Covered With Scorpions

Here's how my morning started off: I've been stung by a wasp. The insectoid kind.
I was picking up the recycling from the Accounting Dept. I was trying to pick up this big banker's box when I felt something drop on my neck (from the ceiling, from an open window?). Suddenly there's this, oh, how should I put it....HORRIBLE PAIN on the back of my neck. I automatically slap at my neck but miss my target cause I feel this dry, quick, twiggy wiggling under my shirt (and on my skin) heading towards my shoulder when there's MORE HORRIBLE PAIN. I grab a handful of my shirtsleeve in my fist, calmly walk to the bathroom.....and then freak out. The pain wasn't half as bad as that feeling of....Infestation. Vermin crawling on me. There's a phobia for that, I'm sure. It's like if someone starts talking about lice....your head does that "maybe I have them" itch. So, I lose it in the bathroom, strip my shirt off......crush crush crush....I'm this close to stomping when......plop.....out falls the world's smallest wasp. That skinny body and fat, poisonous abdomen with the stinger. This particular wasp was a virulent red and yellow (kill a fellow).

This whole episode reminds me of this time my best friend (John McClain) and I were playing on one of his Dad's boats. The boat was behind his house on one of those things...so it can be pulled behind a car. We were playing....Space something to do with Space and Aliens and Lasers. And John is moving along the outer edge of the boat when suddenly he starts slapping at himself and falls off the boat and starts running for the house all zig zag. When I yelled for him he just yelled back, "WASPS!!". His sister doctored him up...it was the first time I saw him cry...and I sort of had a hard time not laughing. That's one of the few stories in my "growing up" file that doesn't involve me being hurt in some way.

It also reminds me of this time I was out sick when I was in high school. When I came back, people asked me what was wrong and before I even thought about it I said, "I woke up in the middle of the night covered with scorpions and they stung me, so I had to go to the hospital." And maybe it was just the way I said it but everyone just believe me.