YOU’RE GETTING WORMER
Superworm Doesn’t Want to Eat Your Styrofoam
Bio-Degradable
I don’t call myself Superworm. Management did that. They always hand out fancy titles for the stuff no one else wants to do.
I am the larvae of a darkling beetle, zophobas morio, whose proud forbears vanquished Xerxes on the bloody plains at Thermopylae. (Probably.) When scientists in Australia found out we can survive solely on polystyrene, you know, Styrofoam, they did a little Dougie dance and renamed me Superworm.
The pocket protectors have big plans for me: let’s take wiggly guy to the landfills so he can chow down on our mountains of garbage, let him eat all that disposable crap that takes 500 years to decompose. Bon appetit!
But did anyone ask Superworm if he wants to spend his life eating and shitting your packing peanuts?
Does anyone ask Superworm anything, ever?
Homo sapiens, always doing experiments down the food chain to fix your screw-ups. It’s never “hey we did these cool experiments, and we found a way to help worms achieve their potential as mixed-media artists.”
It’s “here, worm, eat this foam, hinged-lid clamshell container. We’re trying to find out if this will kill you or not.”
There’s a lot of things I’d like to put in my mouth besides Styrofoam. A whole Michelin Guide’s worth.
Waiter, I’ll start with the Styrofoam with caramelized onion dip, then the sauteed Styrofoam gratiné, and for an entree, I’ll have the Styrofoam with Steelhead Trout Roe special. For dessert, I’m thinking the Chocolate Raspberry Styrofoam Lava Cake. Then a glass of your best Styrofoam port.
THAT’S what a worm says when you ASK a worm what it wants.
But Superworm, don’t you want to save the Environment? What’s more important than that?
Before you shoot me with the Guilt Gun, I like being useful, OK? I like the idea that I could make a real difference in the future. It’s nice to know my gut enzymes are special. When scientists can reproduce those in a lab and stop the planet from becoming a garbage barge, I’ll do a Dougie dance with them.
But what do I do until that happens?
Just shut up and eat my Styrofoam? Tartare?
My value shouldn’t be determined by what problem I can solve for humans. My therapist says people pleasing and co-dependency are a real stumbling block for worms.
If I agree to spend every day stuffing my mouth with human trash, this will become who I am. I’ll become one of those invertebrates who is defined by their work.
Like my friends, for instance. They’re psyched for this. They say waste management is an industry that can ride out any economic ups and downs. That no one ever went broke underestimating the short-term greed of humans. Me? I don’t see a ton of vertical mobility here. Let’s just say I don’t have my eye on the corner office.
I’ll be just another grunt on the garbage pile, pigeonholed, though compared to being a worm that eats Styrofoam all day, being a pigeon sounds kind of amazing.
Who am I a year from now? Twice this size, constipated, passed out in a food coma, while the seagulls squawk over me at the landfill?
Lowered expectations are a killer. “Once a worm, always a worm” is a phrase that really gets into your head you know?
I’m not a caterpillar. One day, I will become a grungy beetle, not some gorgeous Monarch butterfly. I’ve learned to aim low. But surely not Styrofoam-eating low.
I’m young, I’m sentient. I have dreams. I want the coffee, not just the cup.
I’m more than just a mouth, some enzymes, and an anus.
Give me a chance. You’ll see. Maybe I am Superworm.
And just because I don’t have a backbone doesn’t mean I don’t have a…OK, poor word choice, but you see where I’m going with this.
***
Thanks to Supereditor Amy Sea !
The T. Kent Jones Omnibus never closes.
There’s so much comedy behind this blue-eyed cat.
