Haters and Flies

I shall never forget the question someone asked our sixth grade science teacher: "Mr. Freeman, why is it that we can't kill all the flies around our House?" The teacher responded that there are way more flies than people. Each female fly, he said, lays about 150 eggs, three times a month during the summer. The eggs hatch and bring forth similar numbers and the beat goes on and on and on.

Then someone in the class used a word that I heard for the first time, "there are a gazillian flies." I later found out that our number system does not extend to a gazillian. It is used jocularly to underscore the significance or the immensity of a thing. The point, however, is clear.

Today when I recall that long ago class room experience, I transpose the flies to the hostility and pathologically partisan pollution that comes from Members in the chambers of Congress. I wonder how many of those eggs I myself have laid during each session? What if each person who hears me then goes on to lay eggs of their own? Who knows, we might one day end up with gazillians of our own citizens hating each other.

While haters and flies I do despise, the more I hear haters, the more I like flies.