Pow! My brother punched me in the face. Then, thock thock, repeatedly in the gut. I tried to block the next barrage of summersault kicks, but my fingers were too slow. Blood was splattering everywhere, my blood. I was running out of energy quickly. One, two, three more brutal face punches and all I could do was stand there swaying back and forth like a dead tree in the breeze. Then the coup de gras: my brother grabs me by the jaw with his vice-like grip and rips my head off, my spine dangling under it. My body falls to the floor defeated, spaghetti sauce-like blood shooting everywhere. FATALITY!
"You cheated!" I roared, as I hit him with my tiny, sweaty, Sega Genesis hands. I always called him a cheater because I couldn’t stomach the fact that he was better than me at everything. My brother, Austin, was two years and four months older than me, smarter, taller, stronger, and way better at video games. He was especially cocky between his birthday in late October and mine in February, when he was officially three years older than me under birthday law.
Years later I learned that my brother actually was cheating in a way. Austin was using special moves that he purposefully wasn’t divulging to me. My button mashing was no match for his nonchalant Liu Kang fireballs and Scorpion harpoons. Even though I saw it as meanness at the time, when I look back I can understand that as an older brother you have to be better than your younger brother, even in things as trivial as video games. You want them to look up to you. Losing to your little brother not only shatters your confidence in yourself, it shatters his confidence in you. However, six-year-old Paul didn’t grasp the nuances of the situation. I continued hitting my brother.
Just then, my dad stomped down the stairs and stood in the doorway. "Alright, time’s up. It’s been an hour. Mom wants you to go play outside," he said, planting himself there in case we decided to ignore him and try to unlock a new character. There was no way that had been an hour, but there was also no use arguing with my dad, who would change from a jolly bearded Dionysus into a giant, storming Greek colossus if forced to repeat himself. We turned the Sega off and put it away, making sure to wrap the cords around the controllers and place it all safely on top of the giant, twenty-ton TV, where we knew the cats wouldn’t pee on it. Then my dad, like a prison guard, led us to the back door and evicted us from the house.
If I hadn’t been in first grade, I would’ve appreciated just how incredible a day it was. The sun was just reaching the point in the sky where you almost had to snap your neck to look up at it. A breeze blew across the backyard carrying the tang of mown lawns, fresh, sweet, stinky mulch from my neighbor’s yard, and hundreds of allergens right into my nostrils. I could hear the trees rustling in that breeze as well as the sounds of other kids playing on the playground at my elementary school just up the street, and very faintly, the ambient noise of mid-day traffic on I-66 a few miles away.
My brother snuck back in the house and left me outside to play by myself. I decided to do archaeological research in the woods behind my house. Only I had the guts to go there. Neither my brother nor my sister was light enough to survive crossing the rusty fence to get there. Even under my weight it would sway haphazardly. The trick of getting over the fence without ripping a hole in your tummy was to tumble off of it as it swung forward. If timed correctly, you would land on your back in a pile of poison ivy (which I, like the American Indians, have an immunity to). If not, the consequences can be disastrous.
I had survived. Dusting myself off I tramped to my current excavation site between the tree with the woodpecker holes and the rock I found a snake under, and started digging. The dirt of suburban Vienna is a mix of tan clay, thick, tangly tree roots, and quartz crystals. Using a flat, spade-like rock, and my chubby hands I removed the dirt, debris, and halved earthworms from the Earth and put them in a pile near the hole. As I got a half a foot down I had to start cutting through more and more roots; sawing at them, and when that failed, violently smashing them with my rock and ripping them out. Finally I had gotten most of them out of my digging path and was starting to make some progress.
Suddenly, I struck something, maybe a foot down. It was round, hard, smooth, beige, and the size of a large mango. After fifteen sweaty minutes of more digging, root hacking, and wall collapses, I finally wrenched my treasure from the dirt. Giddy, I wrapped it up in the tummy area of my shirt, climbed fearlessly back over the rusty death fence and trotted to the green hose at the back of the house behind the big fan we used to kill bugs in. I carefully washed the dirt and grime off of my object (completely drenching myself under proper hose protocol) and soon realized what I was holding... a DINOSAUR EGG!
