Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-10-17 - 9:48 p.m.

Car Moths

I have moths in my car.

My life is usually strange enough that I don't give this sort of thing a second thought. Sometime, somehow, I must have carried a wool item in the car that had moth eggs in it, and now every few days another moth will surface and fly around the car. It's quite routine.

I know this isn't the same moth because we open the windows and help Mr. Moth out each time he appears. Youngest daughter does not like moths. She does not like any flying insect particularly, for which I cannot blame her, but moths seem to be particularly terrifying.

These moths are not the large decorative kind, though. These are the tiny sweater-terrorist type. No more than a small upholstery smear (for those who decline the invitation out the window.) But they do what moths do, which is to fly quickly and erratically into your face, and Younger Daughter cannot stand this. Somewhere in her life she may have heard me say something was "moth-eaten", and maybe she harbors dreadful images. I don't know and there's not usually time on the way to school to analyze it; only time to say, "Oh, Keeerist, kid, it's just a MOTH," and kind of slap-smear it into the upholstery for her.

I was thinking this morning that other people probably don't have car-moths. Other people have orderly normal lives and would be horrified to know, and have known for months, that they were hatching insects in the family transportation. Other people might not allow their child to keep a spider in the corner of her room as a pet (it's only a small one and since it doesn't fly, she seems to have more empathy for it.) Other people probably do not allow their children to eat cold homemade chili for breakfast before school, either.

I do wonder if I do my kids a disservice. If they deserve a little more run-of-the-mill family. Once in a while I think some middle school snotnose is going to come up to my daughter and say, "Your family's weird and so are you. Your mother drives you to school in her pajamas, and your car is full of moths, you get cold pizza or cut up tortillas in your lunch sack, and your Christmas decorations never get taken down. Are you guys retarded or something?"

But then, my daughter would probably say calmly, "No. Why, are you? Want some chili?"

It's just a passing observation on how odd my life might be. Or it might not; perhaps other people have car-moths and do nothing about them, but they simply don't TELL me. Perhaps their lives only look orderly and controlled from the outside.

Eccentric. Well, worse things have been said.

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