Little Tessa Strowd was playing outside after the rain when she noticed an earthworm struggling on the concrete. She gently grabbed it with her tiny fingers and placed it in the grass. She then ran into the house and proudly told her mom what she had done. Her mother responded dryly. “Why would you do such a thing, Tessa? You disrupted the natural order of things.”
“I can put it back.” Tessa said, with a pout.
“No, it’s too late, just go wash up for lunch.” Her mother replied.
Instead of doing what she was told, Tessa snuck out through the front of the house and found the earthworm still in the grass. She stomped it into the wet earth with all the strength she could muster.
As a teenager, she often thought about asking her mom what role concrete played in the natural order of things, but she never did, fearing the answer might be something like: “Tessa, I have no idea what you are talking about, I mean it’s always something with you, now go wash up for supper.”
When she became Tess Collins and her children were all grown, she sat them down and told them, under no circumstances was she to be cremated like their father. “Feed me to the fucking worms!” were her exact words.
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