I was so amazed and thrilled with myself. I had just dug up a real dinosaur egg that must have survived a bajillion years since the Protacious Age. Fearing I would break it, I brought it in the house and wrapped it in the beach towel with the lady in a bikini on a Harley Davidson that my dad always brought on vacations. First, I showed the egg to my parents and they seemed especially uninterested. No surprise there. When I showed it to my sister, she said she believed me and told me to be very careful with it. Unlike my brother, she had no need to compete with me, and we fought a lot less because of it.
Then I went to rub it in Austin’s dumb face. This time I was better than him. I was the better archaeologist. There was no doubt about it, I had just dug up a dinosaur egg. I even expected him to grovel at my feet for his insolence. But, when I showed it to him, he just laughed directly in my face. He told me it wasn't a dinosaur egg, that it was just a big rock.
Big rock? Big rock?! I was furious. Fool! Simpleton! How could Austin just ignore the obvious signs? The little black spots, the perfect smoothness, and the tiny cracks that indicated the elements it endured over its hundred quintillion years of exile… Plus it came from the ground! Explain that!
For the next few weeks, I kept my dinosaur egg coddled in its awkward towel and slept with it next to me. I knew that it had to be kept warm or it wouldn't hatch. Every night that summer, I wore my Jurassic Park pajamas and slept with my dinosaur egg. Still, my brother maintained the delusion that it was a rock.
On yet another stunning summer day as I was walking around the house with the egg, my brother ran up from behind and snatched it from me. He dashed outside and I chased after him as fast as my puny legs could go. He got out to the deck in the back, climbed up onto the railing, and held the dinosaur egg high above his head.
Time froze. The wind blew through the trees. The carpenter bee on our porch was whirring above our heads like a tiny news helicopter. Then my brother shouted, "It's a rock!" and hurled it straight down at the incredibly hard and solid concrete sidewalk below.
I was devastated and consumed with berserker rage (like Shredder at the end of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze). Austin jumped off the deck and escaped into the house again through the other door. My anger left me and I solemnly trudged down the stairs to see if somehow the egg had miraculously survived. Tears were streaming down my face. My brother had betrayed me.
I looked down at the tragically hard concrete, my eyes blurred and stinging with tears and orange dinosaur dust. What I saw completely blew me away. There in the broken fragments was...
NOTHING!
It wasn't a dinosaur egg. It was just a stupid rock!
In our society, we are disturbed by immaturity and ignorance. At a certain age, we are all forced to see the truth, even if it is a sad one. My brother had passed that moment in his childhood and he was just helping me through it.
Today, if I dug up a rock, I would think nothing of it. Sure, it is interesting, but I’m old enough to know how rare it is to find a fossil and that it is literally impossible to find an actual living dinosaur egg, untouched by the billions of years, the apocalyptic meteors, volcanoes, Ice Age, and destructive urbanization of the land. But at that young age, those things don’t matter. Your cat loves you, your big brother will always be bigger than you (today Austin is half a foot shorter than me), people come back to life when you hit the A button repeatedly, and the hunk of sandstone in your backyard is a dinosaur egg, until it is literally shattered in front of you.
I learned my lesson. I stopped crying and I went inside for a Capri Sun.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Dinosaur Egg: Remake
Pow! My brother punched me in the face. Then, thock thock, repeatedly in the gut. I tried to block the next barrage of summersault kicks, but my fingers were too slow. Blood was splattering everywhere, my blood. I was running out of energy quickly. One, two, three more brutal face punches and all I could do was stand there swaying back and forth like a dead tree in the breeze. Then the coup de gras: my brother grabs me by the jaw with his vice-like grip and rips my head off, my spine dangling under it. My body falls to the floor defeated, spaghetti sauce-like blood shooting everywhere. FATALITY!
