I Wanna Be Nasty Like an Inchworm

It is spring, and Charlotte has grown infested with inchworms. It’s like Georgia with ladybugs, only this is worse. Much, much worse.

Oh, what’s that? You think inchworms are so cute? The adorable way they arch-and-stretch, arch-and-stretch, arch-and-stretch? You think inchworms are the BEST little wormies? Even better than Wormies by Jana?

Oh no, dear reader; you are wrong. You are so wrong. Inchworms are THE worst.

Everyday I walk out my door or across the yard or into my car, and I encounter an inchworm dangling from an invisible thread that reaches to the heavens. And by “encounter,” I mean to say that our bodies touch. Mine. The inchworm’s. Touching.

The inchworms detach from their gooey strings onto my shoulders. They tunnel into my hair. Their sticky spindly webs cover my face and frame with every step outside.

After basking in the city’s blooming of cherry blossoms on every street, I’m pulled the opposite direction by these infinite inchworms now devouring Charlotte. I hate them. Oh, how I hate them.

And yet I’ve been learning so much from these horrid little creatures.

The other day I was sitting at the park having brushed one inchworm out of my hair and another off my crotch. I observed another inching its little heart across the picnic table.

Arch, stretch, arch, stretch, arch, stretch.

So methodical, that inchworm — more like a centimeterworm. They don’t make much progress with one single stretch of their fingernail-sized frames.

But after a couple minutes, I noticed this inchworm had made it to the opposite side of my picnic table — far away from me, thankfully.

All the inchworm’s minuscule scoots actually added up.

There’s a giant soccer field to my left. If that little wormie were next to descend the picnic table and attend his family wormie reunion on the opposite side of the soccer field, it might take him days, weeks, years. Inching along at its poor fixed pace.

The inchworm’s life expectancy aside, he would eventually get there. Something about the inchworm’s consistency has me convinced this wandering inchworm could traverse continents.

Consistency. Persistence. Arch and stretch. Over and over. Inch by inch.

I still despise these menaces, but I’m growing weirdly encouraged by the inchworm. Though their steps are small and slow, their mileage mounts. They get places.

I feel like an inchworm in Charlotte. A part-time job here, a new coffee shop explored there, and a small group attended over there. Inching along while this new place still hustles and bustles all around me.

I think I am making progress in the Queen City, though I’m still inching across this giant picnic table with sights set on the vast soccer field horizon. I want to go so much further than where I stand today. But all I can do is inch in this new city.

It’s a city of cherry blossoms. And it’s a city of inchworms.

Awful nasty inchworms that have become my new inspirations.