Lampyridae. The name sort of sounds intimidating, like it might be some prehistoric flesh-eating beast.
What it actually is, is what I call a lightnin’ bug. And they are everywhere right now.
I stepped out on my back deck Saturday night to admire the freshly cut grass and saw what seemed like a million of them flitting about the yard. I took my phone out to see if I could get video of them lighting up the dusk sky when one flew straight at me. On the recording, it looks more than a little like Tinkerbell.
The experience reminded me of childhood summers when my brothers and cousins and I would try to catch lightnin’ bugs to keep in a glass jar as a sort of homemade camping lantern. The trick was to look for the bugs’ silhouettes against the sky before it got too dark.
Of course, the lantern idea never really worked the way we imagined it would. We always thought if we caught enough lightnin’ bugs, we’d end up with something that glowed like a lamp. Instead, most of them spent their time crawling around on the bottom of the jar or clinging to the glass. Every now and then one would flash, followed by another a few seconds later. It wasn’t exactly bright enough to read by, but to a bunch of kids, it was still pretty impressive.
Those were mostly carefree summers, spent playing wiffleball, fishing in the creek, swimming in the lake and camping frequently. There were no bills or deadlines to worry about, no cell phones or social media to distract us, no home video games — at least until we discovered Pacman on the old Atari system. We’d never even heard of wi-fi.
And we had a blast.
Most days, we’d leave the house in the morning and stay gone for hours. Our parents generally knew where we were, or at least had a pretty good idea, but nobody expected us to check in every 15 minutes. If we got thirsty, we drank from a water hose. If we got bored, we found something to do. If we got hungry, we came home.
Looking back, it seems almost impossible that we managed to entertain ourselves so easily. But somehow we did. A baseball, a fishing pole, a bicycle or a handful of cousins was usually enough.
That’s not meant as a criticism of today’s kids. Every generation grows up in a different world. If smartphones had existed when I was 10 years old, I probably would have spent plenty of time staring at one myself. I certainly pay a lot of attention to it now.
Still, I wonder sometimes what memories today’s children will find themselves revisiting 45 years from now. What ordinary summer evenings will suddenly come rushing back to them when they’re standing in a backyard after dark?
For me, apparently, it’s lightnin’ bugs.
Today’s young people probably would imagine our childhoods to be terribly boring. On the flip side, I think about all the things they’re missing. Like catching lightnin’ bugs to keep in a jar, then reminiscing about it 45 years later.
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Scott Loftis is editor and publisher of the Eureka Springs Times-Echo.
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