Out of Breath and Dusty

During a recent Cardinals game, a moth lost control and crash landed in Matt Holliday’s ear, getting stuck, and forcing him to leave in the 8^th inning. They got the moth out after using a flashlight and a “medical instrument,” which I imagined as a pair of 9” tweezers. My eyes water just thinking about the cold steel slowly entering the ear canal, forcing the athletic trainer to call upon his best “Operation” skills. “I’m going for the white, cheap, plastic moth bone!” he must’ve thought.

I had flashbacks. Bad ones.  The “you can’t call it ‘Nam unless you were there” kinda ones. Those Miller Moth seasons that we all dreaded and that lazy cats everywhere came alive for flashed before me. One of the worst moth seasons takes me back to when I was at Harvard. Ok, so I lived just a half a block off Harvard. Alright, Harvard Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. Doesn’t matter. My buddy Kevin and I had just moved into our brand new, 1878 farm house, complete with a root cellar to store, apparently, boxes upon boxes of homemade soap. Probably an amateur fight club, also.
 It was the summer of ’02. It was hot. Sweltering. We were surrounded by Charlie, er, moths. Everywhere we turned, they just seemed to spring up at us, and drunkenly swoon around us, trying so desperately to inject fear into the minds of the innocent, as clumsily as possible.  Avoiding conflict, we opened up the house and shoo’d them away, not wanting to spread carnage across our newly buffed and stained hardwood floors. Then we ventured bravely into the garage.

Hundreds of moths developing their own dusty, suburban outlet mall and PF Chang’s. In our garage. We retreated, severely out-manned and out-gunned by the enemy. We knew we had to launch an offensive attack in order to win back our future storage space. Two of us were going in. It was my intention that we both were coming back.

Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was that I wouldn’t allow this to happen in my literal backyard. Maybe I had enough and didn’t want to go through a “Deer Hunter” scenario, with a handful of these dirty, fluttering moths crouched around an overturned crate for a table, wearing jungle green cargo pants, smoking, and dealing a game of Russian Roulette. Maybe I just snapped. I had my weapon, and I snatched Kevin’s AR-15 fly swatter out of his hands. I told him to open the door, and in my memory, gave a fantastic final speech about pride and a made-up girlfriend that he would now have to watch over if I didn’t come back, as I gave him a crinkled-up black and white photo. I screamed a magnificent war cry, rushed in, and was engorged by the belly of the beast.

It was horrible. Keeping the door open to the dark garage so long drew the enemy closer to me as I entered. It was like running into a dirty carpet, hanging from the clothesline, ready for beating. I choked. I gagged. I persevered. I went in, guns blazing. At first, to conserve my ammo (energy), I only went for clean hits. They swarmed. My surprise attack initiated a frenzied stampede. My eyes were soon overwhelmed with dust, darkness, and having to adjust to the only light, coming through a half-covered, cracked, smudgy window. Sniping was no longer an option. They took away my vision. I only had my ears. If I could only stop screaming like a little girl trying to slap a spider web off of her back, I would be able to tell from where they were attacking. I started swinging. I was now going back to my “Operation” training, where if I couldn’t get the piece out, I’d just start yelling and jamming the electric forceps into the open wound until I won.

Ten minutes passed. I could hear the faint, distant voice of Kevin calling for me. My ears were ringing. I was temporarily deafened by the attack. He slowly opened the door. I reemerged, out of breath, dusty, and coughing a weak, Tiny Tim hack. “They got me,” I think I remember saying, as I collapsed in his arms. As I squinted, I saw fear in Kevin’s eyes. Not fear for himself, or of me, but for every other moth that would be so unfortunate as to cross the threshold of the garage. He hadn’t known what kind of a roommate he had decided to live with until now. I had wiped out an entire moth village. I think he felt safe. I know he did.

After we checked for blood and exit wounds, it was established that I came out uninjured. But I still had Kevin carry me over his shoulder, running back to the house, with the sound of helicopters rising over the jungle canopy. All of this happened in slow-motion. I think I tried to light the grill as he carried me past it, for some nice mood smoke.

We went inside and grabbed a nice chilled bottle from the vegetable crisper. It doesn’t matter what brand it was. It could’ve been Lemon/Lime Gatorade; it didn’t matter to us. It was Champagne. Cristal. Victory. Winning never tasted so sweet, or electrolyte-y.