The sting of da’feet

These are the best of times, these are the worst of times… The school year has started.

I generally try to keep my professional life private (and my personal life public, weird I know), but as any teacher with any modicum of dedication can tell you, the challenges and excitement of the first few weeks of school encompass both the mind and soul. I couldn’t write on another topic if I tried.

So here I am, a harried public servant once again taking a voluntary free-fall off the 180-day cliff that is the school calendar.

It’s incredibly ironic that I currently serve at a school whose mascot is a yellow jacket. The yellow jacket, in all its stinging splendor, has been a scourge to my nirvana since a very early age.

My first experience with the creature came at around three years old. I was playing out back of my grandparents’ house in rural McNairy County, Tennessee.

Though I was raised in the suburbs, my family is no more than a generation removed on either side from the slow-paced, simple country life of a farmer.

In other words, this little blogger can fish.

So I was wandering barefoot near the goat pen on one sunny summer afternoon, minding my own business and searching a good strong tree to pee on. All of a sudden, I felt a pain radiate through my foot that rivaled what I imagine my first kidney stone will feel like.

I looked down and saw this oddly-colored creature with wings slamming its butt into my ankle with all its might. I swatted at the tiny beast, but missed wildly. I didn’t develop coordination until somewhere around my 17th birthday, and this little guy wasn’t going anywhere.

Even at such a young age, I quickly realized I was ill-equipped to fight this fight on my own. So I did what any self-respecting three-year old might do: I took off at a dead sprint in the direction of the house… and my momma!

Now at three years-old, I lacked the vocabulary to explain the situation to my very-confused parents. As far as they knew the situation could have ranged in seriousness anywhere from a broken limb to a loss at Red Rover.

Not being on the receiving end of this painful ordeal, they kept asking me question after question about just what it was that had attacked me.

“I don’t know,” I yelled. “Something that hurts!”

Ever the calm one, my dad asked, “Son, can you describe it?”

In my frustration I said the only thing I could come up with.

“It looked like a cricket with wings,” I said. “And it had a green stomach on its back.”

From that they determined yellow jacket, and that nest fell victim to a gasoline enema.

Later than night, after a bath and some ice cream, I was thinking clearly again. I thought about the nest and all the innocent yellow jackets that had paid that ultimate sacrifice for the sins of one disgruntled loner. I hoped my name would not now be known by the whole of the yellow jacket community, lest there be reprisals. I would have my answer just three short years later.

Kindergarten. Pearl, Mississippi. Northside Elementary cafeteria.

As we left the cafeteria headed back to our classroom/trailer, Mrs. Gray assembled us by the door.

“Class, when we walk by the dumpsters outside, there are a lot of yellow jackets buzzing around today,” she said. “Do NOT get stung.”

Seemed solid advice at the time, but now I look back on it and think, how exactly does one do that? That’s like asking someone to make sure the sun comes up.

But at the time, I took her challenge very seriously. I was doing my very best, given the limited variables under my control, not to get stung. I was walking in a straight line. I was not talking to the people in front or behind me. I wasn’t making eye contact with any student from another class, and certainly not with any of the circling yellow jackets.

All to no avail.

Yep, I was attacked. It was done mafia style, from behind . My attacker was gone before I knew what had happened. I fell to the ground in slow-motion, like a scene from an Oliver Stone movie, my Ghostbusters lunch box cracked open on the pavement for all to see.

I can only assume it was retribution for what happened to that hive of innocents back in Tennessee, but who knows with these things.

I’ve had it out for the yellow jackets and their ilk ever since.

Except for the ones that attend public schools.