"You cheated!" I roared, as I hit him with my tiny, sweaty, Sega Genesis hands. I always called him a cheater because I couldn’t stomach the fact that he was better than me at everything. My brother, Austin, was two years and four months older than me, smarter, taller, stronger, and way better at video games. He was especially cocky between his birthday in late October and mine in February, when he was officially three years older than me under birthday law.
Years later I learned that my brother actually was cheating in a way. Austin was using special moves that he purposefully wasn’t divulging to me. My button mashing was no match for his nonchalant Liu Kang fireballs and Scorpion harpoons. Even though I saw it as meanness at the time, when I look back I can understand that as an older brother you have to be better than your younger brother, even in things as trivial as video games. You want them to look up to you. Losing to your little brother not only shatters your confidence in yourself, it shatters his confidence in you. However, six-year-old Paul didn’t grasp the nuances of the situation. I continued hitting my brother.
Just then, my dad stomped down the stairs and stood in the doorway. "Alright, time’s up. It’s been an hour. Mom wants you to go play outside," he said, planting himself there in case we decided to ignore him and try to unlock a new character. There was no way that had been an hour, but there was also no use arguing with my dad, who would change from a jolly bearded Dionysus into a giant, storming Greek colossus if forced to repeat himself. We turned the Sega off and put it away, making sure to wrap the cords around the controllers and place it all safely on top of the giant, twenty-ton TV, where we knew the cats wouldn’t pee on it. Then my dad, like a prison guard, led us to the back door and evicted us from the house.
If I hadn’t been in first grade, I would’ve appreciated just how incredible a day it was. The sun was just reaching the point in the sky where you almost had to snap your neck to look up at it. A breeze blew across the backyard carrying the tang of mown lawns, fresh, sweet, stinky mulch from my neighbor’s yard, and hundreds of allergens right into my nostrils. I could hear the trees rustling in that breeze as well as the sounds of other kids playing on the playground at my elementary school just up the street, and very faintly, the ambient noise of mid-day traffic on I-66 a few miles away.
My brother snuck back in the house and left me outside to play by myself. I decided to do archaeological research in the woods behind my house. Only I had the guts to go there. Neither my brother nor my sister was light enough to survive crossing the rusty fence to get there. Even under my weight it would sway haphazardly. The trick of getting over the fence without ripping a hole in your tummy was to tumble off of it as it swung forward. If timed correctly, you would land on your back in a pile of poison ivy (which I, like the American Indians, have an immunity to). If not, the consequences can be disastrous.
I had survived. Dusting myself off I tramped to my current excavation site between the tree with the woodpecker holes and the rock I found a snake under, and started digging. The dirt of suburban Vienna is a mix of tan clay, thick, tangly tree roots, and quartz crystals. Using a flat, spade-like rock, and my chubby hands I removed the dirt, debris, and halved earthworms from the Earth and put them in a pile near the hole. As I got a half a foot down I had to start cutting through more and more roots; sawing at them, and when that failed, violently smashing them with my rock and ripping them out. Finally I had gotten most of them out of my digging path and was starting to make some progress.
Suddenly, I struck something, maybe a foot down. It was round, hard, smooth, beige, and the size of a large mango. After fifteen sweaty minutes of more digging, root hacking, and wall collapses, I finally wrenched my treasure from the dirt. Giddy, I wrapped it up in the tummy area of my shirt, climbed fearlessly back over the rusty death fence and trotted to the green hose at the back of the house behind the big fan we used to kill bugs in. I carefully washed the dirt and grime off of my object (completely drenching myself under proper hose protocol) and soon realized what I was holding... a DINOSAUR EGG!
