When I was a little kid I got a case of pinworms. My grandmother saw me scratching my butt, took me into the bathroom, bent me over her knee and fetched one out with a pair of tweezers. Mom took it to the drugstore, showed the pharmacist and got some medicine for me. But the worms came back. Worms always come back. They are ubiquitous. You cannot live your life without worm eggs getting into your body. It's just a fact of life that most people would rather deny.

And it's not just pinworms that infect us, either.

I did not like Memaw browsing around in my behind, so after that, every time my butt itched, I went to the bathroom, pulled my pants down, squatted my butt over a mirror and looked for the pesky little rascals myself. I could always see them, but they would sometimes crawl back up inside really fast, before I could catch hold of them. And once one fell out on the mirror.

I figured out they didn't bother me as much if I washed my anal sphincter really really good every day. It gets rid of eggs before they have a chance to hatch out. You have to spread the little rosebud open and wash deep in the cracks.

People like to blame pinworms on kids. But I've caught them over and over all my life, and I don't have any kids. I even got them when I was in the army, and there weren't any kids around anywhere. Who's responsible for kids anyway? And how do you tell a kid to spread open the little rosebud and wash in the cracks really, really good? If kids are too small to understand what you are talking about, should you do it for them? And if you did, would the kid need to get therapy as an adult? Just wondering.

We worm our cats. We worm our dogs. We worm our livestock. We worm them regularly. But when humans get worms, the doctor only prescribes two doses of medicine. And people expect this to get rid of worms for the rest of their lives. It would be nice of course, but it doesn't work that way.

And if you laughed while reading this, please say thank you to your brain for the free dose of non-pharmaceutical anti-parasiticals. Worms hate the chemicals that rush through your veins when you are amused.