Here Is The Story Of ‘Bee’ing Stung In The Face

Like every good story this one has morals, tragedies, moments of comedy, tears, laughter, policemen, gang war victims, glow sticks, dogs, vomit, guidos, boobs and lots and lots of chicken kebabs.

I was tired. I had been awake since 1am. I sauntered home from work at midday listening to Biggy Smalls. He kept telling me ‘Its all good baby bay-bee’. Naturally I believed him.

Anyway as I said, I was tired. So I fell asleep in my bed filled with dogs. Not the human kind I used to sleep next to. The fluffy friendly snuggly kind. I woke up to them barking at a leaf. You slowly get used to these macho displays of protection. I realised it was 6pm and I had invited people over for a BBQ. So I gathered my troops and we went to woolies.

It’s important at this point for me to introduce my troops. Firstly we have Matino the Painter. He is a Polish/Russian/French/German man of mystery. He says he doesn’t like Big Brother. But he won’t miss an episode. Another mystery. He has a tattoo that says ‘Trust Nobody’ on his back. We don’t know what language it is in. (It probably really says ‘I heart BB’ for all we know). His cap doesn’t really fit him properly. He painted our house.  Now he lives across the hall. With his girlfriend Delphine. They like rice.

Troop Number Two. Delphine the Stunner. She is from Belgium. We are sure of her origins. She won’t watch any movie with Angelina Jolie or J Lo in it. She says they ‘can’t play’. We all know she means ‘can’t act’. But we don’t say anything. Because it’s cute. Just like her. She likes being in the sea. She can eat whatever she wants and look like Miranda Kerr. I don’t hate her for this. Mainly because I steal her food.

Then there is Nick. He is fresh from the Fiji Bush. He talks funny too. He smiles all the time with his freckly dimples. He also has lots of tattoos. One is about the powerpuff girls. If you were wondering… yes…we asked him last night… and his favourite is Bubbles. He is like a deer caught in the headlights here in the big city. He opened his first twist top beer last night. That pleased him. He doesn’t know what pine nuts are.

Anyway, we went to woolies. To be honest. Matino didnt come. He was asleep. We piled the car up with clean skin wine, meat, veges, salad, and sweet sweet beats. We went to pick up Edward.

Edward is also from Fiji. And Hong Kong. And New Zealand. And here. He is less an international man of mystery and more just a man of international knowledge. For example. When I whipped out the aforementioned pine nuts he said “Oh yay. Pine nuts. They are my second favourite nut. Do you know what my first is?” To me, this was his sneaky way of showing off to Nick that he knows two different types…

Some more people joined us, Shannon the Tall Beauty, Tracey and Cal, the Fiji version of Beyonce and Jay-Z. (With slightly less ass.) We ate and laughed, and ate and laughed, and everyone laughed more while I ate more, and the whole evening was just jolly. We had promised a friend we would check out the new club she is managing. Shannon’s boyfriend came to collect the motley crew and we went to this multicolored world of flashing and pashing. Ed was busy tuning the waitresses. He gave one a generous tip. Of $1.50. He said, thats your bus fare babe. Nick watched the roof. (Because of the pretty lights).

Someone walked by and handed us fluro glow stick batons. This was the beginning of the end.

Edward and Nick got a little excited. They played traffic controllers. They played star wars. They played bashing people on the head as they walked by. They thought this was all brilliant. What a great way to make a night out actually fun!

Some of the nearby V necks got their gold chains all in a twist. One little oily guido in particular did not approve of the childlike activity occurring. He grabbed Nick by the neck and dangled near the edge. He yelled something but we couldn’t hear over Havana Brown DJing the latest from… Havana Brown. This attack took Nick by surprise. Less than 2.5 seconds earlier he was grinning from ear to ear pretending to be Luke Skywalker with a flare for Gangnam style. Ed tapped the Anger Problem with his green lightsaber. Everyone walked away. And we left. Just in time to see Fabio being bashed by three slightly smallers Fabio’s outside. I don’t think this gentlemen has very good social skills. I was going to politely suggest watching Dr Phil. But he was busy being smacked in the head.

