Have you ever noticed how the simplest things can cause the most aggravation in life?

Something as minute as a gnat, well it was gnats in this case, busily swarming around my half-eaten tomato was almost enough to drive me insane the other day.

I decided that my aggravation was not from the gnat, but actually something else. Perhaps it was a deep rooted problem with my sense of insecurity in a world full of evil gnats. Then again, maybe I had something else aggravating me that was brought to the surface by this minute problem.

So I decided to kill the gnats instead of looking into the murky waters of the inner self. It is much less of a mess to smash a gnat than to rip open one's innermost feelings and thoughts. That would be like opening a can of worms. Not that worms have anything to do with this story, but that is all I could think of as I was writing this.

Not that I am preoccupied with thoughts of worms, but.... Oh, nevermind.

I was killing the gnats. Or should I say, attempting to kill the gnats.

They were tough guys, maybe even gnat mafia, with beady little eyes. Eyes so little, in fact, that I couldn't even see them. But I know they must have been beady, they were just those kind of gnats.

They waited until I was getting ready to slice the other half of my tomato, which had been in a bowl in the gnat-free environs of my refrigerator. When I opened the bowl, I could almost hear the bugle going off as the gnats broke into a charge. They were flitting around my face and the more I swiped, the more gnats I saw.

Where do those things come from? The windows and doors were closed at the house, but I suppose gnats are like elephants, they can go just about anywhere they want to without much of a problem. Unless they are in a zoo - the elephants that is. Gnats go to the zoo to hang out, but they can leave anytime they want to. Come to think of it, there aren't many things as free as a gnat.

Maybe that would make a good saying, "I feel free as a gnat." Add "and nearly as bothersome," in my case. At any rate, the gnats were buzzing around, silently of course, and I was trying to make a 'mater sandwich.

I had all the ingredients: Two slices of fresh bread, a knife, off-brand mayonnaise and salt. Oh yeah, don't forget the tomato.

The gnats got so bad in fact, I decided to stop making my sandwich to exterminate them. That was when I realized how hard it is to kill gnats without toxic chemicals. I was trying to snatch them out of the air, but they usually just swerved around it and I ended up with a hand full of air. I got a bit carried away, knocking over my wooden, single bottle-wine rack with an errant swipe. My very dusty bottle of "Ripple" (as Fred Sanford would say) nearly hit the floor. It was rolling off the counter top and I jumped to catch it, knocking over a chair which then hit the garbage can.

The can was teetering precariously, seemingly in slow motion as I tried to catch it. I knew it was filled with vile smelling gnat food. The evil gnats had planned this attack more carefully than I realized. I had the bottle in my hand, which I had caught from the counter top, as I tried to catch the garbage can. I tripped over the upended chair and fell into the can, smashing the bottle into the table and knocking over and breaking my tomato bowl (sending the hurling half into the nether regions of unknown floorspace), and my salt. The wine bottle did not break and I caught myself on the window sill before falling, just in time to watch the trash can hit the floor and spray stuff all over that corner of the room. Cursing my bad luck, I walked around the table and almost fell again when I stepped on the half tomato, grinding it into the floor. So what's the moral of this story? Don't get so caught up in killing all the gnats in your life that you nearly break your wine, knock over your garbage can and stomp your lunch into the floor. Take it from me, there's not much fun in it. Unless, of course, you're a gnat.

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