Float Like A Butterfly, Sting Like A Bee

Fridays in school are usually really chaotic. The anticipation of a weekend leaves the students restless and the teachers absolutely thrilled. Two whole days of peace and quiet. Except, I have college; but that is my own doing. I probably ate too much chocolate and in a moment of an absolute sugar high I decided to shoot myself in the foot and get all qualified and shit. 

But this post is not about my idiotic 3 am decisions. This post is about my terrible fear of ...THE HONEYBEE!

Yes, laugh all you want, but I tell you, this tiny creature is God's way of wreaking havoc in people's lives. STOP ROLLING YOUR EYES AT ME! 

So anyway, this Friday, a honeybee decided to grace us with its presence while we were busy revising text for the upcoming finals. The students just quietly moved to corners and some ducked under the table (I teach second graders). 

What did I do, you ask?

I grabbed a student and ducked behind him. Stop with the judgement people, even in an aeroplane you are required to first put the oxygen mask on yourself before attending to the children. 

And then I ran out of the room.

What instigates this fear of the honeybee you ask? I'll tell you. 

When I was around 13 my dad bought me roller blades. With a helmet and knee and elbow pads; everything I needed to make myself look like the coolest (read moronic) kid on the block. The day that I got them, I decided to test them out (read make the neighbourhood kids jealous). However, God had other plans.

I thought I looked real sleek when I stepped out of the house. The neighbourhood was too quiet though; "Where are all these morons when I need to show off?" I wondered. Not a single kid was in sight. 

When I turned around the street corner, I got my answer. I skated right over a beehive that had fallen on the road, straight into a hundred or so very pissed off honeybees. And they were not only pissed, they were out for some cold blooded revenge. And I was the jackass they found. 

Myth

Reality

So I skated all over the neighbourhood screaming bloody murder as a swarm of bees flew after me faster than the speed of light. A few of them got to me. 

However, let's put aside the tragedy of my shattered reputation among the neighbourhood kids after my very graceful escape from the honeybees. Forget the pain of their stings. Forget that in my attempt to escape I skated over a rock, tripped and broke my glasses. 

Let's just focus on what happened an hour after I got home. My beautiful face swollen from the stings...only from the right side. That's right. Those bitches had only stung half my face. And I was in school at the time, so you can imagine the humiliation I had to face and the jokes I had to bear when I looked like a Pakistani from the right and a very disfigured Chinese from the left. I was a 13 year old in middle school and I was the butt of every joke cracked by every ass who thought they were the funniest shit on the face of this earth. I am telling you, that incident left me damaged and I don't just mean physically. 

And there was no way I was going to look like that again! So what if I had to go all Lord of the Flies on my student? What are you going to do? Sue me for not wanting to look ugly? 

Please Remain Calm

My childhood in a word? Wild. 

I was this crazy, out of control, hyper kid; the kind you see at weddings doing cartwheels on the stage while the bride cries,or the ones who push old aunties so they fall on the ground and then laugh hysterically, or go around the neighbourhood sticking tape on the doorbells when the electricity went out so they would all go off together when it came back. 

This kid would have been my Sensei

That, combined with my mother's short temper and even shorter threshold for panic resulted in an extremely chaotic household. Every time something went wrong or some sort of accident happened, my mother's reaction followed this pattern; confusion, anger and then all out hysteria. Sometimes, it was funny to watch (read: when it was directed at other people). Most of the times though, it was just really frustrating. I mean, if someone got hurt, instead of extending some sympathy, she'd just lash out at them. A panic room would have an entirely different purpose in our house.

Don't do drugs, snort me instead. 

When I was around 8 years old, I was sitting with my family watching T.V and was getting extremely bored. So of course, I did what any eight year old would do to entertain themselves; I started shoving tiny buttons up my nose and then blowing them out.

After a few successful attempts, I decided to take a risk and pushed one too far up and as luck would have it, it got stuck. 

Now remember, I was just eight at the time and the fear of my mother's wrath was so deeply ingrained in every fibre of my tiny being that my first thought was "Ami will kill me if I lose this button". 

So I desperately tried to blow the button out, but it was just lodged there like a fat kids hand is lodged inside a packet of potato crisps. 

After a few moments of panic, I figured, oh what the hell! It's stuck now and nothing can be done about it. So I went up to my mom and asked for some dinner. It was around 7 pm and at our house, dinner time is usually at 9. But in my head, I didn't have a lot of time before the button somehow managed to kill me. Yes readers, I thought I was about to die. Now when you're a child with no real sins to your name, death isn't so scary. I was pretty calm about it; the only thought in my mind was that I didn't want to die hungry. 

So I asked mom for dinner and she said it was too early and I'd have to wait. Now, I had to weigh out my options here. Tell my mother the truth and have Athena kill me before the button did or risk it for some food. Of course, food won. So I walked over to where my mother was working on some hideous dress for me on the sewing machine and said "Ami, there's a button stuck in my nose"

At first my mother didn't take me seriously; when she saw my expression, however, it was a completely different story. She used a torch to look up my nose. And then, it was like letting slip the dogs of war. Between random screams at my father to save me, my mother kept pinching me for being so stupid. She ran out to get my father from their room, ran back and shook me really hard so in the process, the torch she was carrying smacked against my forehead. And a-midst all this chaos, my dad walked in calmly, while my mother let out high pitched howls and shrieks to come to the rescue of her only daughter, picked me up and carried me to the doctor across the street and it took him all of 3 seconds to pull it out; I would live to see another day!
Although at home, my mother's fuming face made me wish I had breathed the button all the way in and gotten a hemorrhage or something.
And the sweet irony of it all is I got sent to bed without any dinner.