Beehave

        I stepped on a bumble bee on a beach when I was about 11, and the bee punished me by dislodging his ass into my flesh.  Literally, dislocated the bottom half of itself and injected it into the thin layers of skin between my heel and toes.  My mom, grabbed her purse and for a moment I thought she was going to pull out an emergency bee sting kit.  Instead she pulled out a Discover card and began to dig at the dip of my foot like someone using a spatula to scrape off stubborn burnt crust off of a pan.  At least, along with the screaming, that is how I remember it.  She was probably gentle and kind, in fact I recall her face wincing with pain when I would jolt as she touched the wound, 'this is going to hurt, but it'll all be over soon," she said.  I remember watching my skin bend with the indention of the credit card and watching the pulsating sack of bee intestine pump poison into my blood stream. I gained a respect for bees that day, but mostly I learned to scream and run whaling my arms when I see one. 
        On more than one occasion I have ran my car off of  the road because a bee was on my dashboard,  sometimes it's not even a bee but a fly that resembles a bee, and sometimes it can be nothing but a figment of my imagination.  My fear of bees is paralleled by my fear of getting raped a murdered.  The same twinge of fear that I get when I think I'm being followed home in an dark alley is the same fear that consumes me when I see a bee land on a flower.  Which is why this morning I spent three hours running from room to room after a wasp and bee hybrid creature made it's way into my apartment.  This thing looked like the worlds leading scientists had gotten together to combine the DNA of a bumble bee and a taradactle and then released the monstrosity into my living room as some sort of sick joke. 
        I generally don't pick fights with insects because I'm lazy and not very fast, not to mention I have actually lost a fight to a spider once; but after the creature dive bombed my heirloom tomato salad shortly after taking a swing at my face, it meant war.  I went for my choice weapon for dealing with household pests, and on all fours crawled into my bathroom to get the hair spray.  Once in the bathroom I poked my head out to check on the status of the bee.  He was in the dining room, reeking havoc on an old beer can.  As I reached for the can of hair spray I remembered my last encounter with the very same can I was reaching for.  Jen nearly killed me last month when I spent half an hour chasing fruit flies around the house with a lighter and her hair spray, which apparently costs $30 bucks.  She wasn't happy and hair spray torches were out of the question because if there is one thing I've learned about Jen is that she will let the first offense go, but pissing her off twice about the same thing will end in castration. 
       My plan foiled, I called my mom.  She'd know what to do.  She instantly started laughing at my plight, "the hardest thing about getting divorced was having to kill bugs again," she said. "Just roll up some newspaper and kill it, it's just a bee."  Clearly my mother wasn't grasping that I wasn't dealing with your ordinary bee and that news paper would have been child's play for the beast rocketing through my apartment.  So I rolled up my yoga mat and started clubbing the bee, making contact only once, the bee spiraled down to the floor with such force my windows practically raddled to the brink of shattering.   I had officially pissed off the bee and hung up on my mother to seek refuge in the bathroom.
        It was time for a new plan, so I got my 20 inch box fan, opened the door, and tried blowing it out of the house.  The hurricane winds only pissed the creature off further and it started charging for me only to be blocked by the box fan.  Finally, I gave up and ran. At this point I feel I should mention I was sweating bullets and having a panic attack in the bathroom bomb shelter floor.  After smoking a cigarette to calm my nerves, I crawled out of the bathroom with the stealth of ten ninjas.  I spotted the bee resting on my coffee table and grabbed Tina Fey's memoir, "Bossy Pants" and charged with the force of a cannon ball.  Letting out a battle cry that reached an octave I had previously though my voice was incapable of reaching, I bludgeoned the flying menace.  It was over.
       To my surprise after I killed the bee I had to sit down, as I was out of breath and sweating profusely.  My hands were shaking as I reached for my phone to text my mom.  "The deed was done." I said.  She responded a few minutes later, "I'm glad you made it."  As I read her text I laughed because even as an adult male I still call my mom when there is a bee in my house.  The fact that she answers and talks me through such situations makes me grateful to have her as a mother.  It's nice to know that she is always there to listen to my childish fears of bees and life.  It's nice to know that if I had been stung, she would have been on the other line saying, "it's going to hurt, but it'll all be over soon.  Now get a credit card."