I was watching a show on butterflies tonight and it just brought huge feelings of guilt in my heart. Over the course of a month in first grade, we had a class project concerning butterflies. Our teacher managed to acquire some caterpillars, which we were supposed to observe and note about its transformation into a chrysalis and butterfly. We actually had a class book with each student illustrating a page: One kid shows the caterpillar eating a leaf, another kid draws how it crawls about. Finally they all became chrysalises inside a cage we kept near the front of the class.

Every morning we would enter the classroom and play around for about ten minutes until the teacher called a meeting at the front of the room where there was a large carpet. We would sit on it and she would discuss her plans for that day. I remember the teacher asked me to get something for her, and I stood up, got it, and turned around... accidentally knocking over the caterpillar cage. Right in front of everyone. Their gasps of horror still ring in my ears to this day. The images of those destroyed, nearly-born butterflies are still burned into my retina. I just murdered about a dozen butterflies. The ones we all working on together. Giving them nicknames. Wondering which one would hatch first. How we'd tag them before letting them go into the wild so scientists could research their migration path. They were our babies. With one movement I just ruined all of that.

To this day I wonder if my teacher told my parents about that. I asked them once, but they can't remember anymore. What would she have said? "Yeah, I made this wonderful group project for the class and all the kids got emotionally involved until your daughter fucked that all up."

Did you know the actual plural of "chrysalis" is "chrysalides?" I didn't use that because I'd sound like an asshole.