I’m thinking about midges.

You know them. Those stupid flying bugs that swarm my car in June. They line front doors and windshields until it looks like a clear plastic sheet is covering them.

They rise from the water like Swamp Thing and die quicker than my sister’s goldfish.

They are a nuisance on par with Screech Powers and Shawty Lo fans.

The species only accomplished one worthwhile thing in its irritating history. They managed to land en masse on Joba Chamberlain’s pack-o’-hot-dogs neck during Game 2 of the Yankees-Indians playoff series in 2007. The quasi-locust swarm stole Joba’s cool and he blew the game.

So midges and I both hate the Yankees. Otherwise, we have no common ground.

But I got them on my mind.

I blame Lara Heinz. She has the misfortune of being my friend and, with that distinction, comes responsibility.

For example, I handed her a book of Emily Dickinson poetry today and told her, “Pick the poem for today’s blog. I prefer her musings on death.”

(That’s a paraphrase. I don’t use words like “musings” in my rhetoric. I may have said something like, “I like her death stuff.”)

I’ll be damned if Lara didn’t pick the perfect poem (or, at least, a better poem than I would have picked.)

A toad can die of light!
Death is the common right
Of toads and men,—
Of earl and midge
The privilege.
Why swagger then?
The gnat’s supremacy
Is large as thine.

Dickinson’s proposed theory: Death makes us all equal with the midge. My thought: She obviously didn’t live by a lake.

Then again, they did beat Joba...

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com