I was so amazed and thrilled with myself. I had just dug up a real dinosaur egg that must have survived a bajillion years since the Protacious Age. Fearing I would break it, I brought it in the house and wrapped it in the beach towel with the lady in a bikini on a Harley Davidson that my dad always brought on vacations. First, I showed the egg to my parents and they seemed especially uninterested. No surprise there. When I showed it to my sister, she said she believed me and told me to be very careful with it. Unlike my brother, she had no need to compete with me, and we fought a lot less because of it.
Then I went to rub it in Austin’s dumb face. This time I was better than him. I was the better archaeologist. There was no doubt about it, I had just dug up a dinosaur egg. I even expected him to grovel at my feet for his insolence. But, when I showed it to him, he just laughed directly in my face. He told me it wasn't a dinosaur egg, that it was just a big rock.
Big rock? Big rock?! I was furious. Fool! Simpleton! How could Austin just ignore the obvious signs? The little black spots, the perfect smoothness, and the tiny cracks that indicated the elements it endured over its hundred quintillion years of exile… Plus it came from the ground! Explain that!
For the next few weeks, I kept my dinosaur egg coddled in its awkward towel and slept with it next to me. I knew that it had to be kept warm or it wouldn't hatch. Every night that summer, I wore my Jurassic Park pajamas and slept with my dinosaur egg. Still, my brother maintained the delusion that it was a rock.
On yet another stunning summer day as I was walking around the house with the egg, my brother ran up from behind and snatched it from me. He dashed outside and I chased after him as fast as my puny legs could go. He got out to the deck in the back, climbed up onto the railing, and held the dinosaur egg high above his head.
Time froze. The wind blew through the trees. The carpenter bee on our porch was whirring above our heads like a tiny news helicopter. Then my brother shouted, "It's a rock!" and hurled it straight down at the incredibly hard and solid concrete sidewalk below.
I was devastated and consumed with berserker rage (like Shredder at the end of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze). Austin jumped off the deck and escaped into the house again through the other door. My anger left me and I solemnly trudged down the stairs to see if somehow the egg had miraculously survived. Tears were streaming down my face. My brother had betrayed me.
I looked down at the tragically hard concrete, my eyes blurred and stinging with tears and orange dinosaur dust. What I saw completely blew me away. There in the broken fragments was...
NOTHING!
It wasn't a dinosaur egg. It was just a stupid rock!
In our society, we are disturbed by immaturity and ignorance. At a certain age, we are all forced to see the truth, even if it is a sad one. My brother had passed that moment in his childhood and he was just helping me through it.
Today, if I dug up a rock, I would think nothing of it. Sure, it is interesting, but I’m old enough to know how rare it is to find a fossil and that it is literally impossible to find an actual living dinosaur egg, untouched by the billions of years, the apocalyptic meteors, volcanoes, Ice Age, and destructive urbanization of the land. But at that young age, those things don’t matter. Your cat loves you, your big brother will always be bigger than you (today Austin is half a foot shorter than me), people come back to life when you hit the A button repeatedly, and the hunk of sandstone in your backyard is a dinosaur egg, until it is literally shattered in front of you.
I learned my lesson. I stopped crying and I went inside for a Capri Sun.
"You cheated!" I roared, as I hit him with my tiny, sweaty, Sega Genesis hands. I always called him a cheater because I couldn’t stomach the fact that he was better than me at everything. My brother, Austin, was two years and four months older than me, smarter, taller, stronger, and way better at video games. He was especially cocky between his birthday in late October and mine in February, when he was officially three years older than me under birthday law.
Years later I learned that my brother actually was cheating in a way. Austin was using special moves that he purposefully wasn’t divulging to me. My button mashing was no match for his nonchalant Liu Kang fireballs and Scorpion harpoons. Even though I saw it as meanness at the time, when I look back I can understand that as an older brother you have to be better than your younger brother, even in things as trivial as video games. You want them to look up to you. Losing to your little brother not only shatters your confidence in yourself, it shatters his confidence in you. However, six-year-old Paul didn’t grasp the nuances of the situation. I continued hitting my brother.
