Saturday, April 25, 2009

The Flying Beasties (and my daughter with Down syndrome)

Ricki looked like a character in a horror film who, finally coming face-to-face with a loathsome fearful enemy, gazes at it in shock. She pointed a quivering finger in the direction of the window. I glanced up from the studies we had been working on together, and saw that there was indeed a strange, though harmless sight: a “swarm” of about five miniscule baby flies were swirling around in the airspace by the living room window, looking for the entire world like they were in “holding pattern” at the airport. I gave a few ineffective sweeps at them with my notebook, and attempted to draw Ricki back to the math exercises we were doing.
Ricki was not about to be distracted from the menace located a few paces away. She demanded that I get rid of them. I gave a few more sweeps at them with my notebook, but I guess that they really were flying on instruments or something, as they would not budge from the terrain they had already occupied. (What do you want? They were ISRAELI flies.....) Ricki insisted that I “kill” them.
Reluctantly, I got out a bug spray, hoping that one little spritz (squirt) would make them flee to safer territory, without causing too many casualties. I gave a squirt, the flies dispersed, and we returned to our studies.
Suddenly, about five minutes later, a fly struggling though his final moments on earth dropped squarely on to Ricki’s homework sheet. She yelped in near hysteria, but I swept the fly off the table, hoping that it could somehow survive. But Ricki was not concerned with any UN resolutions, and the poor fly (who had not harmed a soul), had to be dispatched of, for the cause of Ricki’s (and collaterally, my) sanity. So much for peace in the Middle East.

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