Mrs. Ladybug And The Fast Lane To Insanity

I'm sitting at sushi bar in a Stockholm mall. The walkways, shops and stores of the mall are entirely indistinguishable from every other shopping mall on the planet. If I step outside the building I could find myself in London, Washington, Beirut or Wimbledon; there is no sense of any Swedish cultural specificity around me. I’m... wait... there's a ladybug sitting on my leg.  A tiny red blot all alone on a rice stained baggy cloth of Atlantic blue denim.

What to do? Should I flick Mrs. Red away or just leave her be? Hm?

I place one of my long Chinese eating sticks on my leg and watch Mrs. Red climbs onto the stick. I carefully place the stick and Mrs. Red on my table. No doubt she'll fly way.  I take a long sip of Ramlosa, Sweden's finest bottled drinking water. I see that Mrs. Red hasn't moved on. Mrs. Red is lying on her back with her legs in the air. She's wriggling away, hard and fast, but not going anywhere.  The surface of the table is too smooth for her little feet to gain any purchase.

Why should I care?

Well, I've eaten well, had a nice day out, and this is probably a good opportunity to be a better version of myself; so I use my sushi stick to turn Mrs. Red over and allow her to stand up on the table. She's okay. Good. 

Obviously, I don't know much about Ladybugs. Why are Ladybugs even called ladybugs? How long do these bugs live for? How resilient to damage are they? How sensitive to pain are they? Why am I even worrying about this bug? I'm not responsible for this bug. I don't know her name. We've never met before.

Wait! While I’ve been pondering these important questions a waiter has come along and cleaned the table. My eating sticks are gone! The bottle of water is gone! Mrs. Ladybug is gone! I'm looking at the dirty dishcloth in the waiter's hands. Please don't tell me Mrs. Ladybug has been squashed and her flattened corpse is in that unspeakably dirty cloth! 

Should I say something to the waiter? This is ridiculous? I’m being ridiculous. Ladybugs die all the time and no one cares.

Be honest Sam, have you ever spent a single second of your life before wondering about the life, the value, the merit of a ladybug? No!

So why now?

“I have no fucking idea!” I scream back at myself as I watch the waiter go back to his kitchen and drop his  potentially murderous dishcloth in the sink

I tell myself to Get Up, to walk away from this table and not give that meaningless, insignificant insect one more single thought. Walk away.  Shut down this mental madness.

Wait. Wait. Sam, what are you doing?

Why are you following the water and checking out his dishcloth for any sign of the battered, mashed up corpse of Mrs. Red?

Mrs. Red isn't anywhere to be seen.

Calm down, you tell yourself. There’s no proof Mrs. Red is hurt. She’s probably somewhere out there with her family watching Dance Mom’s and is happy!

For the love of God, Sam, leave it at that and m-o-o-o-o-v-e on…

And so I did.