Just then, my dad stomped down the stairs and stood in the doorway. "Alright, time’s up. It’s been an hour. Mom wants you to go play outside," he said, planting himself there in case we decided to ignore him and try to unlock a new character. There was no way that had been an hour, but there was also no use arguing with my dad, who would change from a jolly bearded Dionysus into a giant, storming Greek colossus if forced to repeat himself. We turned the Sega off and put it away, making sure to wrap the cords around the controllers and place it all safely on top of the giant, twenty-ton TV, where we knew the cats wouldn’t pee on it. Then my dad, like a prison guard, led us to the back door and evicted us from the house.
If I hadn’t been in first grade, I would’ve appreciated just how incredible a day it was. The sun was just reaching the point in the sky where you almost had to snap your neck to look up at it. A breeze blew across the backyard carrying the tang of mown lawns, fresh, sweet, stinky mulch from my neighbor’s yard, and hundreds of allergens right into my nostrils. I could hear the trees rustling in that breeze as well as the sounds of other kids playing on the playground at my elementary school just up the street, and very faintly, the ambient noise of mid-day traffic on I-66 a few miles away.
My brother snuck back in the house and left me outside to play by myself. I decided to do archaeological research in the woods behind my house. Only I had the guts to go there. Neither my brother nor my sister was light enough to survive crossing the rusty fence to get there. Even under my weight it would sway haphazardly. The trick of getting over the fence without ripping a hole in your tummy was to tumble off of it as it swung forward. If timed correctly, you would land on your back in a pile of poison ivy (which I, like the American Indians, have an immunity to). If not, the consequences can be disastrous.
I had survived. Dusting myself off I tramped to my current excavation site between the tree with the woodpecker holes and the rock I found a snake under, and started digging. The dirt of suburban Vienna is a mix of tan clay, thick, tangly tree roots, and quartz crystals. Using a flat, spade-like rock, and my chubby hands I removed the dirt, debris, and halved earthworms from the Earth and put them in a pile near the hole. As I got a half a foot down I had to start cutting through more and more roots; sawing at them, and when that failed, violently smashing them with my rock and ripping them out. Finally I had gotten most of them out of my digging path and was starting to make some progress.
Suddenly, I struck something, maybe a foot down. It was round, hard, smooth, beige, and the size of a large mango. After fifteen sweaty minutes of more digging, root hacking, and wall collapses, I finally wrenched my treasure from the dirt. Giddy, I wrapped it up in the tummy area of my shirt, climbed fearlessly back over the rusty death fence and trotted to the green hose at the back of the house behind the big fan we used to kill bugs in. I carefully washed the dirt and grime off of my object (completely drenching myself under proper hose protocol) and soon realized what I was holding... a DINOSAUR EGG!
I was so amazed and thrilled with myself. I had just dug up a real dinosaur egg that must have survived a bajillion years since the Protacious Age. Fearing I would break it, I brought it in the house and wrapped it in the beach towel with the lady in a bikini on a Harley Davidson that my dad always brought on vacations. First, I showed the egg to my parents and they seemed especially uninterested. No surprise there. When I showed it to my sister, she said she believed me and told me to be very careful with it. Unlike my brother, she had no need to compete with me, and we fought a lot less because of it.
Then I went to rub it in Austin’s dumb face. This time I was better than him. I was the better archaeologist. There was no doubt about it, I had just dug up a dinosaur egg. I even expected him to grovel at my feet for his insolence. But, when I showed it to him, he just laughed directly in my face. He told me it wasn't a dinosaur egg, that it was just a big rock.
Big rock? Big rock?! I was furious. Fool! Simpleton! How could Austin just ignore the obvious signs? The little black spots, the perfect smoothness, and the tiny cracks that indicated the elements it endured over its hundred quintillion years of exile… Plus it came from the ground! Explain that!
For the next few weeks, I kept my dinosaur egg coddled in its awkward towel and slept with it next to me. I knew that it had to be kept warm or it wouldn't hatch. Every night that summer, I wore my Jurassic Park pajamas and slept with my dinosaur egg. Still, my brother maintained the delusion that it was a rock.
