When I was about 5, I had a terrible dream. Our kitchen phone – a prototypical ’80s cream-colored landline with a loooong, dangling cord – began to ring. I picked it up, said, “Hello?” and a torrent of insects poured out of the ear piece. The stream was so thick and fast-moving, it pushed me out of the kitchen, through the front door, and down the driveway, growing ever larger as it surged ahead. The whole world became black – just an all-encompassing flood of thickly-packed bugs. I woke up shaking all over.
Today, in Western North Carolina, we’re preparing for the emergence of a “double brood” of cicadas. Apparently, sometime over the next month or so, trillions of cicadas will burst from the ground to blanket the entire outside world and fill the air with a constant, deafening roar.
Of all the dreams I’ve ever had that I did not want to come true, “bug flood” is most definitely in the top 5. And yet, here it is, preparing to will itself into existence.
I’ve heard harrowing tales of the last cicada swarm in Western NC. Folks had to use snow shovels to dig paths to their front doors. Home window screens and car windshields were so covered in bugs, people’s views were completely obscured. My friend was riding her motorcycle and thought she’d been shot in the chest, then again in the head, but she’d actually splattered two unsuspecting cicadas. The noise was so loud and incessant, people felt like they were losing their minds. And that was a single brood, mind you – half the size of what’s about to befall us. The possibilities are truly terrifying. How are my dogs gonna deal with this? Will they come in from the backyard covered in cicadas? Or with mouthfuls of cicadas?
Maybe, if it gets too bad, I’ll just act like my neighbors down in South Carolina and call the police. “Hello, 911? I’d like to report a childhood nightmare come to life. Anything y’all can do about that?”
I saw one cicada while camping last summer, and that was one too many. I did snap a photo of it, however, to send to my sister. Over the years, I’ve learned that when I see something and say, “Ew,” my sister would see the same thing and say, “Cool!” So I take pictures of gross things and send them to her.
Now that I think of it, I may have a solution here. I just need to move my sister back from Spain so she can go through this ordeal with me.
“Look: that car’s completely covered in cicadas! Cool!”
“There are three inches of cicada carcasses on the ground! Cool!”
“The restaurants are serving fried cicadas! Cool!”
“The dogs are pooping cicada parts! Cool!”
Maybe, with her continual reframes, I could survive the bug flood. And maybe, after breathing life into a dream that was so horrifying, I vividly remember it over 40 years later, the universe will see fit to do a little balancing act and make one of my good dreams come true.
I do love a flying dream, universe. Just sayin’.
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