She was two or three at the time. She watched as her parents looked at the piano in her grandparents living room that would soon be in her house. It was over now, but it still was on her mind and the band-aid on her leg was a constant reminder of what had happened less than an hour ago. Until then, she had been innocent of the dark side of nature. Sure, darkish things had happened to her, but up until then, she had not known the real dark side of nature. She and her mother had been picking flowers for her grandparents when it had happened. Out of the blue, something stabbed into her leg with an excruciating sting. It was the most horrifying thing that had happened in her life and it was not until her mid teens that she tread in that corner of her yard with out terror...
***
This was my introduction to bees and their “pin” and was not close to my last encounter. They were to haunt my childhood, always coming up out of nowhere, catching me off guard with the sudden pain and horror of their sting, driving me near a paranoia of them and not even allowing me to forget about them in my adulthood..
***
She climbed up the steps. She was finally going to go down the really high slide. Her mother had not allowed her to go down it before, but this time her father was there to stand at the bottom of the slide so she was allowed to go. The five-year-old stood at the top of the slide at the peak of high spirits; she had not the ghost of an idea of the fate awaiting her at the bottom. Perhaps other parents were hesitant about letting their kids go down the slide too, or perhaps it had been unused just long enough to give the bees the illusion of its underside being a secluded home. However it was, when her feet touched the ground, a bee flew out and struck her with her second ever Sting From The Blue. She shrieked in pain and terror. Then they were running for the car. Her mother was getting cream out of her purse. She could not stop bawling. It would not stop hurting. The slide stood tall and ominous in the distance.
***
She was running across the front yard. In her hand, she clutched a sprig of pine she had picked up while walking down the "woods path" with her mother and brother. Something pricked the back of her leg. She twisted around in confusion. Had the pine sprig pricked her? She saw something yellow and black sticking out of the bend of her left knee. Not comprehending what it was, she just pulled it out, threw it on the ground and continued across the yard. Then her mother shouted to her that it was bees. She ran inside as fast as she could, screaming all the way.
***
The unsuspecting ten-year-old was standing under the elm tree when when the sting came. She ran inside, thinking she was getting away from it but could not: the bee was in her shoe. Her mother was in the kitchen when she came in. "Get your shoe off!" she said. The girl kicked her shoe off and shrank up against the wall as an angry bee flew out of it. It looked like one of those nasty wasps called yellow jackets, but with a black body and yellow stripes. A black jacket? The ten-year-old wounded bee phobic made a dash for the other room and left her mother to slay the ferocious bee.
***
That last sting was the worst I had ever experienced. My foot swelled up so much I could not walk. I spent two days in bed had could only get places via crawling. As if that were not enough, I got stung again later that summer and then again next year and yet again the year after that, this time on my own door step...
***
She did not approve of the pants she was wearing. All her life, her pants had been more or less tight to her ankles. Now the only kind they sold had ankles that were wider than the knees. She did not like that. It did not seem proper, but being twelve, she was growing fast and her parents did not have time to find enough "proper" pants that fit her. Those pants were to be her bane that day. Her father had knocked a honey bee nest off the house, and had not bothered to move it from where it had landed right next to the door. She and her family had managed to get by fast enough when just one of them went by, but now her whole family had just come back from somewhere and were all trying to go in at the same time. The large slow moving group had really upset the bees and given them plenty of time to gather. One of the swarming bees got caught in her improper pant leg and she felt that all too well known prick...
***
Her epigenome had been so altered she had pretty much lost that the extreme intolerance of pain that had characterized her when she was younger. Sometimes she wondered if a bee sting quite as painful and frightening as it had been before. She did not really want to find out, but at age sixteen she did. It had happened when she hopped off the side of the deck on the way to the chicken coop, like she did so often. She had hardly started down the path when a yellow jacket from an unknown nest under the steps flew out and stung her. She knew a bee had stung her, though it was not quite as painful as she remembered. She shrieked and ran to the coop. No other bees had followed her, but the first bee was still had its stinger in her leg and she was too scared to knock it off. Fortunately, her father had heard her and hurried out to knock it off for her. When she was younger, a bee sting normally pushed all else to the back burner, but this time she just put cream on it and went back out to feed the chickens.
***
She was picking blueberries from the bush in her yard. A back jacket kept flying around her and the blueberries. By the time she was leaving though, it appeared to have left. She started to hasten off and felt something prick her. It felt sort of like a bee, but it was too fast and nothing was there now. Was there a bee's nest in the bush next to her? She felt panic and uncertainty creep over her. “Just keep running,” she told herself and ran inside. Once inside she started examining her leg, trying to find a sting. She could not find anything then, though a little later it swelled up like a bee sting and then went right back down. Apparently, her leg had just bumped into the bee and startled it enough to sting her, but since it did not have a nest to protect it did just flew off after the initial contact. That incident had been just a few months before her eighteenth birthday, and as if to let her know bee stings were not just an ancient unpleasant remnant of her childhood, on her eighteenth birthday a little wild bee got in her boot and stung her.
***
A while back, I found something on line about that said bees were attracted to people born in July. Having been born in July myself, I laughed and laughed at this funny coincidence, but did not really believe it. After all, my slightly younger brother was born in July too and despite having been right there or nearby on several of the occasions I was stung, he has only been stung on two incidents.
C opyright (c) 2011 by Felicia Graham
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