We were sitting at the picnic tables surrounded by bees.  Bunches of bees.  Busy bees.  They landed on our cups and our plates and flitted around our heads, not just a bee, or an occasional bee, but 5 or 6 bees per person.  

In a way, it was funny to watch.  The men all sat stoically, not flinching from bees on their shoulders or their bald heads or their food, exuding manly macho-ness.  But the women were all flapping their arms and cringing away from the bees on their hairdos or their perfume-adorned  pulse points.  Two were allergic to bees so they ate their pasta salad and baked beans and sausage as fast as they could and then retired outside, where they were of course followed by their own bees.  It felt like we were in an Alfred Hitchcock movie, not the birds but the bees.

We had as good a time as we possibly could under the circumstances.  When we were done I gathered up my dishes and bagged them and went to my car, thankful that I hadn’t been stung.  Someone said these bees were not the stinging kind and I figured that was true as none of us had been stung, only angry at these flying suckers.

Driving home, one of my bees dived off the rear-view mirror and stung me on my left arm.  Dang thing.  My arm pulsed with pain.  It was hard to drive.  Not only that, but even though I opened all the windows the bee chose not to leave.  It flew around and around, buzzing and dive-bombing me.  Yikes!  I hurt.  It was a bad trip home, what with the pain and trying to chase the bee out of the car and watch my speed and try to find a place to pull over in heavy traffic so that I could kill that bee with my purse which was heavy enough to kill a rhinoceros.  But there was no place to pull over so I went on home and as soon as I opened the car door the bee fell down dead and I ran to the bathroom and put cold water on my sting which by now was raised and red.  Then I checked for a stinger and sure enough there was one buried in the knot on my arm and I couldn’t get at it and my arm was still throbbing so I grabbed a bar of soap and rubbed it on the whole swollen mess and to my surprise, the pain went away and an hour later the bump and the stinger were gone, too.

I’m wondering if I’d get a free coupon if I wrote to Ivory and told them about this.

 

© 2011 Just Lynne - 9/12/11