Why I'm Afraid of Bees.

When I was in elementary school, a book series called Goosebumps was released. It was a series of scary books for elementary students, and I read the first thirty-something of them when they came out. One of them was called Why I'm Afraid of Bees.

This blog post is almost completely unrelated to the book, though it does explain why I'm afraid of bees.

Growing up on Fernwood Street in Roseville, my grandmother lived up on the next street (Griggs). On holidays where we'd get together with my father's side of the family, I'd walk out the back door of my parents' house and walk for about a minute and I'd be in grandma's back yard.

Every now and then, my parents would have a bunch of people over, but I'd still make the walk through the backyards - through the Hamernicks' yard where Romain or Bernie would be tending their garden and would greet me warmly, through the yard next to theirs which was usually full of children as it hosted a daycare service. There are some occasions on which my parents have a party at their house (the fourth of July being one), and they need some extra tables and chairs and stuff. On those days, I made the walk to my grandma's house to get her red picnic table and its benches.

It was a long, sturdy, wooden red table; its age gave the red paint a grayish tone. It had some heft to it. I used to measure my strength by how easy it was to carry one half of the table (usually with one of my brothers on the other side) and one of the two benches (with one of my brothers carrying the other).

The top of the table consisted of three long, flat wooden boards, probably six or seven inches wide, with about a half inch of space between them. The legs of the table were X's on each end. The benches had two flat wooden boards apiece, probably about half as wide as the boards which comprised the table's top. Again, wooden X's on the end to give solid support. The whole thing was very well-constructed.

This is where I was sitting on an early summer day (I was probably eight or nine years old) when a bee landed on my leg.

I didn't know what to do. I had never really had to deal with this before. I had a rush of adrenaline that made my leg hyper-sensitive to the bee's movements. I could feel each of the bee's feet landing on my leg like little pin pricks. It was my right leg, a little under half way down my lower leg at the point where my shin starts to become my calf.

My mom was there; she saw me freaking out. "Just stay still. If you don't bother the bee, he won't bother you. Leave him alone, and he'll leave."

The bee left. I held this advice in high regard, it having saved me from pain, and I made sure to remember it.

Some weeks later, I was in the backyard running around with my sisters. It was mid-day, so the sun was high overhead, shining with an intense brightness that I like much less than the golden laziness with which the summer sun shines in the evening. In my memory, the red table and benches are sitting out on my parents' patio, but it's entirely possible that they weren't there. It was sunny, and the Japanese lilac tree in the backyard was still healthy enough to provide a huge patch of shade at the end of the patio.

In the normal course of running around as a kid, I wandered past established boundaries and into the neighbor's yard on the north side of the house - the side opposite the Hamernicks, opposite the day care house, opposite my grandma's house.

I ran up the four-or-so feet of slope which took me from my parent's yard into Hazel Christensen's yard. Hazel is a sweet old lady with whom I never spoke until I made some small talk with her now and then after I got out of high school. She is a widow. Now that she's pretty old, her family visits her more often, I imagine because her physical capabilities are lessening. I still say "hi" if she's around when I pop into my parents' house.

The top of the slope from my parents' yard into Hazel's was marked by a tree. I don't remember what kind of tree it is, but we always ended up with a decent portion of its leaves in the fall. On that summer day, running around with my sisters, running away from the Hamernicks', away from the day care house, away from grandma's and from her table and from the Japanese lilac tree - I ran around to the far side of the tree, placing me squarely on top of a bee's nest.

I remembered my mother's advice.

Just stay still. If you don't bother the bee, he won't bother you. Leave him alone, and he'll leave.

My body quivered in pain as I stood directly over the bee's nest, hot tears pouring over my face. I just stayed still. I didn't bother the bees...with the exception of trampling their home and killing their family members. They took it personally, dozens of them handing my pudgy, nine year-old ass to me.

My sisters ran inside to get my mother, who ran outside to tell me to stop standing there and to run away. I made my way inside and my mother tended to me, feeling a mountain of guilt over my stupid-ass interpretation of her normally sound advice. I don't remember what she applied to my many, many wounds, but it was gritty. I don't remember ever dealing with the stuff before or since. I just sat there and cried and hurt and felt bad that my mother felt bad.

