• I lived with my family in Wingrove, Alabama from when I was born up until I found my first job. Wingrove was a moderately busy, lower middle class town that sat on the edge of a wetlands reserve. That just means we lived on a swamp which meant we enjoyed the company of any number of slimy, crawly, biting critters, the most mundane and abundant of them being the mosquito. You could sit in one spot for 2 minutes
    and come off with a dozen new mosquito bites. We did what we could, wore longer sleeves near the water, kept onions in our diet so that our
    perspiration might ward off the little bloodsuckers. Just little things to avoid getting too torn up, It wasn’t much more than a persistent
    annoyance for most of us. Save for little Eric Bernulle, a rather sickly looking blonde boy, that is. He stayed in most often he could and wouldn’t go
    without a shirt for more than a few minutes. The peculiar bit was what happened when he would catch that inevitable mosquito bite.
    See, If he was to get one on the way to school he’d sit all class itching at it until it wasn’t but a raw hole in his skin. We could tell he’d
    do it at home too cause he’d come to class with fresh gashes. Now, when I say gashes, I don’t mean scrapes or raw spots, I mean deep bloody
    gashes. Not sure if it was a compulsive issue or something else but he wouldn’t miss a bite, I felt bad for him. It was during the
    summer after 6th grade when we stopped seeing Eric at all. Apparently His mother had taken off all of the screens from windows to wash them
    and without knowing this, poor Eric slept a whole night through with his bedroom window wide open.