Not Cricket

I've never played cricket nor have I ever seen a game of cricket played but I'm very familiar with the phrase "that's not cricket" which figuratively describes a form of behavior that flaunts the accepted rules of conduct to the advantage of the flaunter.

Literally, "not cricket" refers to everything else on earth that isn't a cricket, even members of Buddy Holly's band who, let's face it were human.

Let me telll you a few things that are cricket.

Crickets are noctunal creatures who chirp at night. They are dark in color, they have long antennae and four limbs. Only male crickets chirp. They make their chirp by rubbing forwewings together. They use the sound of their forewings rubbing together as a courting song when a female cricket is near. The foreplay chirp has frequent pulses and romantic intervals between. The process of creating this song is called stridulation.

Before stridulating a courting song, males issue an aggressive chirp with less pulsation and shorter intervals between pulses. Imagine the aggressive song as a shout out for other males in the area that translates something like this: "hey dudes, I'm in this area and so is a beautiful female. I'm getting ready to make a move on her so stay the hell away from here."

If there is no response, the cricket goes into his courting song.

Imagine the female cricket during all of this hullaballoo. She's minding her own business when she hears the "shout out", she looks around and doesn't see any other females around so she goes "oh, oh" and a few minutes later she hears the courting song that her mother has been warning her against while simultaneously preparing her to accept. She reads between the chirps and prettys up for the seemingly inevitable.

Ah, sweet mysteries of life......etc

A few minutes later, the male chirps his celebratory song...thanking the female for her time and urging her to produce the eggs from their union.

Yeah, that's cricket.

Now let me tell ya something else that's not cricket.

Jiminy Cricket.

What the hell is Jiminy Cricket?

First of all he's green.

True some crickets are green but most of them are brown or black.

They all have long antennae. Not Jiminy.

They walk on four legs. Not Jiminy.

At first glance, Jiminy look more like a grasshopper than a cricket but a closer look reveals that Jiminy doesn't resemble anything on earth so ya might as well call him a cricket, why not. He's definitely not a fish.

Besides the obvious fact that Jiminy Cricket is a fictional, animated character drawn by a Disney artist for Pinnochio , nothing is Cricket about Jiminy from his hat to his gloves

There is one thing in his favor.

Jiminy sings

And he sings at night when Crickets sing.

He sings to the stars.

He wishes upon those stars that his dream will come true.

What is Jiminy's Wish upon those stars?

Jiminy wants to become a real cricket.

In the meantime, Jiminy is like all the rest of us....literally not cricket.