Don't FLIRT with a Wasp seems a simple taste of wisdom. While Petruchio overcame it, it hardly seems worth the effort for the rest of us.
Real Moods? Terrified, puzzlefied.
One of the great benefits of being alive is learning something new every day. Sometimes we learn new things by chance. But to make the most of our moments on The Planet we can learn more by being aware, by being brave when asking questions, by not shrinking from the stress of the moment, by not letting the pressure of the moment overwhelm our curiosity, our passion to know.
So there is no totally polite way to get into this but I'm still going to keep it "PG-13." Let's lay out the players and the scenario for this life question which, by the way, I don't yet have an answer. (Make this interactive and help me out when we're done.)
Okay, this poser begins with me. Then there is a fan. Add to that a porcelain convenience. Toss in a light. Kick in some glasses, a pen and a crossword puzzle. Place me on that porcelain convenience. For obvious reasons turn on the fan. Put my glasses on and turn on the light so I can get the clue to one down. This is all a fairly common at least once a day scenario. But out of nowhere my life is changed forever. I have a visitor. Whilst I take care of my private business a WASP decides to stop by for a chat.
In calmer moments I consider myself to be one of the more "tolerant of all life" people around. But none of us exist without prejudice. And that prejudice can be colored with intense anger and fear if some past experience is recalled.
So about 20 years ago I'm painting the exterior of our house. I'm doing my circus act where I climb the ladder to the roof holding a paint bucket in one hand, and a paint brush in the other. I'd become so good at that balancing act that I must have been bored with it. I say that because for some reason I yawned as a wasp decided to pay my uvula a visit. My autonomic defense mechanism was to close my mouth. It's reactive synapse told it to bite my tongue (is that where the expression came from?). Then I did the right thing and opened my mouth and screamed like a three year old. That sent the little devil off to look for a new victim.
My tongue soon doubled in size. That might have been fine if the poison simply led to pain and embarrassment. But most of my of my life I've made my living announcing in one form or another, and this point in history was no exception.
So any way I'm now sitting here on the convenience and I think you can imagine the weaving of my emotional and sensory memory centers. To put it mildly I no longer needed to be where I was planted.
"Just swat it with the newspaper you say?" I tried that once and missed. Wasps remember who took a swing at them, and I think they invented retribution.
I know you think this story is going to have this horrible, disgusting result, and on some plane that's true.
The wasp began its circling motion, seemingly looking for the tenderist spot to insert it's weapon. Already my eyes had doubled in size, and it seemed as if my head was doing 360's like a possessed child. Then the unthinkable, the unimaginable happened. The winged thing just went into a brief glide, hit the floor with a thud, and rolled over with it's feet, or whatever you call those appendanges, sticking straight up. It was dead!
Why? That's where I need your help. I already went through the canary in the mine thing. But this wasp had an easy escape route and to the best of my knowledge the air mixture at that moment was healthy. I'd hate to think it died of shock over the look of fear on my face. That's a possibility. I don't really know how to assess the age of a wasp. Maybe it's time had come. I don't want to believe this particular location is where wasps go when they are about to give up the ghost.
If you know anything, share it with me, will you? I'll learn other things today, but if you have the answer to this question it will stay with me forever or at least until I forget.
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