Worms on the pavement

By Soncirey Mitchell

Reader Staff

If an advanced civilization of sentient rocks, or perhaps gaseous clouds, came to Earth in their starships, how would they perceive us? Would they recognize that humanity is made up of intelligent individuals, or would they look at our planet of hairless apes spouting inane, incomprehensible babble the same way that we look at seagulls in the Walmart parking lot?

When I watch something like X-Files, in which a random person gets picked up in a flying saucer to face horrors beyond their comprehension, I always think of my seventh birthday party.

My cousins had found a worm on the ground and were trying to get it inside an already inflated balloon — they were having difficulty grasping Newton’s Third Law of Motion — so that they could send it up into the sky.

When I found out about the attempted worm abduction, I was inconsolable. I sobbed in my parents’ front yard, wearing my scratchy, pink princess dress, until my cousins agreed to give me the worm. I released him back into the soil, where I imagine he told his family about the Lovecraftian entities that almost murdered him.

I’ve always felt a kinship with worms — especially the ones that crawl out onto the pavement during a storm. When I went to college in Washington, every time it rained — which was at least four times a week — thousands of worms would crawl up through the campus lawns to dance and writhe on the sidewalks.

The author at her rain-soaked graduation from the University of Puget Sound, the headquarters of the Worm Savior Society. Photo by Ana Monfort.

There were so many of them that the students formed what we called “The Worm Savior Society,” where we pledged to scoot the invertebrates back onto the grass whenever we could. I would dutifully watch my feet as I walked to class, stooping to scoop the worms up with my ID card so they wouldn’t get squished or dry out.

I don’t think humanity would look much different than worms to a sentient space rock — all pink and squishy, always wiggling around. I’d like to think they’d look on us with affectionate bemusement as they try to push us in the right direction, because the alternative is death by intergalactic balloon.

I think it would do us some good, as we await our alien overlords, to embrace our wormy-ness. According to the Earthworm Society of Britain, the little annelids likely come out when it rains because they can easily glide across the earth’s surface to find food, friends or new homes: worm roller skating, if you will.

They’re moving blindly, so quick to get where they’re going that they sometimes get lost and need a helping hand to guide them back home. Humanity engages in a similar race as we hurry through the work week to get to the weekend, hurry to the store for deals on Black Friday or hurry through life trying to achieve the next milestone. Eventually, despite our best efforts, we get lost.

Accepting our wormy-ness means realizing that we, at some point in our lives, will need help from others and they will need help from us. Sometimes we’re the worm, sometimes we’re the hand with the ID card.

Take a page from worm philosophy — offer kindness to others freely, and accept it just as quickly the next time you’re left directionless on the pavement.