My 3 Absurd Bee Incidents

In my life, I have had three highly improbable, flying-insect with stinger related, traumatic events.  Any one of them I could forgive, but now I'm pissed.  All stinging insects should be exterminated.... completely wiped off the face of the planet.

I know what you're going to say - bees pollinate flowers, which in turn convert carbon dioxide to oxygen.  If we got rid of all bees, we'd eventually screw the ecosystem and destroy life as we know it.  Cry me a river, liberal.  Bees die when they sting us, and we'll never defeat them until we adopt the same mentality.  Once you read my three bee stories, you'll understand my point of view.

Bee story #1

I believe I was five-ish years old.  I was in the backyard behind my parents' house.  I had to go to the bathroom, but was feeling too lazy to walk across the full-acre backyard to the house.  I decided the haystack behind the barn would be a good place to take a piss (pardon the rather vulgar wording). 

I admit, I noticed a yellow jacket flying around...  but I didn't pay any attention to it.  I hadn't learned they were the enemy yet.

I unzipped my pants, and started to take a leak, when the yellow jacket decided to land directly on my penis.  I repeat - the yellow jacket landed directly on my penis.

I've heard the true measure of a man can only be taken in situations of dire stress... war, family members dying, etc.  That's wussy stuff... you don't truly find out who you are until you've had a yellow jacket land on your penis.

Incidentally, it turns out that I'm a very stupid man when measured.

I looked down my penis and stared at the yellow jacket.  His eyes met mine... I swear to God the little S.O.B. grinned.  I think a tumbleweed might have fluttered by in the distance.

Apparently my knee-jerk reaction to noticing an insect on my body is to hit that part of the body as hard as I can.

That's right, I hit myself in the penis as hard as I could.

I missed - the damn thing had already stung me - and flew away.  I'm pretty sure he was laughing his ass off.  Not only did he sting me, he conned me into punching myself in the gonads. 

Like any good 5 year old, I ran back into the house crying.  My mother and brother were sitting in the kitchen.  Between sobs I let them know a bee had stung me.  My mother asked where I was stung... she could rub some salve on it to ease the pain.  I said I was stung in my "special place". 

My Mom, ever sympathetic, choked out "Are You Serious!?!?!".  Then she nearly fell over laughing.

My brother, laughing so hard he could barely breathe, quipped "So Mom, are you still going to rub salve on it?"

I ran away embarrassed, crying to myself.  Thus my deathly fear of all flying insects that sting began.  To this day I claim I had an allergic reaction to the sting, permanently causing the affected area to grow to tremendous size ;).

Bee Story 2:

(Note this story has one bee-stress related moment of stupidity, and one moment of stupidity that I can only claim as my own)

Fast forward about eighteen years later.  I had been playing alot of basketball, and had torn my meniscus.  I had to get arthroscopic surgery.

The surgery went well, and I was sitting in my room recovering.  They had given me an epidural for the surgery, numbing me from the waist down.  They had also given me a number of sedatives to calm me down.

I was still groggy from the surgery when the doctor said I could go home as long as I demonstrated I could go to the bathroom.  Through my drug induced haze, that sounded pretty easy.  I tried to locate the hole in my boxers so I could pull "Mr. Happy" out and urinate.

I had no idea how much finding the hole in your boxers depended on not being numb from the waist down.  Normally, your boxers bulge near the hole, and you simply pull apart the bulge to reveal the hole.  You can tell the difference between the bulge near the hole and the bulge created by "your manhood" by feel.  Until you are given an epidural.

I spent about fifteen minutes trying to pull my penis apart through the fabric until I realized it was the wrong bulge.  This was my own fault - I was still wasted from the sedatives - and believe me I paid for my mistake once the painkillers wore off.

Eventually I did go to the bathroom, and they let me leave the hospital.  As I just had surgery on my knee, they wheeled me out to the car in a wheelchair.  As fate would have it, a bee landed on my leg.

I freaked... I shot out of my chair like a bullet and sprinted across the parking lot.  Surprisingly, you're not supposed to start sprinting within an hour or so of knee surgery.

I had to get another knee surgery.  At this point, I was starting to develop a very healthy dislike for all flying insects.

Bee Story 3:

I was on the freeway, in stop-and-go traffic.  I was in the "stop" portion of the program when I noticed a bee had landed on my windshield.  Now thoroughly biased against bees, I quite happily turned on my wipers to give it a smack.  The wipers hit it, and pinned that bad boy directly against my hood.

Ten minutes later, traffic had cleared up.  I was cruising down the highway going around 70 when I noticed a strange buzzing coming from the air vent in the dash.  I remember thinking to myself – no way in hell man, no way in hell.

One minute later the bee I had pinned against the hood with the wipers was struggling to come out of the air vent in my dash.  Yet again I freaked.  I started smacking the air vent as hard as I could.  All the desperate banging on the vent did was dislodge the bee, and he started flying around my car. 

It didn't occur to me until I saw red and blue flashing in my mirror that I had completely stopped paying attention to my driving.  Trying to calm myself, I stopped swinging at the bee, slowed the car down and pulled over.  The bee promptly stung me.

At least I figured I had a hell of an excuse for erratic driving.

Again I was wrong…

Apparently, if you are a cop, you hear this story twice a day.  It's one of the oldest excuses in the book for speeding.  People even go so far as to keep a dead bee on their dash to give the story more credibility.  The cops eventually notice the dust that has accumulated on the bee after laying on the dash for four months.

Needless to say, I got the ticket.

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These are three fluke occurrences… they are so statistically unlikely in their totality that I have to believe the bees are organized and deliberately targeting me.