On yet another stunning summer day as I was walking around the house with the egg, my brother ran up from behind and snatched it from me. He dashed outside and I chased after him as fast as my puny legs could go. He got out to the deck in the back, climbed up onto the railing, and held the dinosaur egg high above his head.
Time froze. The wind blew through the trees. The carpenter bee on our porch was whirring above our heads like a tiny news helicopter. Then my brother shouted, "It's a rock!" and hurled it straight down at the incredibly hard and solid concrete sidewalk below.
I was devastated and consumed with berserker rage (like Shredder at the end of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze). Austin jumped off the deck and escaped into the house again through the other door. My anger left me and I solemnly trudged down the stairs to see if somehow the egg had miraculously survived. Tears were streaming down my face. My brother had betrayed me.
I looked down at the tragically hard concrete, my eyes blurred and stinging with tears and orange dinosaur dust. What I saw completely blew me away. There in the broken fragments was...
NOTHING!
It wasn't a dinosaur egg. It was just a stupid rock!
In our society, we are disturbed by immaturity and ignorance. At a certain age, we are all forced to see the truth, even if it is a sad one. My brother had passed that moment in his childhood and he was just helping me through it.
Today, if I dug up a rock, I would think nothing of it. Sure, it is interesting, but I’m old enough to know how rare it is to find a fossil and that it is literally impossible to find an actual living dinosaur egg, untouched by the billions of years, the apocalyptic meteors, volcanoes, Ice Age, and destructive urbanization of the land. But at that young age, those things don’t matter. Your cat loves you, your big brother will always be bigger than you (today Austin is half a foot shorter than me), people come back to life when you hit the A button repeatedly, and the hunk of sandstone in your backyard is a dinosaur egg, until it is literally shattered in front of you.
I learned my lesson. I stopped crying and I went inside for a Capri Sun.
Monday, January 5, 2009
BEES!
These two events might have occured in the same summer...
For a long time there was this Bee Hole (a beehive in a hole, I guess) in our back yard. I used to watch bees buzzing in and out of it. One day, when I was 8 or 9, after visiting the Natural History Museum and seeing the bee hive in the Insect Room, I had the brilliant idea to take a long, clear, plastic pvc tube and stick it in the nest. In my head I imagined studying the bees as they happily crawled through the tube. It was a genius idea. So I went and got the tube, walked over to the bee hole (which didn't seem too active) and shoved it right in the hole. Then I looked directly in the tube.
For a while nothing happened. Then suddenly I felt the tube in my hand vibrate and, as I peered in, saw in a split second, a very pissed off bee zip up the tube and fly directly into my face. It appeared the bees were not happy with the new entrance, and had sent a "negotiator" to discuss it with me. In a millisecond the bee flew out, clung to my forehead, stung me eight thousand times and died. Ow. Bee stings hurt. Then a moment passed... OW! OW! OH JESUS NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bee venom was literally coursing through my brain! It was like a brain freeze times infinity and it lasted for almost ten minutes. It was the most painful thing I had ever experienced in my life. Later that day I removed the tube and ran like hell.
On a different summer day (after the brain sting) Austin (my brother) and I were hanging out in front of my uncle Tom's house where there was another bee hole. I wasn't a big fan of bees for obvious reasons, but I wasn't really afraid of them either. I knew from experience (getting stung in the forehead) that if you leave them alone, they won't attack you. So I stayed a good distance away and stood pretty much still. However, my brother thought it would be an awesome idea to throw rocks at the bee hole. So he started throwing big brick sized rocks and big rock sized bricks at the bee hole while I yelled at him to stop or face the wrath of the hole bees. The hole bees were getting angry. With each rock the air around the bee hole became more and more opaque with swarming bees. Finally my brother lunged a huge rock directly into the eye of the hurricane (of bees). Then all hell broke loose.
