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.