wallet, her first impulse was to put it in her mouth.

"i don't know. when i was touching it, it felt like one of those soft candies you like. you know, like GUMMI GUM."

MWAHAHAHAHAHA.

oh mother goose. you're so good for my lungs. this is why i've forgiven you for naming me after a citrus fruit.


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*whole conversation translated for international readers and the leech community.