So, the kidlet and I are driving home from school today, and all of a sudden, at a very busy intersection, he screams, and begins to cry hysterically.
"What happened, what happened?" I ask frantically as I crane my neck around while trying not to wipe out any of my fellow commuters.
More loud sobs. "Some-, something sharp!" He lifts up his arm, and hanging from the tender flesh just above his elbow is a freaked out yellow jacket. I flick it off of him and it zooms out the window.
"You got stung by a bee," I tell him.
"Waaaaa, waaaaa, owie owie owie, waaaaa!" said the kidlet.
Meanwhile I'm trying to pull over so I can at least calm him down a little bit. I normally wouldn't be too concerned over a bee sting. We all get them, they hurt, they itch, no big deal, right? I'm not allergic, and my mom was always very good about teaching us not to be afraid of bees or yellow jackets, and I valued that lesson very much (I hope to keep bees some day, in fact) and have been passing it on to the kidlet. I didn't want him to be one of those kids who ran around in a panic at the sight of one. However, a couple of weeks ago my mother got a yellow jacket sting that caused her to break out in horrendous red hives which were so alarming that they almost took her to the ER. So maybe there were allergies in the family, just that no one had ever gotten stung by the right critter before.
I got safely off the road so I could check out the damage. "Don't touch it, don't touch it!" he sobbed (he is a big wuss a very sensitive boy). I determined that his throat wasn't going to immediately close up, and so far just a small welt, so we headed for home, and I called gramma to re-hash her experience. I only killed one pedestrian when I was talking on my cell phone and trying to shift gears and steer into a tight parking space at the drugstore where we stopped to buy benadryl, so all in all it wasn't too disastrous of an afternoon.
Poor kidlet. "I didn't think I'd ever get stung by a bee," he told me over and over again, because he'd learned so well not to swat at them or act panicky around them. He thought that since he knew that a bee wasn't an attack animal, that it would just hurt you if you picked it up and squashed it or something, that he was safe from the unexpected. sigh Now I'm afraid that his version of reality will be that you just never know what's gonna be lurking on your car seat waiting to gitcha.
Guess I won't be buying that beekeeping equipment anytime soon.
Hey, there is a BIG difference between a jellow jacket and a bee. Both hurt, but a jacket sting leaves a painful bruised feeling at the bite site. In fact, a bee sting is about 5 on the 10 scale and a "jallow" jacket is more like a 8. Only a ground hornet hurts worse. Hey, Kidlet, I would be a bigger wuss if I got jabbed by one. Hate the devils. They may eat other bad critters like blood suckin' mosquitoes, but I still hate 'em.
Posted by: Cowtown Pattie | 2004.08.04 at 10:11
Oh, don't get me wrong, I felt really really sorry for him, I knew it was scary and painful. But he is not one of those bruiser kids who falls down in what looks like a horrible wipe out and then just jumps up and runs on.
Posted by: nina | 2004.08.04 at 12:56
When Stephanie was really little, a yellow jacket got tangled in her hair, and as she tried to swat it away, it stung her ear. YOWCH! Very scary for all of us. My sympathies go out to kidlet and his Mama.
Posted by: Karen | 2004.08.04 at 16:08
I have a not so little one(12) that doesn't do well with wasps. And I admit that the ones we have around here make me jump up and down yelping and run around when I get stung. She's been stung a few times and I think will always have that "run around in a panic at the sight of one."
The thing that gets me is that loss of innocence that they go through when you tell them for so long that the bad things don't happen if you do the right things. Then the bad thing happens anyway. Depending on how bad the thing is, you can lose the ability to say "don't worry I won't let a bad thing happen to you."
Of course we've had one of the worst bad things happen to us so it's probably not the same issue for most people.
Rod
Posted by: Rod K | 2004.08.28 at 05:33