The First Step Is Always The Hardest…
Sometimes I wish I had a microscope. I could open up new worlds, worlds unseen to my naked eye. (My eyes aren’t completely naked. Sometimes I wear glasses or contacts.) But maybe I don’t want what I am wishing for. Maybe I wouldn’t want to see what I would see.
What if? I want to look at nature. So I look inside a flower. Flowers are the reproductive parts of plants. It should be interesting in there. I pull down the petals. But what do I see? Bugs! Insects! One is looking up at me. I wonder if it can see my eyeball through the lens. I examine it closely. It’s cross-eyed. And it has a pollen grain on its head. I think its grinning. No wonder my plants don’t fruit!
My eyes itch. I take a scraping, put it on a slide and whip out my Super Magno Eyes microscope. One of those small portable models you can get from a high school science catalogue. I look through the lens and what do I see? Hopefully nothing. But what if it’s a bad day? And I see a creepy crawly, a mite. I look it up on the Internet. It’s Demodex follicularum! And it was crawling around. On my eyelid! These things are nocturnal. I must have yanked it out of its beauty slumber. Thankfully, it’s not running, not jumping hurdles over my eyelashes anymore. But it’s got a big gob of gooey sebum in its mouth. Ewwwww…At least it’s not having sex. What to do?? Seeing something like that would make me want to burn off my eyelashes.
What if? Your significant other has belly button lint. And it’s moving. On its own. Better take a look. Fluffy fibers?? Not a chance says the microscope You look through the eyepiece and see a body louse imprisoned in body hairs. The body hairs form a cage. Thankfully it’s trapped. What did the microscope tell you? It says, send your friend packing. Tell your friend to take a shower. And to get lost.
Your butt itches. You want to scoot along the carpet with your dog. Hemorrhoids or pinworms? Do you dare look? Should you do the scotch tape test for pinworms? Hmmm. Doesn’t sound very aesthetic. Better forget about this one. It’s too gross. Scoot over Rover!
I could get carried away with this. What if I had a really good microscope, like a Scanning Electron Microscope? I could see molecules. I could watch paint dry. Now if I had a lot of time on my hands, I could watch paint dry one molecule at a time.
I’ve had a lot of cavities lately. The dental hygienist told me I need to floss more. She got in between my teeth with her picks and gouges and shoveled out two pounds of plaque, blood, and muck. Bet it would look disgusting under a microscope. If I saw anything wiggle, crawl or pulsate, I think I would scream, “Where’s the #@!!** dental floss???”
I don’t want to see no worms, bugs, amoebas, slime, mites, ticks or fleas! I don’t want to look at mold on my bathroom walls or bread. I don’t want to know what ails me. I want to look at something wonderful but I don’t want to know what it really is.
