January 2010
76 posts
I HATE SNAILS! Seriously, I keep a little list of things that make me cringe, with the ultimate goal of posting it here just for fun… but stepping on snails definitely trumps anything else on that list.
Walking home tonight on the freshly rained sidewalks, it suddenly occurred to me that some of the crunching sound in my ears might be coming from snails beneath my feet. I was horrified. My walk started to include periodic fits of me stamping my feet as I walked, so that I could minimize the time I would spend conscious of any potential squishings that might occur. I also began to emit whimpers and angry, distressed sounds. At one particularly weak moment, I seem to have yelled, “EFF YOU, SNAILS!!”
Fortunately, the streets of San Ramon are basically always empty of pedestrians, and the cars were going by too quickly to notice me yelling… but truthfully, I can’t say an audience would have made much of a difference. Maybe a little less colorful language, a little more muttering under my breath?
Anyhow, it’s funny how I can derive such pleasure from crunching a leaf and such disgust from crunching a snail. I suppose that in the darkness, I could very well have been stepping on really crunchy leaves instead of snails. I hope that’s all they were.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go wipe phantom snail guts off of the bottoms of my shoes.
