Welcome Tammy Tuesday, 09-Dec-97 11:32:09

Your story reminded me of a "parents' weekend" back in college. One day as I approached the steps of the dining hall, I froze when I saw a beetle lying helpless on its back on the second step (from ground level). It was struggling to right itself, as if it knew what its fate would be if it didn't. Instead of going inside, I waiting around the steps to see if a pretty freshman girl would accidently step on him. Several people passed, including some good looking girls--but they just stepped everywhere except on the bug! (I was lucky though that none of the guys stepped it, though). Then suddenly, a family was approaching the dining hall. The daughter and father walked passed the beetle, but I hit pay dirt with the mother. She looked great for a mother. She was tall with dark hair and was wearing large black pumps. She slowly stepped on the first step with her left foot and then---her large right foot came down right on the beetle! It made a huge crunch--like stepping on a crinkled leaf during autumn. Her foot covered the entire beetle, and he stuck to her shoe! Despite the loud crunch, she didn't even realize it at all, and kept walking up the stairs. I followed her inside, where she had to walk up another 6-8 steps to get to the dining hall food area. All the while she was trampling him mercilessly as she walked up the stairs. I actually went up to her as she stood in line for food and said "Excuse me, I couldn't help but notice that you trampled a live beetle". I motioned to her foot. She looked under her pump, and the beetle was so flat and squashed. She was a little embarrassed, but she smiled and said something like: "Well, I guess you saw him lose his life." But I was so in to it that I didn't stop there. I reminded her that the bug was still stuck to her shoe. She said that most of it had apparently come off---but she was wrong. The entire bug was completely on her shoe; but it was so flat, that she wrongly assumed that she had only a thin layer of it left on her. She finally said to me that she would scuff it off on the grass later; I then overheard her say to her husband (referring to my persistence), "What's the big deal."

Clay