Of Crickets and Google
I’m sitting out on my front porch. Partially because I heard a noise that sounded like a doorbell while I was brushing my teeth — It’s about 10:30pm, summertime — and partially because it is so nice outside.
Nice…. Really it’s chill. A clear moment of comfort and calm. The consistent, deafening song of the crickets outside is overpowered only by the occasional car passing by. Between each passing car, it’s easy to lose track of where I am as I focus only on the crickets’ symphony. I don’t really know why crickets chirp, but I don’t want to Google it and ruin the moment. I like it here. If sleep wasn’t so necessary, I’d spend all night out here.
The air is cool, but yet warm enough I don’t feel uncomfortable without a jacket. My bare feet feel right at home, flat on the pavement. There’s just enough warmth left from the day that my feet feel almost seamless with the ground. My butt is beginning to lose feeling from sitting for so long on the pavement. I would go grab my camp chair but it’s at my parents’ house. Even if I did have it, I’d probably still sit without it. I like being lower to the ground. It makes me feel more hidden from view. It’s easier to focus on my thoughts that way.
If I don’t understand why crickets chirp, I really don’t understand why they do it so consistently. While writing this, the cricket closest to me stopped for a brief moment — as if it needed to catch its breath. Does chirping make them tired? Then it started back up not five seconds later and slowly ramped back up to the pitch and frequency it had maintained for the 20 minutes I’ve been sitting here.
What are they saying? Is it just a nervous tick like when I shake my legs? How is it so loud? How does something so small make such a consuming noise? And why is it soothing? Are there people who hate the sound of crickets? Outside of a traumatic experience in a place where crickets were chirping, I can’t imagine why anyone would hate the sound.
Can crickets hear? Do they know that other crickets are chirping with them? Like I said, I could easily Google the answers to this, but that takes away the fun in thinking. Google has put a damper on thinking. You don’t have to think about things because you can just type it in faster and get your answer. Besides, thinking and reasoning take time, and that’s something everyone wants more of. So if you can find out the answer to something quickly and get back to scrolling through Twitter, why spend that time thinking? Thinking is becoming a lost art. We’ve outsourced it to Google. At least that’s what I think.
For a brief second, I thought about closing this by saying something like “I envy the crickets” because I thought that sounded real literary and deep. But the truth is, I don’t envy the crickets. They’re pretty low on the food chain. And if I were a cricket, would it still be as comforting to sit on my porch and listen to them?