That's why I'm afraid of bees.

Kindergarten: Five Things. One lie.

In my previous post, I alluded to something I remember about kindergarten, noting that I don't remember much about the time I spent there.

Now that I think about it, I remember more than I originally estimated, but as far as actual events are concerned (and not general things like classmates' names or physical details of the rooms, etc.), I remember five of them, considering only one of them to be truly important.

One. We ate paste. When I was in kindergarten, in addition to having glue, we had adhesive paste. I never used it after kindergarten, and I don't recall either of my younger sisters using it when they were in elementary school, so ever since a few years after kindergarten I always thought that I was one of the very last people ever to use it. There's no way that's true, but I thought it for a long time.

Anyway, I remember the day we ate the paste. It was a group of four or five of us. It was regrettable and, in a surprising turn of events, minty.

Two. We ate crackers with butter on them. The crackers themselves were buttery, too; they weren't saltines. I have no idea why we did this. Now that I think about it, it's possible that someone my teacher knew made the butter. I think we may have been talking about making butter. Really, I think the whole thing was just a way for my teacher to have what was likely one of her favorite snacks. Why else would you talk about making butter with your kindergarten class?

Three. A girl named Katie threatened boys on the bus with a belt. She was the only Katie I went to elementary school with; there were Katherines and Kates, but no Katies - and she went to another school after kindergarten. She was wearing a dress, not any sort of garment that would require the wearing of a belt. Threatening boys on the bus by snapping a belt was such a good idea that she went out of her way to bring one to school - this couldn't wait until a day on which she might wear a belt anyway. That's almost as dumb as writing about this event in such a way that suggests that kindergarteners might voluntarily wear belts at some point.

Four. Stop, drop and roll. One day in kindergarten, we talked about fire safety. As one might expect, this eventually involved discussion of stopping, of dropping and of rolling. When I was in kindergarten, I was pretty happy to be at school. All the way through elementary, really. I liked it and I got a lot of satisfaction out of it. I was more than a little bit of a goodie-goodie. Almost as much of a goodie-goodie as my classmate who composed and sang a song in front of class at music time, the lyrics to which go like this:

I like school and school likes me,
I'm as happy as can be,
I like school and school likes me.

I still remember the melody.

The first (only?) time this got me in trouble came on the day we talked about stopping, dropping and rolling. On the bus home, I sat next to David Barker, who was blonde and tiny. We got to talking (and to getting excited) about stop, drop and roll.

At this point, I began to physically demonstrate in the bus seat. David Barker got a bloody nose. I don't need to tell you how funny it was.

Five. My teacher lied to me. My teacher lied to me and I will never, ever forget it.

We were using a particular type of plastic blocks. They were sort of Lego-ish in that they locked together, but were a softer plastic and only had one shape and size. You could stack them in a line and that was about it. The teacher was having us use them in order to teach us about patterns.

We were instructed to use different colors of blocks to create a pattern. I was doing this next to a girl named Megan Sutherland. I remember that it was her because, had my teacher not told me a terrible, terrible lie, Megan would have been the focus of my anger, not Miss Petersen.

I was sitting on the floor, taking the plastic blocks out of a bin and constructing my pattern. The pattern went like this:

Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Red. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Green. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Red. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Green...and so on.

My pattern took considerably longer to develop than all the other ones in the classroom. It also took many, many more yellow blocks than the others. That's the part that was disagreeable to Megan Sutherland. As Miss Petersen walked by, Megan told her, "Miss Petersen, Jon's hoggin' all the yellows."

Miss Petersen, in what (in my experience) was the only wrong thing she ever did to anyone, turned to me and lied:

"Jon, that's not a pattern."

It was a damn pattern. I fought, trying to explain to my teacher how it was a pattern. It didn't really matter; she understood that it was. But she told me it wasn't.

My pattern took more brains (...and more blocks) than those of the other students. It shouldn't have been taken away from me because it was inconvenient. Or even if I had to give up the yellow blocks, I certainly didn't deserve to be lied to.

