Setting Things Right With The Wasps

The Palinode and I are staying with his parents, and they have a pool. I never swim in it, because I prefer to remain covered from neck to ankles in summer months and earlobes to toes throughout the winter. I wouldn't mind if other people did that, too, because those of the female persuasion tend to have ugly knees, and those of the male persuasion tend to have issues with not looking completely dorky in shorts. I just can't be one of those people who embraces the human form in all its variants, because, well, yuck.

Anyway, I was just out by the pool, and there are a million wasps out there, because my parents-in-law like to watch the slow rise of alarm in their houseguests, and lo and behold, one of the houseguests, a little boy, was just stung in the baby toe on his left foot. While he was carrying on with screaming and being mad, my first thought was Dear god, child, shut up, but I quickly chastised myself for that. Just because I am all high on psych meds and feeling very cynical about children in general since my hysterectomy does not mean that I get to be an asshole. THE KID WAS STUNG BY A WASP. I am given to believe that that sort of thing really hurts. From my comfy situation seated in the warm sun with a stein of beer in my hand, I had no right begrudge a pretty cute little kid his right to yell his head off when stung on his babiest of toes.

And then, I got to thinking about how I have never been stung by anything other than a mosquito, except maybe basically innocuous spiders, and that's a pretty good run for someone who's thirty-five, and that I was kind of asking for it if I was going to be a total jerk to a seven-year-old, even if it was only in my head for four seconds, so my stein of beer and I made a run for the house, and that's where I am, and I'm not leaving.

I am can be a bit superstitious about thoughts translating into reality, so when I think about wasps, if I even catch only the barest whiff of my feeling self-congratulatory about having never been stung, I start to feel those stingy buggers crawling up the backs of my arms and on my neck, and I know, I just KNOW, that my thoughts have infiltrated their hive mind, and they are all moving in slowly, arguing over who gets first bite.

Now I am feeling quite thoroughly repentant for my bad thoughts about that kid's reaction to being stung, because he's a kid, and he really didn't carry on so much as get pissed off about it, and if it had been me, I know I would have been the loudest, foullest-mouthed thing within a twenty-block radius of the back yard. Also, I need to reconcile myself with the hive telepathically.

Dear wasps,

I love you. I promise to bring some honey out for you as a night snack.

Kisses,
Schmutzie

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