Come Back, Horny!

I was apparently a strange child. Go figure. 

I have always preferred animals to most people. I don't mean, "Oooh, I like kitties!" (but, well, duh). I mean all animals. Cats, dogs, rabbits, hamsters, raccoons that hung out in the dumpsters, worms, bugs. Bugs were really neat. Sometimes I really question all of my life decisions for not having studied entomology in college. When I was a kid, I went back and forth between "I wanna be an author!" and "I wanna be a veterinarian!" Then I realized that being a veterinarian wouldn't just mean "I get to play with animals!" but that it meant "I have to see animals when they're in pain." And that would haunt my dreams. One time I took my cat to the vet and a dog died in the waiting room. I cried for hours. Not like a trickle of tears. Gut-wrenching sobs for hours. I was 20. I definitely could never be the person breaking the news to somebody that their pet was sick. 

I spent most of second and third grade "writing books" about cats and hamsters. Recess? Fuck that noise! I'd go to the school library during recess, grab information books about cats, and summarize them, because I was determined to write informational books about cats. Same with hamsters. While this never took off into a lucrative career, it did serve quite well for preparing me for freelance technical writing. So, that's cool. Thanks, me, for being so damn weird as a kid.

What was I talking about? Oh, yes. Come back, Horny.

I always thought bugs were cool, be they insects, arachnids, vespines. Oh, vespines. Such interesting creatures. Vespines, my dear readers, would be hornets. It seems I used to play with hornets when I was around three or four. Yeah. Play. With. Hornets. I don't even know what this means. I asked my mother about it today and she doesn't remember. So I assume this means I would be jumping on my Pogo Ball (that's right, I'm an 80s kid!) while a bunch of hornets flew around overhead. I probably talked to the hornets at the same time. I don't know. This was also the same era in my life in which I called all animals by diminutives. Kitty, Doggy, Bunny, Birdy, etc.

So, one day, I was in the backyard, playing with hornets. One of the hornets flew away, as hornets are wont to do. And I burst into tears. Like, absolutely inconsolable, because my friend was leaving and I never even got to say good-bye! According to my mother, I ran after the hornet, screaming for it's return. And I wasn't just screaming, "Come back, Friend!" I was running across the backyard, screaming at the top of my lungs for all the neighbors to hear, "COME BACK, HORNY! HORNY! I WANT MY FRIEND HORNY! HOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRNNNNNNNNNNYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!"