The Bee Sting

A couple years ago, just before the dawn of the school year, I went to get a haircut at a barbershop. I entered the place through a back alley, strolling past a fetid dumpster that simmered in the late August sun.

It should be noted that I was wearing blue jeans and sandals at the time. Triple-digit heat be damned; pants are the norm for me year-round. The reason being my superhumanly hairy legs, which I regard as Twilight Zone compensation for the good old receding hairline.

You see, sometimes the man upstairs likes to balance things out for his noblest creations. The people most likely to be ranked a “10” on the attractiveness scale oftentimes have vapid personalities (ex: Paris Hilton, Tommy Lee, and the late Mother Teresa). Steven Hawking was born physically handicapped, but in order to counteract that, God blessed Hawking with a brilliant mind that permitted him to write a revolutionary book on Nintendo cheats and codes…or something impressive like that; I’m not overly familiar with the man’s work and this article is due in fifteen minutes, so we’ll just go with the Nintendo cheats and codes thing.

In my case, God realized that a receding hairline early on might cause me some problems, so, in his infinite wisdom, He compensated that genetic mishap with some kick-ass Sasquatch legs. When I’m feeling especially creative, I coil clumps of hair up and down my calf and imagine I’ve created a twisted teepee reservation for a tribe of fleas. When plucked, one of my leg hairs is long enough to wrap around John Madden’s waist three-and-a-half times. But enough about pants and the secret hideousness they conceal, let’s talk about my footwear on this particular day.

I very seldom wear sandals. They hamper your mobility, click annoyingly with every stride, and, as I was soon to learn, they provide insufficient protection for your feet. You know what kinds of people regularly wear sandals? Off-duty guidance counselors with graying ponytails that browse the self-help section at Walden Books every other Saturday and lethargic burnouts that play in a String Cheese Incident cover band and empty their hash-pipes underneath the rug when the ashtray is a daunting eight feet away.

Sandals are made by aspiring shoe manufacturers that just lost their motivation halfway through the process and said, “To hell with it; here’s the finished product.” (In fact, I’m willing to bet that a surprising number of the people that work at sandal factories play in a String Cheese Incident cover band.) Prior to my haircut, I was apparently too impatient to bother tying shoelaces, and, struck by an ominous whim, I fatefully opted for flip-flops.

On my way out the barbershop, walking past the fetid dumpster, my exposed foot was targeted by a sadistic bee, and before I could scream for mommy, the pest stung me just below the ankle. And for the love of Plinco, it hurt like the dickens! To put this pain into perspective, in comic books, when a superhero is overwhelmed with agony inflicted by a surge of electrocution or a parking meter flogging to the skull, the exclamation “Yaarrgghh!” appears in a word bubble attached to his or her mouth. Were a comic book depiction to be made of this incident, let’s just say the word “Yaarrgghh!” emanating from my mouth would be followed by a minimum of sixteen exclamation marks in order to vaguely capture the torment I was feeling.

After every bee sting, I take marginal consolation in the knowledge that they can’t live without their stingers; every act of aggression is kamikaze for them. But on this occasion, my blood was boiling unabatedly as I hobbled through the parking lot. 364 days out of the year, I fumed, when that fiendish be attacks my foot, I’m protected by a two millimeter fortress of shoe fabric. Had I been wearing shoes like any decent, God-fearing man would do (Jesus excluded), I’d have walked away unscathed, scoffing at my arthropod assailant. That bee was malicious, yet cerebral. He knew he could’ve stung my forearm, neck, or better yet, eyeball, but that wouldn’t have the same quasi-ironic flare of needling an area that is rarely vulnerable. The bee is a cunning, quasi-ironic species.


On the drive home, I fantasized in depth about that bee’s widow and thirteen children living inside the dumpster, gathered around a half-eaten Honey Bun, awaiting the arrival of their father, who was uncharacteristically late for the evening meal. At last the landlord of the dumpster would visit and deliver the somber news. “Ma’am, there’s no easy way to say this, but...your husband died today after gallantly stinging a twelve-year-old boy with thinning hair. We’re assuming the boy is receiving chemotherapy for cancer, and if it’s any consolation to you, it doesn’t appear he’ll be around for much longer, either.” As the devastation and grief set in, the landlord would add, “Oh, and P.S., rent is due tomorrow and I don’t tolerate truancy. Blah, blah, blah, sorry for your loss. Goodbye.”

While speeding through a red light and almost crippling the cuter half of a Girl Scout Troop, I further indulged my spiteful daydream. The death of the family’s sole provider, coupled with the excessive cost of his funeral, spelled eviction for his surviving kin. They were forced out of their spacious dumpster into a cramped 20 oz. Mountain Dew bottle. A day later, at the funeral wake, a bereaved millipede accidentally knocked over the Cool Mint Listerine PocketPak that served as my attacker’s coffin, and as his stinger-less corpse crashed against the concrete, the thorax severed from the antennae and all the onlookers shrieked in horror. Even in the twilight of the children’s lives, some fifteen days later, considering the average lifespan of a bee, this traumatic memory would haunt them in their sleep.

As I parked the car in my driveway, dragging behind a kiddy pool that was inexplicably snared onto the back bumper, the agony had worn off a tad, and I had my morbid delusions to thank. It was a short-lived reprieve, because a moment later I realized I had yet to suck out the venom.