On Tuesday night, I was down Louisiana way, drivin’ and talkin’ with three incredible women in a rented Nissan.
Just for fun, we thought we’d scan through the stations and check out the local radio scene. We didn’t get far, because the third station we hit on was broadcasting a call-in talk show about … bugs. All bugs. Just bugs. It was an hourlong call-in talk show for people who have pressing questions about bugs.
One of the incredible women in the car said, “Ha! This is great! They should call the show, What’s Buggin’ You?”
Almost as the words came out of her mouth, the host — who was great — said, “Well, time for our next caller. I’ve got Steve, here. Welcome to What’s Buggin’ You? What’s buggin’ you today, Steve in Lake Charles?”
All the incredible women and I clapped with glee and gladness. It was so cool that there was this show about bugs and people were so into it. Questions came in about ticks, beetles, ants … It turns out, people have all kinds of questions about bugs! The guest entomologist who answered these burning questions on the air was a woman with a very nice voice. Wow, did she ever know about bugs.
Because the questions were so varied — even though they were all about bugs — I thought about this woman’s schooling. I do this a lot: I think about the kinds of classes a professional person must have taken to get their degree. In this case, the lady would surely have classes like:
Grub Seminar II (Prerequisite: Sophomore Larvae Survey)
Advanced Thorax Analysis
Grasshoppers, Crickets, and Katydid: A New View
Right? Don’t you think about these things? What about a dentist?? I always wonder about their classes. I know they have to have classes just about the tongue, how to understand it and work around it and all that. And I think about people in beauty school who have units devoted to the chemical formula of bleach and how this or that molecule of color sticks to a hair folicile (or not.)
If anyone from What’s Buggin’ You? should come across this on a google alert or a search, I would like to thank you for your delightful program. If I hadn’t been driving while we were listening, I absolutely would have called in. I am terribly afraid of bugs — bugs and ferns — and I would have liked to call in and ask how to deal with that fear. Of course, that is really more a question for a shrink, I suppose. Good thing psychiatrists have classes like:
Phobias III
21st Century Exposure Therapies Workshop
What’s Buggin’ You
Love,
Mary