The Debugger - by ftlsid - cybermonk

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One of my pastimes as a six-year-old was stepping on roly-polies in the backyard. I took a great pleasure in waiting patiently for each bug to crawl out of the grass, imagining myself a giant as I assumed an exaggerated pose, jumping as high as I could, and bringing my light-up Yu-Gi-Oh! sneaker firmly down on the unsuspecting creature. They’re not quite rigid enough to crunch, nor wet enough to squish or splat; an onomatopoeia for that wonderful moment of damp crushing does not exist in our language as far as I know. All I can say is that that unnameable sensation was so sublime that I found and killed them over and over again until their population collapsed and there were none left. You, reader, may have an instinctive disgust response to this kind of story—perhaps based on things people repeat over and over: torturing animals is psychopathic behavior, kids who take pleasure in killing insects are “messed up,” and so on. My position is different—kids like to play around. That’s all

Mollusk fossils in Eocene marine sediment (30-50 million years ago). Note the spiral shell on the right. One of my pastimes as a six-year-old was stepping on roly-polies in the backyard. I took a great pleasure in waiting patiently for each bug to crawl out of the grass, imagining myself a giant as I assumed an exaggerated pose, jumping as high as I could, and bringing my light-up Yu-Gi-Oh! sneaker firmly down on the unsuspecting creature. They’re not quite rigid enough to crunch, nor wet enough to squish or splat; an onomatopoeia for that wonderful moment of damp crushing does not exist in…

The Debugger - by ftlsid - cybermonk

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