Every goddamn bee in that nest headed straight for me, the guy standing perfectly still a quarter of a football field away. As they swarmed me, I ran like a man on fire. Finally I had outrun the larger portion of the bees, with a few hundred still clinging to my shirt, hair, and shorts. I spent the next few minutes getting stung by bees, and smacked by my brother (who was trying to kill the bees on me). Austin had been untouched. I had sustained more bee stings than I could count.
I learned a painful lesson from that experience. Always throw rocks at bee holes when other people are doing it, because you're getting stung either way.
For a long time there was this Bee Hole (a beehive in a hole, I guess) in our back yard. I used to watch bees buzzing in and out of it. One day, when I was 8 or 9, after visiting the Natural History Museum and seeing the bee hive in the Insect Room, I had the brilliant idea to take a long, clear, plastic pvc tube and stick it in the nest. In my head I imagined studying the bees as they happily crawled through the tube. It was a genius idea. So I went and got the tube, walked over to the bee hole (which didn't seem too active) and shoved it right in the hole. Then I looked directly in the tube.
For a while nothing happened. Then suddenly I felt the tube in my hand vibrate and, as I peered in, saw in a split second, a very pissed off bee zip up the tube and fly directly into my face. It appeared the bees were not happy with the new entrance, and had sent a "negotiator" to discuss it with me. In a millisecond the bee flew out, clung to my forehead, stung me eight thousand times and died. Ow. Bee stings hurt. Then a moment passed... OW! OW! OH JESUS NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bee venom was literally coursing through my brain! It was like a brain freeze times infinity and it lasted for almost ten minutes. It was the most painful thing I had ever experienced in my life. Later that day I removed the tube and ran like hell.
On a different summer day (after the brain sting) Austin (my brother) and I were hanging out in front of my uncle Tom's house where there was another bee hole. I wasn't a big fan of bees for obvious reasons, but I wasn't really afraid of them either. I knew from experience (getting stung in the forehead) that if you leave them alone, they won't attack you. So I stayed a good distance away and stood pretty much still. However, my brother thought it would be an awesome idea to throw rocks at the bee hole. So he started throwing big brick sized rocks and big rock sized bricks at the bee hole while I yelled at him to stop or face the wrath of the hole bees. The hole bees were getting angry. With each rock the air around the bee hole became more and more opaque with swarming bees. Finally my brother lunged a huge rock directly into the eye of the hurricane (of bees). Then all hell broke loose.
Every goddamn bee in that nest headed straight for me, the guy standing perfectly still a quarter of a football field away. As they swarmed me, I ran like a man on fire. Finally I had outrun the larger portion of the bees, with a few hundred still clinging to my shirt, hair, and shorts. I spent the next few minutes getting stung by bees, and smacked by my brother (who was trying to kill the bees on me). Austin had been untouched. I had sustained more bee stings than I could count.
I learned a painful lesson from that experience. Always throw rocks at bee holes when other people are doing it, because you're getting stung either way.
BEES!
These two events might have occured in the same summer...
For a long time there was this Bee Hole (a beehive in a hole, I guess) in our back yard. I used to watch bees buzzing in and out of it. One day, when I was 8 or 9, after visiting the Natural History Museum and seeing the bee hive in the Insect Room, I had the brilliant idea to take a long, clear, plastic pvc tube and stick it in the nest. In my head I imagined studying the bees as they happily crawled through the tube. It was a genius idea. So I went and got the tube, walked over to the bee hole (which didn't seem too active) and shoved it right in the hole. Then I looked directly in the tube.
For a while nothing happened. Then suddenly I felt the tube in my hand vibrate and, as I peered in, saw in a split second, a very pissed off bee zip up the tube and fly directly into my face. It appeared the bees were not happy with the new entrance, and had sent a "negotiator" to discuss it with me. In a millisecond the bee flew out, clung to my forehead, stung me eight thousand times and died. Ow. Bee stings hurt. Then a moment passed... OW! OW! OH JESUS NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bee venom was literally coursing through my brain! It was like a brain freeze times infinity and it lasted for almost ten minutes. It was the most painful thing I had ever experienced in my life. Later that day I removed the tube and ran like hell.
