Bandwing Grasshoppers

I carefully inspected the cold glass jar in my small hands. Searching for any trace of tampering. I didn't see anything suspicious about the jar, nor the liquid it contained, so I went ahead and poured a small amount on my food.

A common meal at my house was pan-fried trout, steamed rice, and a simple salad. My parents would eat on their TV trays in the living room, and my brothers and I were left to serve ourselves. We kids usually were not even alerted to mealtimes; it was up to us to pay attention to things like that.

During the summer, my brothers and I would chase and catch grasshoppers in the tall weeds of our backyard. I liked the loud crackling noise these particular bugs made when they jumped. Oh, and when they did jump, what a beautiful surprise they revealed. Their hidden underwings displayed a bright flash of color as they leapt. I caught and lovingly inspected as many as I could, always looking for subtle differences in each as if they were exotic flowers.

However, we usually did not catch them to gently admire. No, quite the opposite-- we mostly caught them for bait. We would break their colorful wings to make them stay open, pierce a hook through their thorax, and then toss a hopeful cast from the nearby creek bank.

The first time I skewered one, I found that a thin, dark fluid leaked from the grasshopper. I made the mistake of exclaiming in my weird little kid way that it kind of looked like soy sauce I then proceeded to sniff it, for whatever reason.

"Don't lick it, STUPID!" My brothers laughed, braying like a pair of jackasses.

It didn't matter how many times I swore I wasn't trying to taste it, my brothers were never going to let this one go.

From then on, anytime they saw me use soy sauce for my steamed rice, they would raise their eyebrows teasingly and cock their heads, laughing, as if to say, "Are you SURE that is REALLY soy sauce?"

For the longest time, I would check the bottle prior to use. It didn't trust my brothers one bit. I had to make sure there were no grasshoppers floating in it.