when_the_bee_stings ovenbird I was three that day we went to the park with the big yellow twisty slide. My brother was a baby, pushed along in a stroller. The slide was a tube, like a plastic drainpipe made for funnelling shrieking children onto the wood chip laden earth. My hair was in two short pigtails. I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. The t-shirt was roomy and cool and when I went down the slide air rushed up my shirt and it billowed and the air was carrying a bumblebee, which found itself under my shirt, and the bee (fearing for its life) did what bees do. It stung me. It stung me at least eight times because bumblebees do not have barbed stingers like honeybees and are capable of multiple stings with no repercussions to their own health. So when I was spit out onto the dirt I was, indeed, shrieking, but not with joy. With fear and pain. I had to walk home. That’s what I remember most. I was scared and hurt and my belly was swelling where the stingers went in and I wanted to ride in the stroller. But my brother was a baby and couldn’t walk and my mother couldn’t carry him all that way, so I trudged home with my dirty, tear stained face on display, and my hands clutching my aching stomach. I hated my brother that day. It wasn’t his fault in any way. I knew it then and I know it now. But on that day, I really hated him. 260526 what's it to you? who go blather from