The common gnat and I have a long history of hostility.
As a twelve-year-old at Scout camp, I remember trying to build a dam in a creek beside our tents while being plagued by gnats. At the military academy where I spent one summer hiking and sweating through the Catskills, we battled these little devils while sleeping tent-less out of doors for a week. Once, walking the battlefield at New Market in Virginia, my young wife and I were so swarmed by gnats—they shot into our eyes, clogged our nostrils, investigated our ears, and flew into our mouths—that we returned to our car at a near-gallop, imitating the Yankees who had fled the Virginia Military Institute cadets and other Confederate soldiers so long ago.
As a twelve-year-old at Scout camp, I remember trying to build a dam in a creek beside our tents while being plagued by gnats. At the military academy where I spent one summer hiking and sweating through the Catskills, we battled these little devils while sleeping tent-less out of doors for a week. Once, walking the battlefield at New Market in Virginia, my young wife and I were so swarmed by gnats—they shot into our eyes, clogged our nostrils, investigated our ears, and flew into our mouths—that we returned to our car at a near-gallop, imitating the Yankees who had fled the Virginia Military Institute cadets and other Confederate soldiers so long ago.
But my most meaningful encounter with a gnat occurred eleven days ago.
I had driven up to Virginia after my classes ended on Thursday and arrived at my daughter’s house right around ten in the evening. By 10:30 we were sitting at her big table visiting and drinking a glass of wine. I also had my laptop—my MacBook Pro—up and running.
At that point, my daughter went upstairs to check on her children. So there I was plinking away on my laptop, looking at emails, and minding my own business when the gnat arrived. He buzzed my face, then the keyboard of the computer. I took a few half-hearted swats at El Diablo, hoping to encourage him to leave, but he ignored the message. Finally he hovered over the keyboard, and I spread my hands and gave him an enormous clap.
I missed the gnat, but I did manage to smack my glass of chardonnay, which splashed sideways a good two feet into the keyboard.
Now, eleven days later, four hundred dollars poorer, and somewhat wiser, I have my computer back.
My little friend the gnat, known scientifically as culex pipiens, which should mean “pest from hell,” taught me three lessons.
First, no drink shall ever again grace the desk near my computer. Right now my cup of coffee is six feet away from me, seated safely on another desk. Hey, exercise is good for me, right? (Some readers may remember that just a little over a year ago I was talking on the phone with the mother of a student, typing away on the computer, and drinking a gin-and-tonic, all at the same time. Somehow I had forgotten I didn’t have three or four hands, and so spilled that drink into the keyboard. Fortunately, the homeschool mom regarded my colorful language with humor rather than with condemnation).
Second, the tablet I have used while the computer was in the shop is a concoction of the devil. Its very name—android—sounds like some invention of Milton’s Satan, mechanical, graceless, anti-human, and ultimately stupid. I can’t turn off the Gmail, one slip of the fingers sends me off to sites unwanted, and writing anything on its pathetic screen is a trial. With my computer back in service, the android—a name as ugly as the F-bomb word—is going back to being just a camera.
Finally, and most importantly, I owe this gnat a debt. Mr. Culex Pipiens showed me how much time I was wasting online. This lesson—and this alone—was well worth the money spent on the computer.
Let me explain.
For the last eleven days, essentially computer-forlorn, I have accomplished so much work, all of it to the good, that I am amazed. In this time I have prepared excellent lesson plans for my classes, made thirteen Latin videos for a homeschool company, visited at length with three of my children, graded well over a hundred student papers, read three books, written one book review, taught five days of classes, rearranged books in three rooms of my apartment, and done the usual daily chores of cooking and cleaning. That list of accomplishments also includes an annual physical with my doctor, visits with friends, and some long phone calls.
That witless gnat taught me an invaluable lesson about time. By putting my computer out of commission, he reminded me of the value of my hours, of my days. Deo volente, I reckon I have at best fifteen more good years of writing and working, and the gnat demonstrated to me that if I spent a good portion of those years dinking around on the internet and cruising from one site to another, my accomplishments would be far fewer when the time comes for me to be slipped into the earth.
Bless you, Brother Gnat. And since your own life span is apparently less than two weeks, R.I.P.
I had driven up to Virginia after my classes ended on Thursday and arrived at my daughter’s house right around ten in the evening. By 10:30 we were sitting at her big table visiting and drinking a glass of wine. I also had my laptop—my MacBook Pro—up and running.
At that point, my daughter went upstairs to check on her children. So there I was plinking away on my laptop, looking at emails, and minding my own business when the gnat arrived. He buzzed my face, then the keyboard of the computer. I took a few half-hearted swats at El Diablo, hoping to encourage him to leave, but he ignored the message. Finally he hovered over the keyboard, and I spread my hands and gave him an enormous clap.
I missed the gnat, but I did manage to smack my glass of chardonnay, which splashed sideways a good two feet into the keyboard.
Now, eleven days later, four hundred dollars poorer, and somewhat wiser, I have my computer back.
My little friend the gnat, known scientifically as culex pipiens, which should mean “pest from hell,” taught me three lessons.
First, no drink shall ever again grace the desk near my computer. Right now my cup of coffee is six feet away from me, seated safely on another desk. Hey, exercise is good for me, right? (Some readers may remember that just a little over a year ago I was talking on the phone with the mother of a student, typing away on the computer, and drinking a gin-and-tonic, all at the same time. Somehow I had forgotten I didn’t have three or four hands, and so spilled that drink into the keyboard. Fortunately, the homeschool mom regarded my colorful language with humor rather than with condemnation).
Second, the tablet I have used while the computer was in the shop is a concoction of the devil. Its very name—android—sounds like some invention of Milton’s Satan, mechanical, graceless, anti-human, and ultimately stupid. I can’t turn off the Gmail, one slip of the fingers sends me off to sites unwanted, and writing anything on its pathetic screen is a trial. With my computer back in service, the android—a name as ugly as the F-bomb word—is going back to being just a camera.
Finally, and most importantly, I owe this gnat a debt. Mr. Culex Pipiens showed me how much time I was wasting online. This lesson—and this alone—was well worth the money spent on the computer.
Let me explain.
For the last eleven days, essentially computer-forlorn, I have accomplished so much work, all of it to the good, that I am amazed. In this time I have prepared excellent lesson plans for my classes, made thirteen Latin videos for a homeschool company, visited at length with three of my children, graded well over a hundred student papers, read three books, written one book review, taught five days of classes, rearranged books in three rooms of my apartment, and done the usual daily chores of cooking and cleaning. That list of accomplishments also includes an annual physical with my doctor, visits with friends, and some long phone calls.
That witless gnat taught me an invaluable lesson about time. By putting my computer out of commission, he reminded me of the value of my hours, of my days. Deo volente, I reckon I have at best fifteen more good years of writing and working, and the gnat demonstrated to me that if I spent a good portion of those years dinking around on the internet and cruising from one site to another, my accomplishments would be far fewer when the time comes for me to be slipped into the earth.
Bless you, Brother Gnat. And since your own life span is apparently less than two weeks, R.I.P.
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