The Bee Incident

I have been absolutely horrified of bees since I was a kid.  My aunt was taking a bite of Popeye’s chicken and mid bite, a bee landed on her chicken and she was stung in the mouth.  Since that moment, I have had an irrational fear of bees and I never, EVER ate chicken on the bone again. And I made it to the age of 22 without being stung.

My sister and I often went on bike rides when we were home from college for the summer. There was a bike path about a half a mile from my parent’s house. We were on our typical loop around on the path, when all of the sudden, I heard it.

That Buzz.

I heard it and then I felt it. Somehow the thing had gotten into the tshirt I was wearing. I stopped thinking rationally, when it came to bees, I didn’t. And obviously I wasn’t thinking rationally because my first thought was to start hitting my shoulder. Of course, this is the moment that I was stung.

After this, I somehow managed to stop my bike without flying off of it. I started screaming. My sister made it up ahead of me about 20 feet, stopped and turned around to look at me. At this point, I felt my next option was to take my shirt off, So I started to rip off my tshirt.

Almost simultaneously with me pulling off my shirt, my sister yells, “Rachel!” and an older man rides past me on his bike. All my sister saw, was me pulling off my shirt… and the man riding up behind me. What she didn’t know, though, was that I was wearing a tank top under my tshirt and therefore did not expose myself to the mystery man.

My bee sting hurt (for a little)… I still hate bees… and my sister and I laugh our butts off whenever we retell this story.