Good God! Mosquitoes are people too?

One wouldn't think that on a sub-zero day when my car conked out on me in the middle of a turn onto my county road that one of my next thoughts would go to mosquitoes, but that's how things go in the great white north. Here's the string of thoughts. Try to keep up.



So while chatting with a friend who lives in Florida about the bitter cold weather and the 2 1/2 hour commute to the office this morning and the fact that one's spit could freeze before hitting the ground (back off, I was using a hands free), I'm making a turn and "FUDGE" [but, I didn't say "fudge" I said it -- F-dash-dash-dash] my car died. The lights dimmed, the steering froze up (no irony there) and the car coasted through the intersection before coming to a complete stop on the shoulder. After telling my friend I was fine but I needed to hang up and make a call, I fiddled with the car a few times and eventually, the car started again. I called my wonderful spouse and had him talk with me the final miles home on the back roads.



So getting back to the mosquitoes, remember the mosquitoes, this is a blog about mosquitoes...I thought back to my work colleague who claimed the January class was canceled because of my personal needs (who cares about the others in the class). I was thinking about how she'd say that God protected me and made sure my car ran until I was safely home (it actually tried to die again right in front of our driveway). Hmmm...it's a pretty thought, but that God would go out of God's way for me today when God didn't see fit to keep a grain truck away from an intersection when my nephew's good friend blew through a stop sign and was killed doesn't add up. That goes in a sense to the question of evil. You know, why do bad things happen to good people and all that. Am I somehow better than my nephew's friend? Am I more evil than he, and thus the bad person that good things happen to? (He dies in his car while I survive.)



You see, it's all about mosquitoes. Yeah, mosquitoes. In one of my small groups last semester, one of my classmates posted that he believed all creation had a purpose, except for mosquitoes. While that can typically be seen as a throw-away line, when one has a druid/nature-worshipping classmate, even a goofy line about mosquitoes can have an in depth theological conversation in which we go through the gamut of topics, from the question of evil (Can mosquitoes be truly evil? Can anything besides humanity be evil? Can humanity be free from evil?) to what happens to the bad people (Do they get their "just rewards" in this life or in the next? What is "just"? Can punishment be just?). The druid in the class is a believer in reincarnation and suggested that perhaps mosquitoes are humans who royally screwed up in a past life and are now back to learn some divine lesson -- we "current" humans are charged with a profound responsibility -- mete out justice by whacking the mosquito or show a brand of mercy that the human may not have known him- or herself in a past life.



That's all too hard for my brain to take in. Sometimes a kid blows off a stop sign, an alternator gives out on a bitterly cold day, and a mosquito chooses the wrong mammal to grab an early evening snack.