Pine Nuts: If a cicada can take a dirt nap for 13-17 years, and come up singing, why can’t we?
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Sun, 05/12/2024 - 7:41am
I usually whistle past the obituaries, but Larry Young caught my eye. He was a scientist who discovered Love Potion Number Nine. Yes, Larry unearthed a chemical that heightens desire, not that the world needs it. A drug that would diminish desire might do the world more good in the long run.
But Dr. Young was singing the praises of a chemical to make the heart flutter in a good way when he died of a heart attack at age 59.
Does Dr. Young’s work signal the day when perfect mates will be selected at the pharmacy? I can see the ads now: “Perfect Husband Drive Through.”
So what would Mark Twain say?
“Young people seem to think love is the swiftest of all growths, but in fact it is the slowest. No man, no woman, can know true love until they’ve been married a quarter of a century.”
Why don’t they do a study on the mating drive of cicadas? They build-up a libido underground for 13-17 years before busting sod and singing their odes to Aphrodite loud enough to wake Muddy Waters in his Illinois grave.
Poets? Who will need poets anymore when we have chemicals to stir the passions? Poets will be out to pasture and will be hauling in their signs when Love Potion Number Nine hits the market.
So why have scientists failed to study the mating habits of the cicada? Probably because no scientist can wait 13-17 years for the cicada to come calling. Scientists as a general thing are not patient people. I went out with a scientist once when in college, and just as I was about take her hand she announced without emotion, “You blinked sixteen times in a minute, and that indicates irritable bowel syndrome.”
Personally, I hope the old-fashioned way of finding a mate prevails, that of hanging out on the corner near the ice cream parlor, and watching the girls go by.
But while I’m thinking about it, a person’s last words, as they might show up in an obituary, are so important. I tend to favor, “I done my damndest.” We just don’t want to go out mad, like W. C. Fields, whose fiery last words were to his long-standing mistress, Carlotta: “Damn the whole world and everybody in it but you, Carlotta.” (Carlotta must have been an exceptionally nice person.)
This causes me to consider the possibility of a future life. Hey, if a cicada can take a dirt nap for 13-17 years, and come up singing, why can’t we?
All I know for sure is, we have to make the most of this life we’ve got, choose a good mate, raise some good kids, and make the world a little better place. Above all, while I’m up on this soapbox, please, in this great land of ours, where we can be anything — be kind.
— For more than 35 years, in over 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American."
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