B. v Mothra

Late last night, I looked up in the corner of my kitchen and there was an enormous moth. Like the size of a small station wagon. I could see little 1970s children looking out a window in that moth’s butt waving to me for help, that’s how big it was.

I know we’ve talked about this before, but Jesus Christ, if you were born between about 1965 and 1980, it’s really a wonder as many of us made it to adulthood as have. It was all, eh, throw the kids back there with the spare tire and I’ll drive them around town while I smoke and let the littlest one sit on my lap and work the stick shift.

I can remember being in the back seat of one of my friends’ mom’s cars and my door wasn’t shut tight (which, in those days, seemed to be a real concern–my cousin once went rolling down an interstate saved only by his pillow when he fell out of a car because the door wasn’t shut tight and my brother lost some beloved GI Joes when they fell out of a car) and she just reached back behind her, right cigaretted hand on the wheel, left hand grabbing for the door handle, and she just opened that thing, slammed it shut, and kept going, never dipping below 40 miles an hour.

And I still have that vision of the passing pavement practically beneath me seared into my brain.

Seriously, the people of my generation need to take my parents generation aside and just grab them by the lapels and shout, “What were you thinking? We could have died!” and also “Was littering a public sport back then or what?”

You can almost imagine that the guy tossing his little styrofoam clam from his Big Mac out the window just as my cousin rolls out of the car ahead of him was all “Damn, there goes my chance for victory!”

Anyway, the moth. It was huge. And I did the sciency crap where you turn off all the lights in the house and turn on the light in the garage to try to lure the moth into being fooled into believing that that’s the sun out there or something. But Mothra was having none of it. Mothra was all, heh, now that we’re alone here in the dark, let me fly right at your face!!!!

Thanks for nothing, science.

I got the broom out of the other room and tried to swat Mothra outside. But of course, Mothra just sat on the end of the broom and was all, “That’s right! Take me for a ride, tiny human!”

And folks, I am embarrassed to admit that it took me a good ten minutes to realize that the solution was to let the moth land on the broom and then take the broom outdoors where the moth promptly flew away.

So, victory for me! Kind of. I mean, ten minutes! But, in my defense, look at how my parents brought me up.