A friend and I were at a picnic over the weekend. The eleven-year-old sitting across from us started talking about all the bugs he was collecting, what he was doing with them and how he was categorizing them. He was animated, talkative and describing them in great detail. It brought me back to my childhood days of catching fire flies during the summer and examining all the insects I found in my backyard.
“Where do you keep all these bugs?” I asked. “Do you try to keep them alive?”
He looked at me with a weird expression. “What do you mean ‘keep them alive?'” he asked. “Well, we used to put them in a jar with a few leaves,” I told him. Now he looked really looked lost. Then he thought for a moment and said, “Let me show you.”
He pulled his iPhone out of his pocket and started showing us the bugs he was capturing in a game. But then someone distracted him and he scampered off and I was left to my memories of catching fire flies that actually flew.