Bee Day 1977

At the beginning of autumn in 1977, I had not yet started kindergarten and my Nana (who I lived with) dressed me in a yellow Star Wars tee-shirt and sent me off for the day to my cousins’ grandmother’s place, on a nearby farm. I hated the tee-shirt because I thought it was boyish. I was also mistrustful because I’d heard that bees were attracted to the color yellow. Did you think that when you were little? Maybe it’s just because everyone I knew was a dumb bumpkin.

So, my cousins (Clint and Winfield) and I were playing in the cab of an abandoned farm truck in a field, when suddenly they yelled, “Bees!” and jumped from the cab, closing the doors behind them and leaving me alone. Before I could get the rusty old door open, I had been stung by three bees that had apparently been nesting inside the truck. I had never been stung by a bee before and I took it REALLY hard. I was pretty convinced I was going to die. My cousins’ grandmother took me in and picked out the stingers and smeared toothpaste on me, but she had one of the farm workers drive me home to the farm we lived on because I was still very shaken up.

At home, when I asked my Nana if I could change my shirt because it was yellow and that’s why I got stung by bees, she wouldn’t allow me to because she was the one who did all the laundry and I think deep down inside she hated me. So, I was allowed to watch cartoons while I continued post-hysterical-crying-shuddering on the sofa for a few hours.

When it got to be later in the afternoon, my Nana told me she’d seen the mail truck go up the road and that she wanted me to go outside and get the mail. Our mailbox was a short distance from our house, maybe fifty yards or so. I was like, “No. I’m scared to go outside.” Nana was not having it. She started shrieking at me about how I couldn’t spend the rest of my life afraid to go outside because it is very rare that a person is stung by bees, etc. (For the record, I don’t think I wanted to spend the rest of my life afraid of going outside, I just wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon afraid of it.) The only thing scarier than the memory of being stung by three bees at that point was the notion of being further cursed out and sent to my room where there was no TV, so I caved. For whatever reason, I was able to overcome the psychological hurdle of going out the door and walking up the road because I had the idea that I’d take this big red umbrella with me. Maybe I thought it would cover me, plus the red would distract from the yellow. Either way, my Nana told me I looked ridiculous going out on a sunny day with an open umbrella and I’m sure I did.

I remember walking about halfway to the mailbox and that it was really windy and hard to hold onto the umbrella and that is all I remember before blacking out. Why did that happen? Well, according to what I’ve been told, it’s because I walked straight into a swarm of angry bees. I guess when I took a long time coming back, my grandmother looked out the window and saw me lying in the road. She came out to get me and I was covered with a carpet of bees, passed out. She carried me inside and called my mother who rushed home from work. (I’m not sure, but if this ever happens to any kid I know, I might call an ambulance, but maybe she didn’t know the number?)

By the time my mom got to us, I had woken up, so good for me. My mom walked over to our neighbors’ house (they owned the farm we lived on) to warn them about the bee-saster and on the way, she got several bees on her (which she was and still is allergic to) and when she got to their door, she was trying to swat them away. The lady of the farmhouse was saying, “Don’t kill them! Don’t kill them! Those are our honeybees!” Come to find out, the farmer family had started raising honeybees and the very windy day had blown over two hives which broke. The farmwife panicked (???) and decided the proper course of action would be to throw the hives into the brook that ran by our houses. Which caused the bees to decide that the proper course of action would be to swarm.

The upshot of the story is, I went to the hospital because I couldn’t walk properly and was puking. They counted over a hundred stings on me and said that not walking and puking seemed pretty normal for a kid that had been stung a hundred times. In the end, I threw the Star Wars shirt away and didn’t go outside for over a week or something, until I was coaxed out under cover of darkness, to go bowling.

That’s my bee day of 1977. Thank you for letting me tell you.

– Caissie St. Onge

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