What if I hadn't fought it? What if I didn't hold on to what I knew to be true? In my mind, that was a truly dangerous moment. It could have been the first step toward developing a very different mind than I have today. For convenience. To avoid ruffling any feathers.

I don't know for sure whether that moment actually triggered anything that ended up affecting my mind long-term for the better. But I have to think that the fact that I so vividly remember it suggests that it was very important.

I very genuinely thank God that I resisted in that moment. The consequences could have been staggering. It was a pattern.

Slouching, Then and Now.

Most of the time, I have terrible posture.

For much of the day, my head and shoulders are lowered and leaning forward as I appear to be a few inches shorter than I actually am. I've been like this for long enough that standing up straight with my shoulders back in line with my body feels unnatural and uncomfortable. It started when I was young, and the way it began doesn't have much of anything to do with the way it is now.

I slouched when I was young, but it didn't really start until kindergarten. This was the first place I went regularly and had repetitive social interaction with people who weren't part of my family. (You might be thinking, "what about preschool?" I only went to preschool for two days. I didn't like it.)

When I got to kindergarten, I very quickly noticed that I was noticeably taller than everyone else. There were others in my age group at Emmet D. Williams Elementary who were as tall as or taller than me for most of my time there, but at the time they were in the PM kindergarten class, which met later in the day. I was an AM kindergarten student, and my teacher (to whom I was as attracted as a kindergartener can be, regardless of the fact that she was likely at least five times older than me at that point) had the same initials as I did. Her name was Janis Petersen.

When I would stand around and talk with the other students, it felt weird to be several inches above them. I didn't know anything about...well, anything at that point (I was in kindergarten), and I figured that if I was talking to people my age and "fitting in," I shouldn't be towering over them. So I slouched. I did what I thought was necessary to fit in (which contrasts sharply with one of the only other things I remember about kindergarten, about which I will blog sometime soon).

But when I got older, I developed an entirely different reason for slouching. My motivation for slouching began to change when I was in middle school, which was absolutely the worst time of my life and (hopefully) will remain so for the rest of my existence.

In middle school, I didn't slouch to avoid the appearance that I was different from the other students. I slouched to avoid being noticed, as my two years in middle school were filled with people treating me and others in ways nobody should ever be treated. If someone noticed me, they would notice how completely seventh-grade, don't-understand-what-the-hell-is-going-on awkward I was, and then start to mistreat me.

It would be kind of weird (and would reveal lots of deep-seeded issues) if the reason I slouched when I'm 26 stemmed from things that happened when I was 13. Instead, the reason I slouch today is both different from and related to my previous reasons for slouching.

I slouch today because of the cumulative effect of innumerable disappointments and embarassments which my mind refuses to forget.

I remember so, so many embarassing or shameful events from my life, no matter how small. I don't know why I remember them so vividly, but I do.

When I was very young, I was running around in my back yard. I wandered into my neighbor's yard, where my neighbor was sitting around with her yippy, terribly annoying chihuahua, whose name was Mitsy. At one point, I got to hold the dog. I don't remember whether I asked to hold the dog or whether I was asked if I'd like to hold it.

I dropped it.

I vividly remember exactly where I was standing at that moment. I remember the exact direction I was facing and where my neighbor was in relation to me. I remember looking down at her (I was standing, she was sitting in a chair) and I remember the exact look on her face as she yelled at me: "GO HOME NOW! YOU COULD HAVE BROKE HER BACK!" I remember very clearly that she said "broke" and not "broken." I remember what her glasses looked like. I remember the tone of red her face took on as she yelled it, and I remember beginning to cry instantly and sprinting into my house.

I remember this and a number of other similarly shameful incidents I repeatedly went over in my head during my youth. I don't know why these things stick with me as well as they do. It probably just comes with my hyper-introspective nature and how deeply I've always desired to avoid disappointing people (middle child!).

I don't really know where I'm going with this. I slouch. There are reasons. The reasons have changed over the years. I don't have any way to bring this all together. Writing a blog about nothing in particular is usually done under the assumption that the readers are interested enough not to need me to take this in any more dramatic or productive direction.