Today’s expression: “Give it a rest.”

Meaning: If you tell someone to give it a rest, you want them to stop doing something or stop talking about something because it’s annoying you.

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One time, I was backpacking with a group from school. And I had a few granola bars in my pack. There were some bars for my groupmates and some for me, all sealed up, and we had a bag of trash that we hung from a tree so no bears got to it. Well, I ate one of the granola bars during our hike during the day and left the empty wrapper in my pack during the night. During the night, some little creatures picked up the scent of the chocolate smeared on the wrapper and marched towards it. In the morning, I saw them. The creatures. They were eating the remnants of my chewy granola bar (with chocolate chips). But there were only three or four crumbs and a smear of chocolate in my backpack. I don’t know how they found them. The creatures. There were a lot of creatures. So many that I couldn’t count them. And actually, there was a whole trail of them from the trash wrapper in the top pocket of my backpack down the back of my backpack and on the ground to their round mound somewhere ant-miles away. I kindly asked them to leave, but they didn’t. I asked again, differently and louder this time, yet they stayed. But I didn’t want to wake anyone, so I didn’t ask a third time. So, I shook my pack a little bit. Some ants fell off. I brushed others so that they flew to the ground. I opened my backpack and saw more ants! A million or less. Funny and fun, but also scary and scared. They were nice black ants and not the biting mean red ones and they were happy to have food from me so I was happy to feed them. But I had to put on my pack soon and I didn’t want them (the ants) crawling all over my spine and legs and neck and earcanals, so I started to panic. I got nervous and dug a hole and did my duty by a tree away from our campsite and covered the hole and went back to our campsite and the ants were still in my pack to no surprise. I emptied my things in a panic but calmly so as not to scare anyone for fear of bears and my groupmates were just waking up so it was too early for panic. My pack was emptied then (except for a million ants), so I kept brushing my little insect friends off my pack and to the ground. Luckily, they can survive falls from any height and they weren’t damaged but I probably stepped on some and I imagined their screams. It was okay after I brushed most off, but they kept appearing from cracks and crevices from my black backpack. And now the whole camp was awake from my screams and we were getting ready to go back to school, so I had to put my gear back into my backpack back with the remaining ants. I did, and it was fun. And funny when I felt ants crawling on my arms. It was better than in my ears but still gave me shivers. We all stood in a circle and talked about our trip before loading up for the ride back and our professor said she was proud of us. She asked about our experiences and asked if we had any questions. I said, “You got questions? We got ants, sirs,” and they all said, “Oh, give it a rest, wouldja?” When I was back in my apartment that night I cleaned out my gear and I found more ants and even in the morning there were some still! It makes me think it’s more or less hard to count to a million or less.

Brain teaser:

Find a number less than 100 that is increased by one-fifth of its value when its digits are reversed.

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A+