I Ate a Bug and I Liked It

Yesterday evening Ryan saw an ant climbing the wall behind his toy box and excitedly announced, “I see a BUG!” Daddy told him to catch it, and he did – by squashing it with his hand, of course. He carefully examined the tiny corpse in his palm and brought it to each of us in turn, proudly informing us, “I caughted the bug.” (He hasn’t quite mastered the art of the past tense yet.) And then, almost too fast for the human eye to see, he pinched it between his fingers and popped it in his mouth. And grinned. Yes, my son has eaten his first (but probably not his last) bug.

Being the mother of a boy, I suppose I should be prepared for such things. Let’s be honest: little boys are gross. They are fascinated by their own bodily functions. Their favorite pets are slimy instead of fuzzy. They live for snot and farts and poop jokes. They’re just gross in a way that little girls rarely are. And if you’re the mother of one, you need to accept that grossness will be part of your life for a number of years to come.

I’m pretty sure I can survive a fair amount of grossness, though. I already do things I thought (and in some cases, SWORE) I would never do, like eating off Ryan’s silverware and finishing his leftover (and often somewhat mangled) lunches and dinners, not to mention changing some pretty nasty diapers, wiping some really disgusting noses, and cleaning up various bodily fluids. The grossness is part and parcel of parenthood. And if eating bugs is as gross as it gets, I think I can live with that. I just really hope that he doesn’t ever decide to adopt a pet centipede!