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Living the (Chigger-Free) Good Life

Today I am thankful because I remembered a Calvin Trillin reading on Prairie Home Companion about growing up in Kansas City. He talked about chiggers. Chiggers! One of those "Eureka" moments when I realized that yes, it's true, there are no chiggers in New Jersey. Say what you want about Jersey, but at least there are no chiggers here. What a perplexing pest, the mightiest of the mites, the invisible chigger! Got me good at Mrs. Hunt's in 1988 in Springfield, Missouri when I was weeding her garden for $5 an hour to pay the bills in college. Growing up in Southern Illinois, chiggers wreaked havoc on me so many times, but no more. Not in the past 16 years. I had forgotten all about them until Trillin's essay. I experienced instant gratitude!

Even when I joined the Marines, I got sent to Southern California for boot camp. They called us "Hollywood Marines," as opposed to whatever they called the guys who went to Paris Island (PI), South Carolina for boot camp and suffered under the tyranny of sand fleas. Guys who went to PI all talked about it, trying to stand at attention with the sand fleas bearing down on them, making them want to scratch. So by missing South Carolina for Southern California, which is mostly the same letters if you look carefully, I avoided sand fleas. And by moving to Northern New Jersey from Southern Missouri, I left chiggers far behind. So with no sand fleas ever, and no chiggers anymore, I'm thinking I've got a pretty good life.
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