it bee spring
Spring has sprung in NE Ohio. The birds are chirping. The flowers are blooming. The bees are buzzing.
Which is why, in part, I am so stupid.
Allow me to explain.
About, oh, 30 years ago, the five year old version of Hot Coffee Girl (she was known then as Demi-Tasse back then) was swinging on the swing, enjoying a beautiful Spring day, such as today. She smelled the sweet air, looked at the blossoming flowers, swung so high that the slack of the chains clicked in her hands…all with an innocence and purity that only an unsuspecting tot can possess.
The pleasantness of the day was short-lived, however. For there, coming towards her on the swing was a vicious, ferocious beast. The sun was clouded over by its shape, and its fangs dripped with blood. A ziggety flight path belied its very target…it was headed in the most bloodthirsty way to feast on my delicate five year old flesh. A bee. A yellow-jacket, to be more specific. But like none you have ever seen or heard about. No ordinary insect, this. Zipping towards me with unrivaled speed was a spiky-furred, blood-fanged creature with death and destruction on his mind. Weighing my options, I did the only thing a young child could do in such a situation.
I screamed at the top of my lungs.
For a very long time.
So loud and so long, in fact, that it brought my mother, the neighbors next to us (and the neighbors next to them) out running. Sensing that he was outnumbered, the monster flew off just before they arrived, leaving me to try to explain the situation to the crowd that had now gathered.
“Big.” <Sniffle> “Bee.” <Cough. Gag.> “Gonna. Get. Me.” <Gagcoughsniffle.> It took me a few minutes to get my breathing under control enough to see the skepticism in their faces begin to register. Which brought tears of a different sort. Indignation. “The BEEEEEEE. You saw it. It was gonna KEEEEEL ME.” Then fear all over again thinking what I had been through.
My mother grabbed me and took me upstairs to my bedroom, assumptively to protect me from future bee attacks. In reality, it was me…not the creature…that her irritation was directed at. Apparently, screaming loud and long enough to empty the neighborhood was not good behavior. I plead my case, “But the thing was soooo biiigg! It was going to kill me!” When that didn’t work, I tried playing the sympathy card. “My head. It really hurts.”
Her response? “Well, of course it does. You probably screamed out part of your brains.”
Which is why every Spring I think of how the bees made me stupid.
It’s a right of passage.
hcg
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I spend all my brainpower watching porn, so brains are overrated.
Well at least you have an excuse.
Long ago when I had hair and a waist so small I could see my shoes, I took a job painting a large shop building. Everything went fine until I saw the red hornet's nest in the tallest corner of the building. Never one to allow fear to hinder bad judgement, I grabbed a painter's extension pole and climbed a few steps up the extension ladder (it was a really tall building) with the intent of knocking that dude down and running like hell. Only a couple of steps did not get me close enough, so watching that nest of danger with unblinking determination I climbed a couple of steps higher, then a couple of steps higher.
To this day I do not know how high I climbed without ever looking away from that clod of potential pain and misery. I do know I was uncomfortably close to it when I whacked that wasp covered nest off the building. Then I followed through with my initial plan of taking one step back and dropping to the ground. Only, I was no longer just a couple of steps up the ladder.
I can clearly remember stretching my legs out from their knee bent position trying to find the ground that should have been right below me. Feeling with my toe in a Wile E Coyote manner just before feeling the greatest pain I ever experienced. Worse, lying not 8 feet from me was that freakin wasp's nest I had knocked to the ground. Luckily for me the wasps were too busy laughing at the moron that would spend the next couple of days pissing blood to bother with stinging me. So, in effect, my plan worked. Except, when I healed up and went back to finish the job... the wasps nest was back.
I am SO allergic to bees, I would have done the same thing.
Great blog, LMAO, I shall return!
Nice to meet you!
I hate bugs! I really hate bees. You might find me doing my sexy gal walk down a busy city street, then see me dart and swoop and run if a bee decides he likes my cologne.
You did the right thing.
If the "my head hurts" thing didn't work, I really feel sorry for ya.
oh my daughter does the same thing with bees, spiders, birds that land on her head, not kidding on that last one.
aww you poor thing! that sounded horrible, at least it didn't sting you! that would have been far worse! xxx Rachel xxx
(I'd better not talk about the time I was in a toilet-tent on a remote island - all part of the joy of being an archaeologist in the middle of nowhere - and a bee flew into my trousers).
Apparently they're more scared of us than we are of them.
Maybe buzzing is a kind of screaming. Did it buzz louder, can you remember?
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