The Ants were ALREADY THERE!

“don’t drop anything. .the ants will come”

Now this might sound bad English, and I am translating from Konkani here, my mother tongue from south India.

And the above line is a daily one way unicast from mother dearest to me, and just few days back  I discovered where she gets it from, guess? — FROM HER FUCKING MOTHER!

Here’s the scene:

Every time I have any piece of anything edible in my hands or in my plate, she goes of with the above line like an alert configured on an IDS. And it’s false positives all the waaayyyy..why?

Because.

 

 

THE ANTS WERE ALREADY THERE!!!

The ants did not “come”, they did not teleport there from the amazon forest right when some chunks of biscuit broke of when I bit into it and fell to the ground, nor can they be born right when I drop something. The ant colony is already there in the house, it’s in the walls, the furniture wood, near the plants, they are already there and a few of those bastards called scouts are always looking for something I or anyone drops ALL THE FUCKING TIME.

What’s more the colony has a queen which is a fucking baby ant factory, then there are soldiers, workers and so on, it’s an entire well organized society you are up against and to win against it, you must strike at the very core, the centre — kill the fucking queen.

You can maintain god level cleanliness and build yourself a robot to vacuum the floor every 30secs, but till the queen lives you are not winning this. In fact my mother has taken to spray insecticide right on the little bastards the moment she spots one or few of them. Begs the question, am I not doing her a favour by dropping some food around then?

I have tried to explain her this, but it’s not worked yet, just like how I’ve not been able to convince my parents that bills can be paid online and the dad doesn’t need to spend the two hours he usually does.

The Learning

There are important life lessons here, or else I would not be doing this at 22:30 with my ongoing ATTN attack.

The whole thing to me reeks of ignorance, arrogance and basic human inertia to change—of thinking and doing things.

1. Not understanding what you are up against, not even spending the time to understand it.
   • People do not even stop for a second and think, “what is exactly going on?” How can they find more information before taking any action? Should they look for more info before taking any action? Is there any information even available anywhere before they take any action? The three things winners do works amazingly well here.
2. Rationalizing, assumptions, not bothering about evidence.
   • I have tried asking my parents where do they think the ants come from or where do they go, I got such a totally weird answer, fuck it doesn’t make any sense. “they come out due to the heat of the summer” is what mom said once during the summer season, out of nowhere, she never watched it on a show about ants on natgeo, nor had anyone told her ants behaved like this during summer, she just CAME UP WITH IT! Out of nowhere. She just made up an explanation from the first thing(the summer heat) she noticed around her.
   • And obviously she had no evidence to back it up whatsoever.
3. Not listening, being old = being smart.
   • I told her the whole thing about ants, she just never considered it. Or maybe did, but for a little while and then her ego bounced back about knowing more than me because she’s older and is the mother.
   • About how being old works in India you should read this one too.
4. Failing to understand cause and effect
   • Never spending the time to understand what comes first, the ants or the food?
5. A lot of people act this way with life.