The Worm

He does remind one of a worm, now that I think of it, his consistently fair coloration, his soft, somewhat featureless appearance, and the smooth round shape of his head all reminiscent of an earthworm.

And then there's his habit of pausing with his mouth open, searching for something sufficiently sycophantic to say, I suppose, and the high-pitched way he strains to sing his words of stilted smarm in the only the most pleasing manner. He's a regular Eddie Haskell, he is, except I don't know anyone he ever levels with. Maybe his wife?

He's good, I'll give him that, for I could never quite put my finger on what it was about him that got my skin crawling, what with his flattering words, his hearty approbations, his judicious pauses, his smooth-as-silk smile.

It took a woman of considerable discernment to see him for what he is, noting in his comings and goings over a short period of time a distinct pattern of avoidance, namely, that he was prone to appear whenever she left me, to slither away whenever she returned.

"Why?" she asked me, and in asking it she answered it for me, for at that moment I finally figured it out. She was a threat, both to his friendship with me and, more importantly, to his secret plans for my future, plans which, now that I saw him more clearly, looked glaringly obvious, though tinged with a very weird sort of twisted logic: a religious conversion, a cross-country move and, in all likelihood, a business partnership. How could I have been so blind? How could he have been so creepy?

"He's a worm," she explained, and I had to laugh. It was so true.

Later whenever he'd come up in one of our conversations, one of us would imitate him, saying "Hello, I'm just a worm," in a slow high falsetto voice, stretching out the "r" in "worm."

One morning I said it while the kids were playing on our bed. I was wiggling one of my feet and my eldest assumed I meant that my foot was a worm. A new game! My other foot quickly became a slug with a voice like a '30s gangster and then I hid the first foot and it reappeared as a particularly evil-tempered mole, ostensibly trying to push her off the bed but in reality just tickling her. Soon a whole host of fauna appeared under our covers, each with its own distinct voice and odd behavioral issues, and the worm reappeared and the evil mole tried to eat it but instead just tickled my youngest and -- what can I say? -- the senseless fun just went on and on and today my kids often ask me for the "worm game" by saying "I'm just a worm" in their highest-pitched pleading voices, unwittingly imitating the original worm.

It's odd how life happens, isn't it?