Flies

We've been battling a lot of flies lately, most likely due to the humidity. I hate flies. Since we installed the air conditioner and sealed up the house yesterday, I haven't had to deal with them as much. But for a while there, they were getting out of control.

I was standing in the kitchen making lunch last week and a fly buzzed by my head, making a dive-bomb attempt at the plum on the cutting board. Suddenly I got lost in a memory from early childhood:

My Mom used to take me to her friend Tammy's house, and I would hang out around the house with the kids while she and Tammy rode horses. I hated going to Tammy's. There was always a sink full of dirty dishes and hoardes of flies, zooming all around and making the house sound like it was alive. And for hot dogs, Tammy and her kids would use a slice of white bread instead of a bun, which really bothered me. To make matters worse, they loved to watch WWF wrestling, and we would all pile on the green velour couch so they could cheer on their favorites and yell at the screen when things went wrong. It was so silly to me even then, the men dance-fighting in tights and masks, the soap opera story lines. I knew it said something about this family, that they like to watch WWF wrestling.

I was at my Mom's this past weekend and a fly was buzzing around her kitchen. My Mom hates flies much more than I do. She raced around the kitchen with a swatter in her hand, looking a little bit crazy in her determination to kill that lonely fly. I told her how flies make me think of Tammy's, and she said, "Oh yes, they had terrible flies."