Worm on a Hot Tin Roof

So I'm a fan of the nightcrawler, or earthworm in general. I think it comes from a golden age in my childhood, when my grandpa was still alive, that I used to go nightcrawler hunting at night. We'd take coffee cans full of earth from the garden, flashlights, and take off across the spacious backyards - traipsing through the vineyard row and the daffodils, running up and down the rows of corn looking for the wiggling fellows. We were hunting for nightcrawlers for fishing bait. Picking them up as they tried to shove back into the earth away from us, watching the wriggle in our hands.
We never hurt them (well okay it probably hurt going on a hook the next day), and we'd check them out - looking at their length, their shape and the way they would flip and flop to get away. I loved watching them.
Since then, I don't ever shy away from picking up an earthworm who is stranded on pavement. It sometimes surprises people - especially people at work - to see a lady in a suit and heels pick up an earthworm carefully and redeposit him in the grass.
And don't be fooled, I'll smash a bug in a heartbeat. I'm not some "small icky creatures lifesaver".
I just like the earthworms.

Yesterday I was sitting at a stoplight on my way home, and I noticed something jumping. I couldn't figure it out at first. I thought it was trash or a fuzzy or something....and then as I watched it twisst in midair - and turn......I realized. It was an earthworm.

I sat there, in my airconditioning in the hottest day in Atlanta in 7 years, wondering what the hell that worm was doing on the pavement. And as it stopped jumping and then stopped moving it occurred to me.......

It was cooking.

On the hot pavement.

Poor Worm.

I was thinking about the worm today, when I was getting a lovely/horrid/torturous shot of corticosteroid into the very tender place in the heel of my foot for my long bout of plantars fasciitis. Ever had a BIG needle jammed into the bottom of your foot?

It hurts, a lot. But if you check the date in the original post, I've been living with this since MARCH or earlier. So I needed the shot. It hurt, it burned. It made me really unhappy. The doctor and nurse said that not only was I the only person they ever gave one of those shots to that didn't SHRIEK, the nurse said most people move and she has to hold down the leg.

I sucked it up I'll admit. I didn't cry or even make a sound. It hurt A LOT. If you think I didn't want to flop away in pain as they were doing it you'd be wrong. I'd have flopped away from that needle in a second.

Like a worm on a hot tin roof.