On a different summer day (after the brain sting) Austin (my brother) and I were hanging out in front of my uncle Tom's house where there was another bee hole. I wasn't a big fan of bees for obvious reasons, but I wasn't really afraid of them either. I knew from experience (getting stung in the forehead) that if you leave them alone, they won't attack you. So I stayed a good distance away and stood pretty much still. However, my brother thought it would be an awesome idea to throw rocks at the bee hole. So he started throwing big brick sized rocks and big rock sized bricks at the bee hole while I yelled at him to stop or face the wrath of the hole bees. The hole bees were getting angry. With each rock the air around the bee hole became more and more opaque with swarming bees. Finally my brother lunged a huge rock directly into the eye of the hurricane (of bees). Then all hell broke loose.
Every goddamn bee in that nest headed straight for me, the guy standing perfectly still a quarter of a football field away. As they swarmed me, I ran like a man on fire. Finally I had outrun the larger portion of the bees, with a few hundred still clinging to my shirt, hair, and shorts. I spent the next few minutes getting stung by bees, and smacked by my brother (who was trying to kill the bees on me). Austin had been untouched. I had sustained more bee stings than I could count.
I learned a painful lesson from that experience. Always throw rocks at bee holes when other people are doing it, because you're getting stung either way.
For a long time there was this Bee Hole (a beehive in a hole, I guess) in our back yard. I used to watch bees buzzing in and out of it. One day, when I was 8 or 9, after visiting the Natural History Museum and seeing the bee hive in the Insect Room, I had the brilliant idea to take a long, clear, plastic pvc tube and stick it in the nest. In my head I imagined studying the bees as they happily crawled through the tube. It was a genius idea. So I went and got the tube, walked over to the bee hole (which didn't seem too active) and shoved it right in the hole. Then I looked directly in the tube.
For a while nothing happened. Then suddenly I felt the tube in my hand vibrate and, as I peered in, saw in a split second, a very pissed off bee zip up the tube and fly directly into my face. It appeared the bees were not happy with the new entrance, and had sent a "negotiator" to discuss it with me. In a millisecond the bee flew out, clung to my forehead, stung me eight thousand times and died. Ow. Bee stings hurt. Then a moment passed... OW! OW! OH JESUS NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bee venom was literally coursing through my brain! It was like a brain freeze times infinity and it lasted for almost ten minutes. It was the most painful thing I had ever experienced in my life. Later that day I removed the tube and ran like hell.
On a different summer day (after the brain sting) Austin (my brother) and I were hanging out in front of my uncle Tom's house where there was another bee hole. I wasn't a big fan of bees for obvious reasons, but I wasn't really afraid of them either. I knew from experience (getting stung in the forehead) that if you leave them alone, they won't attack you. So I stayed a good distance away and stood pretty much still. However, my brother thought it would be an awesome idea to throw rocks at the bee hole. So he started throwing big brick sized rocks and big rock sized bricks at the bee hole while I yelled at him to stop or face the wrath of the hole bees. The hole bees were getting angry. With each rock the air around the bee hole became more and more opaque with swarming bees. Finally my brother lunged a huge rock directly into the eye of the hurricane (of bees). Then all hell broke loose.
Every goddamn bee in that nest headed straight for me, the guy standing perfectly still a quarter of a football field away. As they swarmed me, I ran like a man on fire. Finally I had outrun the larger portion of the bees, with a few hundred still clinging to my shirt, hair, and shorts. I spent the next few minutes getting stung by bees, and smacked by my brother (who was trying to kill the bees on me). Austin had been untouched. I had sustained more bee stings than I could count.
I learned a painful lesson from that experience. Always throw rocks at bee holes when other people are doing it, because you're getting stung either way.
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