I am a man of fantastic extremes. Last Friday I wanted to feel BIG. After a failed attempt by grafting giraffe body parts onto my fantastic body I achieved my goal by surrounding myself with tiny things. Today, I decided I wanted to experience being very small. Logic would dictate that the best approach would have been to surround myself with GIANT things. That seemed like a cop out though.
Realizing that removing parts of my body to make myself smaller was probably not a good idea I took another, less radical approach. I decided to move around on the ground like a worm. If you aren’t familiar with worms, they are very small animals that live under the ground. They are not the same as ants, which are also small animals that live under the ground. They are not the same as moles, which are also small animals that live under the ground. They are not the same as some wasps, which are also small animals that sometimes live under the ground. They are similar to snakes, which are also small animals that live under the ground. They are not the same as bugs, which are also small animals that live under the ground. No, worms are their own kind of animal that lives under the ground.
One of the things about worms is that they don’t have any arms or legs. In this they are like snakes, which also don’t have arms or legs. Not having arms or legs means that worms see everything from the ground, kind of a “worms-eye view” and this was what I was hoping to achieve by moving around on the ground like a worm. Here is how I did it:
- I got out of bed.
- I lay down on the floor.
- I wriggled along the floor to my dresser.
- I realized that since worms have no arms I wouldn’t be able to reach up to get an clothes out of the dresser. (Thankfully, because I am a MAN of ACTION I sleep in my special ANDY LAM MANLY NIGHT ARMOR so I wasn’t nude!)
- I wriggled out my bedroom door. (The guards stepped aside to let me through. They quickly realized what I was doing and followed close behind to make sure nothing bad happened, like a bird attack for example. This is important because birds are worms natural enemy — particularly first thing in the morning, which it was when I was doing this experiment.)
- CAREFULLY, I wriggled into the elevator. (Again, because I was a worm I wasn’t able to reach the buttons. Fortunately, the guards realized I wanted to go down (since my room is on the top floor) and they pushed all of the buttons, which would allow me to wriggle out on whatever floor I wanted. I should probably point out that to keep with my worm persona I decided not to speak. This presented many challenges throughout the day.)
- When we reached the ground floor I wriggled out and kept on wriggling until I was out in the garden.
- I began to roll around in the dirt, pushing myself into the cool soil. Just then, a bird came swooping down! It began biting me with its sharp beak! I rolled from side to side hoping it would fly away! It grabbed me in its beak though and flew away with me before my guards could react!
- The bird flew and flew with me handing from its beak. We flew over the compound for a while. As we approached the inner walls I was starting to worry that I was going to get lost. I was so scared and nervous!
- Suddenly I saw a team of my border agents pointing up at me and the bird. One of them raised his rifle! Was this really about to happen? Was the bird going to be shot out of the sky? And what would happen to me, ANDY LAM, if that happened?
- There was a loud BANG! A shot was fired! The bird was blown to smithereens! (Thankfully, the bullet didn’t hit me at all!)
- I was falling out of the sky.
- I was tumbling out of the sky.
- I could see my fire trucks racing under me!
- The ladies and gentlemen from the fire truck hopped out and held a giant net for me to fall into.
- I landed in the net and bounced a few times.
- They carefully put me back on the ground.
- I wriggled back to the garden and resumed pushing myself into the soil.
- I did this for several hours.
- I got bored and decided to get up to have some lunch and stop being a worm.
This is what I learned: being a worm is hard. There is not a lot you can do. The worm’s eye view, however, is very interesting. When I was on the ground and looking up everything looked super big, which made me feel super small. When the bird had me, however, and I was in the air, everything suddenly looked super tiny which made me feel super big. It was very confusing to go from feeling super tiny to super big and I didn’t really like it very much.
The other thing I learned is that if you are going to experiment with being a worm you should arrange it with your people in advance. That way they will know what you are doing and will be able to help you faster if a bird grabs you. I think that was the biggest lesson of my attempt to be small. Birds are very dangerous.
Back to my normal size and feeling better for it, I am . . .
ANDY LAM!
