But I still have a healthy (well, unhealthy) collection of hysterias. Probably the biggest of all is bees, wasps and hornets. No, it's not a sane person's reasonable caution concerning the sting-y buggers. I have nightmares about them. I can't even look at pictures of them. Should a nature show on TV suddenly zoom in on a beehive, I dash out of the room. As for those whackjobs who like to wear bee beards, well, they ought to be horsewhipped.
It's so ridiculous that even typing the word bee makes me jittery. That, my friends, is a phobia.
My lineup of shrinks and skull jockeys has urged me to unearth the genesis of this terror for decades. The best I can come up with is an incident when I was about four years old. It was a sunny summer day. I was fooling around in the backyard without any shoes on.
My father was mowing the lawn and I was pretending to help him. Apparently, my seemingly futile attempts to drag the bushel basket over to him when it was time to empty the grass catcher were actually of service. Who knew?
Anyway, at one point I took a step and felt a sharp pain. I looked down and saw beneath my pink big toe the mad, buzzing, wing-flapping bee who'd just planted his shiv in me. I shrieked louder than Janet Leigh in her Bates Motel room shower and ran inside. Dad either couldn't hear me or - more likely - chose not to. He didn't possess an unending reservoir of empathy for the anguish of four-year-olds.
Ma grabbed me and hustled me into the bathroom where she applied a variety of palliatives to my throbbing toe. She yanked the stinger out with a tweezers, washed my foot with soap and hot water, dabbed mercurochrome on the wound and, for all I know, sprinkled garlic powder on it. At some point during these ministrations, Dad must have called for his bushel basket and found me missing. He was hot.
Dad marched into the house and called my name in that loud, deep, father-voice that's meant to petrify anyone within earshot. I couldn't answer because I was still sobbing. He called my name again and the second ensuing silence enraged him. He stomped into the dining room, off of which was the bathroom, and found Ma operating on my foot. "I'll be goddamned!" he hollered. "When I call you, you answer!"
Ma hollered back: "For chrissakes, Joe! he was stung by a bee!"
What followed was one of their classic donnybrooks. My parents fought exactly as George Costanza's parents would on TV some three decades later. Every time I see Frank and Estelle screeching at each other on "Seinfeld" reruns, I alternate between convulsive laughter and painful grimaces. It's as though I'm watching my family's home movies.
At that age, such brawls scared the bejesus out of me. Ma and Dad would take positions at either end of the house and launch verbal salvoes at each other for what seemed hours. They swore, they called each other names, they goddamned each other and themselves countless times, their faces turned beet red and there was fire in their eyes. Normally, I'd hide in my room until they'd shouted themselves out.
I did so on this particular day, all the while telling myself it was my stupid fault for getting stung by a bee. As usual, after such open hostilities had ceased, my parents would then engage in a Cold War, refusing to speak to each other for days - even weeks - on end. I was, I told myself, a jerk for causing another such stretch of bad blood.
Cut to Friday afternoon. The Loved One announced that she'd discovered a hornets nest under the eave of our house. My blood turned cold. I didn't even respond, thinking that if I ignored her, the nest and her forthcoming suggestion that I do something about it would simply go away. Mirabile dictu, she didn't breathe another word about it for the rest of the day. Almost.
That night, about 11:00pm, I was sitting in my boxers and flip-flops at the dining room table, reading celebrity gossip on dlisted online and feeling my eyelids getting heavier by the minute. That's when The Loved One, who'd been snoring on the sofa, began to stir. I heard her pad around the kitchen, pouring herself a glass of milk and sneaking a piece of chocolate cake. She joined me in the dining room.
"Mike," she asked, "would you help me do something?"
"Certainly, my precious angel, light of my life and partner 'till death. What is it?"
"Help me take down the hornets nest. It's the perfect time; they're dormant for the night. It'll be easy."
My eyes, half-lidded 15 seconds earlier, now were saucer wide. My legs turned to jelly. I responded monosyllabically:
"No."
"But Mike, we have to do it!"
"No."
"I need your help!"
"No."
"You're so selfish," she snapped. With that, she stomped out of the room. She refused to speak to me at the beginning of the next day. She eventually warmed back up by noon. Thankfully, she hasn't brought up the hornets nest again.
For my part, I was prepared to fight a Cold War for days - even weeks - on end.
