I have decided to go through my old stories and do a few vintage imports... maybe a story a week or something, because I like keeping that stuff available for people to read. So, without further adieu, I bring you:
The Day I Had A Boob. At Age 9.
Yes. A boob. No, not plural. Just one.
See, I was 9 years old, and riding in the back seat of my mom's 1976 Ford Mustang Ghia, which had a sunroof. We were on our way to my Uncle Joe's house in Valencia, probably driving down the 118 freeway, en route to I-5. In fact, I know we were, because I remember seeing the rocks along the hillside overlooking Simi Valley, and had started looking to my right to see the city from above, when the horribly traumatizing, life-changing impact took place.
Just for background, I'll let you know, dear reader, that my parents smoked at the time. Hell, everyone still smoked then. Restaurants with non-smoking sections were still rare. I'm old. Shut up. Anyway, all of the windows were open, as was the sun roof, since it was August, and hot. My mom never ran the air conditioning when she would go over hills like that one, because cars were known to overheat as a result.
Anyway, I remember looking over the city, when I felt it. It was like a hot, searing, burning, mind fucking pain, almost electric shock-like... one I'd never felt before, on my little pre-pubescent chestal area. I opened my shirt, and saw something that looked orangy-red moving back and forth like a miniature flaming toxic waste drum that had just been knocked over, and let out a scream. At first, I thought it was a cigarette ember. I was primed for a split-second to give them an angry lecture on the dangers of smoking! But... alas... upon closer examination, I realized what it really was.
A honey bee.
Its little body was broken from its stinger by then, with its wet, feathery, frayed, sinewy abdomen... crawling around as if to say: "What the fuck is happening to me?"
The severed stinger throbbed and pulsed its poison under my skin. I really found the both halves; the moving body, and the undulating stinger severely creepy. In fact, at the time, this weird fact of science nauseated me, and I almost passed out.
I had no idea what else to do but scream... scream as loud as I could.
I screamed so loudly my mom came close to wrecking the car.
She pulled over, I got out, and dropped the bee's body from my shirt. Still though, none of us knew how to properly remove the stinger from my skin, which was, by now, red and swollen, so we decided that we would need to wait until we got to my Uncle's house, where my grandmother (a nurse,) would also be, and would likely know how to remove it.
I tried so hard not to look at it. The drive there seemed agonizingly long. Literally. The pain was intense, and still electrical in nature. Still, I couldn't help it. The stinger seemed like a well pump, just going to town. I had no idea they did that until it happened to me, and my little non-boob.
No idea at all.
When we finally arrived, my grandmother took me into a private room and tweezed the stinger out, somehow coaxing the barb along with the rest of the stinger. It all came out in one fell swoop, nothing left behind. She then gave me ice to put on the affected area.
Ahhh... Sort of.
And I had a boob. A very red boob. Yes. Just one. No, not plural. Painful as it was, I wished there had been two bees so I would have at least looked balanced.
Thinking about that at the time, I flashed back to another time, when I wanted to be Afro-American. I tried to paint myself black with black watercolour paint. I started with my feet, and only made it up to my knees, at which point, the little pot of paint was empty, and I couldn't finish. My parents thought I wanted knee socks. I can't remember if I ever told them what I actually wanted. I think by then my dream was completely dashed, so I probably said nothing. Ho, hum.
And still, at the time, it made me laugh, and almost forget about my single, pained bright red boobie.
Nope. Couldn't win as a kid. Just couldn't.
-H
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