Clearly Alive

Saved a worm this morning.  Went down the stairs from the gym.  Fuddling with my phone.  I will call this gentleman now.  No.  I will call him when I walk out the front door of the school in two and half minutes because the signal will fade and I will need to turn off the phone’s WiFi to kill the fading school internet signal and then pause for the 4G signal to kick in.  Wait, then.  I texted him.  I’ll ring him in a minute.  

Passed the stationary bicyclists pedalling to nowhere, playing a contemporary soul tune about how great some man is.  If I could play right now you’d recognize it.  It has a big catchy break. Passed the wall paper depicting students exercising intently.  A wave now down the hall to the young guard who once tried to suggest I wasn't allowed in the changing room.  We're cool now.  I can go to the changing room.  She’s down the hall fifty feet or more so I give a distant sort of wave. 

Out on the concrete I find a worm writhing at the edge of the concrete.  Worm’s tend to writhe.  I couldn’t tell t first if he was alive or dead but the writhing gave it away.  This afforded me a flash of happiness.  Not the same sort of happiness that one might feel coming upon a human figure of questionable sentience who suddenly moves.  I should imagine that that is rather different. 

Still this was registered.  The worm was clearly alive, twisting about.  The lawn was about ten inches off to the right.  I don’t know how he’d gotten to where he was.  I don’t know what led him down this unfortunate concrete path or if he had agency for why he was, where he was.  I thought of worms I’ve impaled with barbed hooks, fishing.  One thinks of those things, unwittingly.  And, as I’ve done before, I stoop over and pick up the worm and toss him (her?) back on to the lawn.  This is the full extent of my heroism.  I did not dig a hole for him, nor did I lay him down gently.  But I left feeling like I’d done my bit. 

And oddly, as has also happened before. I had the repulsive leper like feel of worm-touch on my fingers.  Forty-five minutes, I think it was, before I could properly go the bathroom and wash my hands.  Once I did that and the science of soap was applied to the snake-oil worm’s touch, my fingers felt sanitized.  Before that though I was disgusted by the physicality of my worm-save.  Still, I saved a worm. 

Wednesday 05/09/18