By Will Carlin
Summer is here. I don’t know about you, but for me summer is that sunny, warm time of the year when just as I lie down in bed, my thoughts regularly return to young women who would like nothing more than to suck my body dry of my blood.
No, I am not referring to fantasies of sexy, patent-leather wearing vampires like Kate Beckinsale from the Underworld series of movies (um, not here, anyway…); I am talking about the very real possibility of being torn into by hundreds of razor-sharp mandibles.
I don’t really get summer. I mean, as the temperature goes up, why aren’t people paralyzed with fear? Okay, I understand that it brings warm weather, lazy weekends and, well, bikinis, but it also means the return of a non-fictional horror that has six mouthparts and sucks blood.
The mosquito.
I shuddered just now as I typed the word. Sure, not many people are affectionate toward mosquitoes, and many would agree that they are a nuisance, but hardly anyone seems to be quaking in terror (I mean, c’mon, six mouthparts!). Wikipedia’s entry on them says that “because they consume blood from living vertebrates, including humans… [and] transmit some of the most harmful human and livestock diseases… some authorities argue that mosquitoes are the most dangerous animals on earth.”
Exactly.
Maybe they scare me so much because from a very young age, mosquitoes seemed to adore me. It is a creepy thing to be loved by insects because they basically do three things: nest, mate and eat. So, if they’re interested in you, it’s because they either want to mate with you, eat you, or build a nest in you.
Without knowing these details, I knew early on that these parasites were the epitome of evil. When they bite, it doesn’t really hurt, but the aftereffects are real: a reddish papular eruption that very quickly starts to itch, often dramatically. Their torment, however, is as much psychological as it is physical.
Their buzzing whine, which comes from wings that beat between 300 and 600 times per second, indicates that they have found you. There is nothing quite as awful as the silence immediately after the buzz, however, for it signals that they have landed and may be biting you right now. When I was younger, a single mosquito in my bedroom with its repeated cycle of buzz and silence could reduce me to tears.
Because of that, every opportunity I had to make a wish starting at about age five (blowing out birthday candles, wishing upon a star, pulling the apart a wishbone, blowing on dandelions, throwing coins into a wishing well—I mean every opportunity), I had one recurring wish: no more mosquitoes.
I spent hundreds of wishes on their eradication until I was about 13, and I would have continued were it not for a 12-year-old named Rhonda (I was, as the mosquitoes seemed to know, a red-blooded boy).
I have come to think of mosquitoes as waging an all-out attack—indeed, the very reason they are so persistent in trying to bite is that blood is critical to their reproduction (which is why only female mosquitoes bite)—but because biting is at the risk of their lives, they also are, not surprisingly, very adept at dodging direct attack.
This past march, SquashTV launched a Facebook and twitter campaign to come up with a new nickname for Ramy Ashour. I didn’t participate but I watched it with interest. The final six names were: The Artist, Cairo Cobra, The Illusionist, Jewel of the Nile, The Maverick, and The Scorpion.
The winner was The Artist, and while it is a terrific name for one of the greatest shot-makers the world has ever seen, I couldn’t help noticing that two of the finalist nicknames were from the animal kingdom. And that, of course, got me thinking about my lifelong opponent as a potential squash-player nickname, too.
It doesn’t totally work for Ramy (to start with, the mosquitoes who attack are, as noted above, all female), but with a combination of relentless attack, razor’s edge shooting that seems almost to draw blood, and an underrated defense that is almost as good as his offense, The Mosquito fits well for much of what makes Ramy so great.
Though he is known as one of the best sportsman on the circuit (which, itself, is filled with the most collegial group of players in its history) and is the opposite of evil in personality, Ramy’s unexpected shotmaking has its own psychologically debilitating effects on his opponents (look at the expressions of James Willstrop or Nick Matthew when Ramy is really on). So, while I don’t think it should have won the SquashTV contest, The Mosquito isn’t all bad as a squash nickname.
With that in mind, there is a player—lesser known to be sure—on whom I would like to bestow the moniker. She is small, lean and quick, and she also is one of the fittest players in the US; she keeps coming at her opponents again and again. This fitness also gives her the ability to offset her relentlessness with a fairly stunning retrieving ability.
She is well liked, but she wears her drive, her focus and her competitiveness on her proverbial sleeve, and it gets under the skin of many of her opponents.
She has won a skill level or age group national championship every year but one since 2002, and this year, in the 40+ category, she took out two phenomenal players in Shabana Khan and Hope Prockop to take the 2012 title.
Julie Lilien has been remarkably successful in a game she took up as an adult, and as a semi-regular hitting partner of mine, I am kind of praying that she likes being known as “The Mosquito.” Otherwise, I might feel the impact of one of her six racquets.
There might be blood.
