In Memorium: The Tiny Survivor in My Salad

I will say right up front that I have come a LONG way over the years in my ability to force mind over matter in certain things - but last eve I reached even a new level.     While preparing the family lunch for today's volleyball festivities in Fort Worth, I had a moment of pause over a little bug who clung to the bottom of one of the "pre-washed" organic lettuce leaves I would be using in our sandwiches...   Now take just a moment to picture it with me - really get inside my mind and body if you would.    I tossed a few leaves onto a sandwich and glimpsed something "foreign" - I picked up the leaf silently and cautiously peered at his little shiny, black sectioned body.   I'm not sure if he was truly a survivor or if he had passed on at some point in the refrigerator or during the "pre-washing" cycle at the lettuce factory.    I had a silent war with my brain/stomach (not for as long as you might think)... and then I just laid him to the side in a pile of refuse and quietly continued making the sandwiches, though checking both sides of each leaf after that.    In that few seconds of pause I had reasoned with my stomach that it would be completely ridiculous and irrational to throw out this whole box of organic greens for one (I'm going with one) bug... I considered the reality that there have surely been others who went undiscovered into my stomach over the years, I have survived.   I called to mind the words of my practical mother  "I'd rather have a bug than toxic poisons on my food"... this was said to me during my first year back in Oklahoma while gathering the turnip greens which were covered in fat little aphids - knowing full well that there was little chance that we could wash EVERY bug out of those greens.   I managed to overcome my queasiness after a period of time and could eat those turnip greens and even enjoy them.   Today we ate our sandwiches without a thought for that little bug who clung so valiantly to that lettuce leaf through who knows what horrors in the wash bin only to be refrigerated to dormancy or death.   At least he didn't go in my stomach....