Chirrrrp… Chirrrrp…

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

I’ve been dealing with crickets all my life it seems. There’s a photo in my Mom’s family picture album of me, not quite a year old, where I’m smiling, sitting on the floor with most of a cricket hanging out of my mouth.

Why my mother or father or whoever saw what was happening and thought, “I’d better whip out the ol’ Kodak 110,” and not “I should probably prevent that baby from eating an insect,” I’ll never know. It was the 1970s, so I guess it was just a different time in America. I mean, my grandson can’t even eat a dried up leaf these days without his grandmother swooping in and giving him the ol’ hooked finger in the mouth to fish it out.

But anyway, fast-forward a few years. Every spring, or so it seemed, we’d get a cricket or two in the house. I mean, the series of little “chirrrrp… chirrps” are annoying enough when you

See VIEWPOINT, page A5 VIEWPOINT

From page A4

hear them from out in the yard, but it’s a whole ‘nother thing when it’s coming from inside the house.

So, it’s a lovely April evening in 1980-something. You’re enjoying an episode of “The A-Team” or “M*A*S*H” or whatever when the sound coming from your giant 800pound 25-inch console TV is invaded by cricket noises.

You probably don’t even notice it at first, but once you do, it’s all you can hear.

Then you have to play “Find the Cricket,” and they’re very good at shutting up when you get close. It’s like they know you’re playing the game.

And oftentimes, they’re in the walls or behind the baseboards or some other little hidey-hole where you can’t even reach them. So, you just resign yourself to having cricket ambience while “Dynasty” or “The Dukes of Hazzard” plays and eventually you can tune him out… until bedtime. Ever have a cricket serenade you while you’re trying to sleep? Perhaps second only to a mosquito in your ear, it’s the most annoying sound when you’re attempting to drift off to sleep.

I’m pretty sure that cricket encounters in my younger days are why I sleep with a box fan on at night. Not for the air circulation — for the noise, Why am I mentioning all of this? Well, because it’s 12: 45 a.m. and I just became aware of a cricket somewhere in the vicinity… so, I’m awake.