Interesting thing | Chelsea Call

I grew up in sunny Las Vegas. That doesn't sound like an interesting thing, but being a child of Southern Nevada meant growing up in a completely different way. For instance, when I was twelve my Grandpa took me out to show me the 'evils of gambling' and I walked home with two thousand dollars from a lucky keno card. I never saw snow, I couldn't comprehend farmlands, and I knew a lot about the human anatomy from billboards at a young age. Our play habits are quite hilarious to non-Nevadans as well. Playing in gutters when it floods in August sounds a little strange to an outsider, catching lizards and scorpions in the desert next to your house sounds a little strange to an outsider, and spending summer vacation outside in the dark... you get it. My summer vacations were unique and I loved them. When summer break hits, the heat is just starting to climb. A month later when it's in the 120's at noon, children can't go out and ride their bikes. Children can't go out and do anything... except fry eggs on the sidewalk. We would stay inside all day reading, watching cartoons, playing board games and finding out how to get into trouble in the limited space. Every once in a while we could go to someone's house and swim, but that was a treat. It was at night that we rejoiced outside with our youthful freedom. It was like a strange scene from a movie where everything is topsy turvy. At nine PM kids would come out under the yellow street lamps and find ways to enjoy the cooler temperatures. My neighborhood was filled with korean children and my best friend, Joan, was bilingual. She would translate for me to her grandparents sitting out on the lawn.
My brothers, Joan and I had a favorite night hobby, cricket catching. We were especially talented in the art of capturing bugs. You had to know all the good spots, avoid the big spiders, and keep the catch unharmed. Our tools of choice were our bare hands and a Ziplock bag. Once we filled the bag, we struggled with what to do with our catch. After my mom yelled at us for putting the bag in the freezer we decided to take our bag out to the neighbor kids and dare them to eat the crickets. I was my older brother's ginny pig, as most younger siblings are, and I ate the crickets to show the other kids how tough our little gang was. After a couple weeks of this, you start to enjoy your glory and fame, but also the crunchy satisfaction of your catch. So I had an affinity for the taste of crickets when I was young, so what? Once my mom heard from the other neighbors what we were doing she showed her true craftiness as a parent. The next day we had a shiny glass aquarium in the living room with a green iguana staring back at us. We named him Lars after our favorite movie character. The rest is history. He got all the excited faces pointed in his direction, he got all the anticipation build up for his first bite and he cut off the supply of my favorite childhood snack. Ugh, I always hated that lizard.