When I was nine years old a bee stung me in the ear, right inside the little concavity next to the eardrum. I was at a friend’s house, and I remember the ice his mother gave me to put against my ear and how the pain was kind of like the ice and numb. My friend and his little sister all crowded around my ear, and he said I better make sure to get the stinger out, and his sister said she’d heard that a bee dies after it stings you, if that makes you feel any better. ”Make sure you remove the stinger,” he said. The bee was dead, his sister assured me. I might have been stung but the bee was dead.
Originally published May 25, 2015 in Knee-Jerk Magazine.
