MANDY FLYNN: Worming through my fears

Twelve. I counted 12.

The sight never ceases to disturb me. Baffle me.

Some curled up. Some stretched out. Some a little bit of both. Worms. Not squirmy ones like you buy when you go fishing, those big, fat ones in a Styrofoam cup full of dirt. These worms were far less active. They were like tiny worm mummies.

All dried up.

Why do they do that, crawl out on the concrete right there like a smorgasbord for birds, the sun, rain? Human feet, even, that might squash them at a second’s notice? A veritable worm suicide. And not just one of them – 12. There may be more in the grass, I don’t know. Right there on the side of the street. Like a tiny suicide worm cult.

Disturbing.

I figure there could be several reasons for my curiosity with worms. One is that my childhood was laced with worm references meant to manipulate and terrify me.

“You need to eat more. You look like you’ve got worms.”

“Don’t walk around barefoot in the mud puddle or you’ll get worms.”

The worst, by far, was when my brother told me he knew a guy who walked through a mud puddle barefooted once so now he had a worm living in his brain and when he wanted to play with it he’d wave a glass of warm milk in front of his face and the worm would come out his nose. I think my brother laid awake at night thinking of ways to be cruel to me.

After that, I laid awake at night worrying about worms.

Maybe my fascination with worms is genetic. My daddy’s cousin had one of, if not the, largest worm farms in the country right there outside of Plains. For years, he raised and shipped millions of wigglers all over the country. He started out raising crickets in an old coffin that was left in his daddy’s mercantile that used to be a funeral home. Not sure why he turned to worms, but I remember him telling me once that they have no arms, legs or eyes and that there can be over a million worms in just one acre of land. Worms are deaf, too, so I guess they don’t get offended when I scream at the sight of them.

After learning all of those fun facts, I laid awake worrying that there were a million deaf, blind worms outside my window, waiting for me to walk around barefooted so they could crawl up in my brain. That was then. I’m not so afraid of them anymore. Not the little ones, at least.

Now I’m more concerned about the South African ones that can grow as large as 22 feet long. Seriously, they found that one back in 1967 on the side of the road in South Africa. That was a year before I was born so, hopefully, that ginormous worm hasn’t been alive for 48 years. Or, in the freezer that long … because you know what that means … he can come back alive and make his way to the United States. At least, that’s what my brother would say.

I hope he gets worms.

Email lifestyles columnist Mandy Flynn at [email protected].