A true sign of intelligence is learning from past mistakes . . . for example, when I was eight years old and my younger brother Marc was five, we threw rocks at a wasp nest until we struck it, causing an angry swarm of wasps to emerge-- and though my advanced years didn't make me much smarter than my younger brother, I was faster than him, and so he got stung multiple times while I suffered no stings . . . yesterday, when I was forty-seven years old, I was playing tennis with my kids (ages 12 and 13) at the fabulously soft and wonderful courts at East Brunswick High School-- the surface is some kind of padded rubberized acrylic-- and Alex yanked a cross-court backhand and it hit off the scoring tube-- the plastic contraption attached to the net pole that holds a tennis ball for keeping track of games-- and Ian was at the net, near the tube, and he suddenly ran from that spot, swatting with his racket, and when we asked him what was wrong, he claimed that a big wasp came out of a hole in the tube-- so I went over to investigate, and my kids --trusting their dad-- came to see what was up as well, and Ian was right, there was a wasp and it was just sitting there now, on the plastic tube, taunting me with it's venomous belligerence, and so I took my racket, turned it sideways, and decided I would smush the wasp, which had no place on a tennis court-- net play is hard enough-- and just as I struck at the wasp, I noticed that there were several wasps inside the hole, but it was too late-- my smushing stroke was already in motion-- and as I hit the tube, I yelled to my children "RUN!" and a swarm of twenty wasps erupted from various holes in the scoring tube, formed a swirling, buzzing cyclone around the tube, and then splintered off in search of the attackers-- my kids listened to me for once, and they outran the few wasps that flew in their direction, but most of the wasps homed in on me: the most obvious threat to the nest-- so I backpedaled, gracelessly, while simultaneously swinging my racket, and I managed to fend them off . . . by this time my kids had run five courts over, out of range of the angry insects, who then retreated back to their scoring tube/nest so they could terrorize net players on another day (FYI: they live in the tube on the farthest court from the parking lot) and when I joined my kids on the far court, opposite the nest, I told them the story of when Uncle Marc and I threw rocks at the wasp nest in the Poconos and we hit it and ran and Uncle Marc got stung and they said, "Dad, that was when you were a kid . . . you're forty-seven now, haven't you learned anything?"
I have a similar story from my youth involving my stepbrother and his friends, a football, and a wasp nest embedded in the railroad ties that served as a retaining wall for the terraced front yard across from my stepbrother's friends' house. Everyone was trying to hit the wasp nest from across the street with the football, and when the older kids failed repeatedly and then grudgingly gave me one attempt I hit the entrance to the nest solidly with the point of the ball. I stood there, arms aloft, celebrating my athletic success in the face of their failure, as wasps boiled out of the hive. When I realized it was time to run it was too late and I suffered some stings. All I saw as I ran were the other kids' backs at least 25 yards ahead of me.
ReplyDeleteAlso, my father and I were once taking turns with a slingshot, shooting rocks from his gravel driveway at the massive paper wasp nest suspended from a tree over the driveway. As with the football story, I hit the nest solidly, putting the stone completely through the hive and out the other side. As with the football story, wasps boiled out of those two new holes and the normal ingress/egress at the bottom of the hive. As with the football story, I stood there, arms aloft, celebrating my slingshot success in the face of my father's failure. I suffered no stings, but my father started to run well before I did and did not make any attempt to drag me with him. As with the football story, all I saw as I turned and ran was my father's back at least 25 feet ahead of me.
Finally, you should read "Sting of the Wild" by Justin Schmidt, in which he describes his misadventures in creating the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. He allowed himself to be stung by myriad stinging insects and rated the stings on a scale of 1-5 in increments of 0.5. He also includes little summaries of the pain, sort of like those short descriptions of fancy beers on a fancy beer menu. I hope he finds a new editor to tighten up his writing if he ever pens a new book (or a revised version of this one), but at least I now know which wasps to fear the most.
boiled! that was the word i was looking for-- nice. i listened to a podcast about the schmidt scale-- radiolab, i believe. it was awesome. that's quite a shot with a slingshot, i love that your dad abandoned you . . .
ReplyDeletenice use of the paragraph
Of course this was your reply. Podcasthole.
DeleteI think Dave's a podmaster...
DeleteThank you. The slingshot story is a nice parable for my relationship with my father.
ReplyDeleteSchmidt's book isn't as good as it ought to be but it empowered me to ignore the mud dauber and the nest she built between my family room windows, much to my wife's dismay. I showed her the mud dauber's feeble rating on the Schmidt Index but she was still scared. They're big and scary. Luckily Schmidt also explained that they eat spiders, and that was sufficient justification for Kathryn to let the mud dauber continue daubing.
breaking news! catherine got stung by a wasp today while gardening at her school. it emerged from beneath a yucca plant and stung her on the wrist.
ReplyDeleteIt can be challenging to infer tone in blog comments, but Dave's last comment feels celebratory.
ReplyDeleteit was just so apropos that-- despite my wife's pain and suffering-- i wanted to celebrate the coincidence
ReplyDeletethis sentence is about wasps? or is there a podcasting subtext . . .
ReplyDeleteby the way, you've got to listen to malcolm gladwell's "revisionist history"! i used some of it last night at soccer practice.