My Childhood Summer Game

When I was little, I would play a silly game with my younger brother & sister and the neighbor kids, I being the oldest. (and most clever!) We would collect Japanese beetles in sandwich bags, bottles, pockets- anything we had really.

The rules were simple... I made them up as we went along. We got 1 point for every Japanese beetle you could catch in the amount of time it took for me to catch more than them. I always had the most points, mainly because I could reach higher on the branches of the cherry willow tree outside our parents' bedroom window. The beetles loved that tree. My father uprooted it after their divorce.

After we had all the beetles and I shouted, "Time's up!" we would meet at the corner of the pavement, where we could all sit on either side of the corner in the grass, so as not to our legs get burned by the asphalt. Sometimes I sat on a blue or red workshop rag I found in the garage. (Because I was the "Champion Japanese Beetle Picker.")

We would go around in a circle and take turns lying our beetles out on their backs one at a time and skillfully squish the guts out of them with the slightest pressure from our pointer fingers. You would get points for whatever color the guts were (brighter being more points, obviously- think yellow), or if the guts squiggled when they came out.

We loved that game. Our parents never had to have the tacky plastic beetle catcher bags hanging from their trees. They had us.

I miss being little and carefree.