Crush Pretty

In the distant past, I placed a gentle kiss upon certain tiny toes. I rubbed them lovingly, just as one might also caress the shoulders of a spouse, a close friend, a brother, a sister. No more, no less, than anyone would do for an adorable child in a loving family.

But she has grown a little older now and set boundaries, and boundaries are always to be respected.

The other day, those little toes were dressed in sparkly silver shoes, pretty shoes. And the owner spied a beetle creeping across the porch. With savage glee, she stalked it. She spoke to it:

"I bet you had babies recently. You won't be going home to your babies."

And she stomped. She raised her little shoe over that beetle and all, what 60 lbs of her or so and with obvious pleasure, she crushed it.

Press down,
exert force,
twist side to side slightly
to overcome the resistance of the carapace,
then drag back and forth
til the victim is nothing
but a black smear upon the cement.

This beautiful angel is no budding pyschopath. She'd never harm a butterfly or a puppy; this I know, for her heart is tender for the things she loves. She cries at the sight of roadkill and when a pet passes away. But repellent things, ugly things, earn no mercy from her. And the hatred of a girl for repellent things, ugly things, can burn hot as a drop of molten steel.

Nobody paid much attention that day as she smashed that beetle. Certainly no one chided her. That is as it should be.

Some might say I am a bad man. For we are dear friends, as close friends as family can be. And long ago, when she was first impressionable, I encouraged her to crush things that were icky. "Good girl," I said, as her tiny toes sought out and smashed her first worms, beetles and such. "You are a very good girl."

Certainly I could have said, "All life is to be respected, little one, even icky things."

But I did not.

So ants now earn from her immediate crushing. Beetles, too, die when she is in the mood. Rollie-pollies are "cute" and she spares them.

So it is. So it simply is.