When Meat Heads Take Over the World

You know what a meat head is, right? The guys who hang out in gyms in their ribbed, white tank tops? The backwards ball cap wearing, neckless men who bench press ridiculous amounts of weight and have tattoos of, um, barbed wire or something around their bulging biceps? Yeah, you know them. We alllllll know them. Well, the meat heads of the insect world have staged a coup and have taken over my pantry. They are bulky little beasts, with black bodies built like tanks. In length they are shorter than the average ant, but their girth is intimidating. In front they have menacing pinchers, nearly microscopic mandibles.

I first noticed the mini meat heads as what appeared to be black dots around my container of vegetable oil. The container is always leaking oil, so I place it on a clear plastic bag on a shelf in my pantry. The oil pools there, and on closer inspection, I discovered that the black dots were really mystery insects, trapped like dinosaurs in the tar pit of my oil. And so, I started investigating. My friends, they were everywhere. Everywhere! Hiding in folds of every plastic bag. Strutting around in the bottom of my potato chip bag. Lounging with my popcorn kernels. (Yes, now that I say it out loud, I realize that my eating habits are not so great. You could have been polite enough not to notice, you know.)

The most frustrating part of the whole thing was the way they handled their imminent demise. They didn’t run. They didn’t hide. They didn’t scurry or zig or zag. They just kept soldiering around like they owned the place. It was infuriating. An insect who doesn’t run when confronted with death is just so…smug. So arrogant. It’s as if, even in death, he won’t admit that he’s in MY territory. That he doesn’t belong there at all. The teensy, tinsy spiders that had come to try to capture and eat the armored beasts had the decency to run. When the bleach water spray came and the looming wad of toilet paper started to descend, they ran. Good for them. I can respect a spider. Meat heads, on the other hand…

The whole thing begs the question, “If a giant hand with toilet paper suddenly came out of the sky and headed toward meat heads of the human variety, would they run?” I don’t think so. I picture them, walking slowly with their arms floating at their sides, barely glancing up to say in a thick Boston accent (don’t ask—my mind has a mind of its own), “Do ya worst.”