Partly Cloudy, 64°
They fly through my air, they crawl at my feet, they live in my cereal boxes, and they occupy my dreams. Yes, to some, my termites could be considered a costly, dangerous, nuisance, but to me, they are my best friends. When I get back to my large, structurally unsound house at the end of the day, I want to know that I can eat dinner with company. Yes, my meal is often some sort of pasta and lean protein and that of my termites is the wood that my house is built from, but I choose to ignore our dietary preferences and focus instead on our shared love of opera music.
I hear my neighbors talk, I hear my children on the phone ask me to tent my house, but I also hear the flapping of 100 tiny wings. And that sound is the most important to me. That sound beats out the rhythm of my life.
Are there days when I get annoyed? Of course. There was the time when my termites ate my mother’s false teeth overnight. There was the time during my Memorial Day party where I fell through my deck because the wood no longer had any constitution. There was the day when the postal deliverer point blank refused to come to my door to deliver the mail because the droning of live insects made him too afraid. There was the time that my great-great-grandmother’s bed became a three-post bed, and then a two-post bed, and then just a normal bed with no posts at all. There was the time when the drain in my shower became so clogged with drowned termite carcasses that I flooded the bathroom. There was the time where the water damage from said flooding intermingled with the fragility of the wooden floor in the bathroom to create a large sinkhole where there used to be a bathroom.
So yes, I will admit it, when I have to pull dead termites one by one out of my dried hair because they have taken over my 2in1 again, I do get a bit frustrated. But don’t we all get annoyed at our friends? Tell me, honestly, what the difference is between a friend showing up late to lunch and then refusing to put their card in even though cash is a thing of the past and it is 2016, and termites slowly gnawing away at the place you have decided to call your home?
At the end of the day your friends probably leave you. But I can fall asleep knowing that my house is literally crawling with hundreds if not thousands of my closest friends. Only some crazy billionaire with an ENORMOUS property could say that. So there you have it. My termites are annoying but they are also my best friends.
