firefly .

I was sitting on the kitchen counter this evening, just eating some applesauce, when I looked outside and saw fireflies begin to flash around the front yard. Out of nowhere a flood of memories seeped back into the forefront of my thoughts, and it brought a lot of things to mind.


When I was little fireflies were the coolest thing. I remember my parents getting us little containers so we could catch them and have them as sort of pets. We'd go out and collect grass and leaves and whatever else we thought that they ate. And when you went to sleep at night, they would flash in the dark, being like a pulsating little nightlight.

Sometimes we would just go out into the backyard and watch them blink, chasing them around and trying to catch them in our hands, as they slowly hovered around, most likely unaware of the fact they were being pursued.

As a family, we used to always go play badminton in the backyard. Sometimes it was all of us, sometimes as little as 2 people, but it happened all the time and when the net wasn't set up sometimes we would even just hit it back and forth or around a circle and such. Often the badminton nights would run far into almost complete darkness, to the point where we couldn't even see the fluorescent birdies anymore. At this point my brother and I decided to turn our interest instead to the lightning bugs, as we called them, and go around with the badminton rackets and hitting them. Granted this was kinda cruel, but when you swung the racket, it whistled through the air, and upon contact the bug would explode in a flash of light! It was thrilling... but not because we were killing them, but more because of the resulting light show.

Another memory is of sitting on the front lawn somewhere on July 4th, when the bugs are in full force, and watching an endless line of cars crawl down our street towards the park down the road where they have the 4th of July fireworks. Sometimes my brother and I would sit right on the road in the grass and count the cars, other times it was on the porch, or maybe we were just out doing what we always did and trying to catch lightning bugs. People must have thought we were nuts.

And finally, of course there is the song "Fireflies," an electronic mixture of sounds resulting in optimism and bliss by way of audio. This is the most recent, naturally, as Owl City didn't really exist when I was a little kid.

But as I sat on the counter, it was all of those things all at once. I realized it had been a long time since I had even remembered the fireflies existed -- and upon seeing them all kinds of memories began flooding back to my head. I love when that happens. Despite the sensory overload of times past, it helps you to relive a lot of the good things in life. And I knew right then and there, I had to share it with you guys. Hope you enjoyed it.