What a pleasure it is to sit in the backyard during the summer and hear the cicadas creating their distinctive sound and to see the lightning bugs! It takes me back to my childhood, sitting on the front porch on a hot muggy evening! I can hear the giggles and remember the fun of summers from my youth.
I am reminded of catching the fireflies and putting them in a jar to watch them light up! Another thing that happened in my Indiana town was that my father would take a lightning bug, smush it on our ring finger as it would light up, and we would having a glowing ring! The golden ring would stay lit up for quite some time. But, now I am aware that it came from the sacrifice of the life of the poor lightning bug! As an adult I look back in sadness as I realize that he actually had to kill the bug to create my jewelry. Lately, I have inquired to see if other people ever did this to fireflies, and I have only discovered one person, who was a fellow Hoosier. (Please feel free to let me know if you ever did this as a kid…I am curious!)
After being fascinated by the lightning bugs this year, I decided to “google” fireflies and was astonished to discover that there is one place in the USA where fireflies all flash at the same time, followed by a period of darkness before they light up the sky again. Apparently, it also happens that they flash in a wave. For those of you who also find this hard to believe, a web page where you can read more about it is www.pigeonforge.com/synchronous_fireflies/
This left me wondering, what it would be like if people were the same: all looked the same, all talked at the same time, etc. I believe I would get bored and life would not be very exciting. I enjoy diversity! People who think and act differently than me help me to learn more about myself! No matter what, I might go to Tennessee someday to see the synchronous fireflies, but in the meantime, I will continue enjoy watching them flash one by one in my back yard!
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