I drove home tired, grumpy and craving time alone. If I
hurried I could have an hour to relax before it was time to prepare lunch. All
I wanted was a cold drink and my recliner. I parked the car in the garage,
grabbed my stuff and headed for the house.
We’d had rain the day before, enough rain to make wet
puddles on our cement. I stepped around one such puddle on our garage floor. I
glanced at a very long and quite plump earthworm stretched out in that puddle.
Too bad, I thought to myself as I hurried on. That would have made a great fish
worm. But I haven’t fished since I was a kid.
I closed the back door of the house behind me and unloaded
my things onto the kitchen table. That’s when I heard it. That still small
voice inside my conscience that I don’t dare ignore. “Go pick up the worm and
put it in the dirt.”
“No,” I argued back. “I’m tired and I don’t care about a
silly old worm.”
“Go pick up the worm and put it in the dirt.”
Did I mention I didn’t dare ignore this voice giving me such
unreasonable commands? A slightly used napkin lay on the table. Convenient. I
sighed, picked up the napkin and returned to the garage. Somewhere in between
the time I used to bait my own fishhook at Grandpa’s creek and this morning, I
apparently lost my ability to not shudder in disgust at the thought of handling
a worm. I gingerly picked up the big worm with the napkin, rescuing it from the
puddle of water. I carried it outside the garage door and deposited it in the
dirt.
“There. How’s that?” I was still carrying on an internal conversation
with the voice, but it didn’t answer me. I shrugged, went back inside and threw
away the napkin, washing any trace of worm goo off my hands. Now, about that
recliner.
“Go see if it crawled away.”
“What? Why would I do that?”
“Go see if it crawled away.”
“This is totally crazy,” I muttered to myself as I went back
outside and found the place I had put the worm. It was still there. Why hadn’t
it crawled in a hole or something? Maybe it was dead. Yeah. I’d probably
rescued a dead worm. Nice.
Then it started to squirm. First a little, then a lot. Then I
noticed something. I was pretty uncomfortable standing there in the direct
sunlight with all that humidity hanging in the air. Now, I admit I’m a heat
wimp. My ‘miserably hot’ is most people’s ‘comfortable,’ but I also figured
that worm was probably in the same discomfort as me. After all, it’d just come
out of a nice cool puddle of water into the direct sunlight. Sheesh. If I was
going to rescue the little guy, the least I could have done was put him in some
shade.
But as I watched, the worm wiggled some more and finally
began to make its way across the ground. Why had I thought it would just sort
of burrow down into the soil right where I put it? But it knew better than me. It
knew it had to get out of the sunlight before it got too dry. A dried out worm is not
any better off than a worm stranded in a puddle of water.
It crawled until it came to a piece of tree bark lying on
the ground. I almost lifted up the bark to get it out of the poor guy’s way.
“Leave it there.”
“Oh. Okay.” I didn’t have to be told twice this time. I left
it there. The worm crawled under the bark until its head was sticking out on
one side and its tail (do worms have tails?) poked out on the other. Then, the
strangest thing happened. That big fat worm wiggled and squirmed until it was
able to fit its entire length under that little piece of bark. It didn’t stick
out anywhere. Big as that worm was and small as that piece of bark was, it had
to have practically tied itself in knots to get all of it underneath the bark. But
it knew what it had to do. And it did it.
After watching a few more minutes and seeing nothing of the
worm, I went back inside. I found my recliner and my diet soda, but I couldn’t
quit thinking about that worm. Was there a reason for my encounter with that
ugly brown squiggly thing? I believe there was. I thought I was helping
the worm. But no, the worm was helping me. He was teaching me a lesson I very
much needed to learn just then.
What lesson can a worm teach a person? How about the fact that we all need a little understanding sometimes. Someone to
show us just a bit of compassion. Being too tired, too grumpy or too wrapped up
in my selfish wants is no reason not to reach out to others. Who knows what a
kind word, perhaps even a smile could mean to someone who just wants to know
someone cares?
Mr. or Mrs. Worm (truthfully, I don’t even know if worms
come in boy and girl varieties) knew just how to take care of itself. It only
needed a little help to get started and then it was on its way. Maybe someone I
passed by this morning in my hurry to get home needed something from me and I
missed it. Maybe all I had to do was smile. Or pick someone up from a puddle of
their own grumpies. Did I just leave them to swim against the current? Or evaporate in the sun?
When I checked later (yes, I admit I did check), the piece
of bark had nothing beneath it but an almost imperceptible hole in the damp
soil. But my worm friend didn’t return to its home without teaching me a
valuable lesson first. Be on the lookout. Not all 911 calls come with whistles
and sirens. The loudest shouts for help might just be the ones that make no
noise at all.
