As you get older, everything gets harder.
You have to pay taxes. You need insurance for everything from your car to your left toe. You must eat more fiber, but not too much fiber, because that will make you explode or implode or something like that. There’s a lot to learn and you figure out pretty quick that everyone’s making it up as they go along.
But you don’t appreciate how you’ve mastered certain things. You can open pickle jars with one firm tug, as opposed to bashing it to oblivion. You can breeze through a book without asking someone what every second word means. You have the foresight to save a slice of pizza for the next morning for a great breakfast (okay, that one only happens half of the time). As an adult, you become a sage on everyday minutiae.
For instance, I’ve gotten quite good at swatting mosquitos. As a kid, mosquitos made me dread summer. They’d fly in front of my face, just out of reach, before swooping in, taking a sample of my blood, and zooming away. I’d slap the skin as soon as they left, agitating the bite. Even if I managed to hit them, most of the time they’d simply float back to the sky, barely injured. I had a light touch. I wasn’t fast enough or strong enough to contend with mosquitos.
But now I’m a mosquito swatting master. They have enough time to land on my arm for a second before I turn them into paste. My hands fly through the air, smacking every mosquito to the ground. It’s not a skill I adopted in a month; it’s something that’s grown over years. It’s one of the million little talents we pick up as we get older.
I honed my mosquito mauling talent in Nova Scotia, where the bloodsuckers are as thick as the humidity in the summer. You can’t go camping or swimming or outside to dump the garbage without a full layer of clothes or a healthy dose of bug spray. They’ll attack any exposed skin. They can suck you dry.
This is my first summer outside of Nova Scotia. When I arrived in Yorkton, I noticed a distinct lack of mosquitos. They were here, of course, but not nearly at the same level as my home province. It was like comparing a kazoo to a symphony.
I almost missed the buggers. Mosquitos have always been tied to summer for me. They’re a signifier that it’s time to hit the beach and go for a hike. Without them, I felt a bit homesick.
Well, I remedied that. I walked through the Yorkton wetland the other day. I marveled at the fishing lake, the tall blades of grass, and the humid air. It was a slice of the Maritimes in my backyard.
When the mosquitos came, I slapped a few away, just like old times. But the mosquitos kept coming and coming. They swarmed my legs and my face. I couldn’t walk a few steps before swatting a fly as it sank its needle into me. I had no choice but to retreat to civilization.
My skills failed me. The mosquitos overwhelmed me. I’d found a bit of home, and it had chewed me up and spat me out. I’m still nursing my bug bites.
It’s not worth being nostalgic about everything from your home province. Sometimes, they can really suck.