So we came home to hang out with our favourite people. Ourselves. We we were mid mature conversation about people taking themselves too seriously and how some australian girls’ have a false sense of class and concurrent snobbiness. I was nodding along with the hypothesis.

Someone… somewhere… in the greater universe must have thought me a little hypercritical.

Someone… somewhere… in the greater universe must have been dredging up memories of me over many a year imitating the exact behaviour that I was now rolling my eyes at.

Someone… somewhere… in the greater universe knew that I cried when I had to miss the Matron’s Ball in 2008.

Because hiding under the blanket, the blanket wrapped around my feet, was Karma. Dressed as a wee little bee. Still wide awake, long after its bed time… waiting for me.

I stood up and declared I was hitting the hay. I shook the banket. And the rest. Is history.

It happened in slow motion. I heard it before I saw it. Bzzzzzzz. Bzzzzzzzzz. I screamed and ducked. I felt the prick. Zap. Right in my upper lip. Edward and Nick were yelling “its just a moth” (idiots) while I rolled around on the floor holding my face saying “I’m allergic, I’m allergic!!!”

I pulled out the stinger and shoved it in Ed’s face. Bee. Stinger. I was right. Tiny silver lining on a big black painful cloud. The whining began. Ed gave me some vinegar. And the first sign of swelling showed its LA-like face.

Ed said it would be okay. That I probably out grew my allergy. I iced it. And I could feel it growing. Bigger and Bigger. He was wrong again.
(NOTE : photo removed due to it being the first thing that comes up on google next to my name. Despite years of taking normal pouty photos as a profession.)

(N.B Please ignore the fact that I appear to have a mustache in this photo. I have no excuse to give you. So lets just move on.)

I tried to go to bed but was stressing like Dad at a Cost-U-Less check-out. I went back downstairs to the boys. They laughed hysterically when I came into the room with my sad little eyes. Nick was extra unsupportive. Ed at least tried to go into the corner when he wanted to laugh. By the time Delphine got home (side note- again Matino was asleep through all this… he’s very sleepy… he did make it to dinner though… just to clarify)… anyway by the time Del got home, I had entered Freakdomvile.

(NOTE: More google haunting pictures removed.)

I don’t know if it’s okay to laugh and point at people in Belgium. I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark and say it is. Because Del could not control herself. She couldn’t string a sentence together. She was rolling around wagging her finger at me. She kept trying to say ‘funny”. But it was coming out more like “fooornnnn…”  She looked totally silly. (How embarrassing… )

It’s important to also to know that somewhere in here we found Nick asleep at the top of the stairs. He almost made it into the bedroom. But also didn’t quite make it off the top step. Kind of sprawled in limbo between hallway and haven. Houses must be bigger in Australia. Trips need to be taken in pairs. I tried to wake him up and help him. But my face scared him. This did not feel good.

Anyway the lip kept going. I thought it was going to explode. So I decided to spring into action. “I am going to the hospital.” Ed called me a hypochondriac and told me to go to sleep. But he had already been wrong twice so I naturally ignored him. Ed, Nick and I went to the hospital. I drove. The other two are not only idiots but were also a bit drunk. We got to the hospital and people didn’t want to look at me. I was in a very strange alter universe. One which I NEVER wish to return to.

They took me into the emergency area and set me up with a drip. The nice doctor stabbed me with adrenalin. I was nervous. I started talking about a Fiji business called Adrenalin. Babbling on about the origins of the word adrenalin, how I liked going on the banana boat at Denarau, really important stuff. I’m lucky they didn’t gas me to shut me up. Turns out they had bigger problems.

Just around the corner was a man. He was yelling. He was convinced that he was part of a bikie gang and had just witnessed 3 murders. The man who had killed them was coming after him and would come here. To the emergency ward. And massacre everyone!! He was banging on the chairs and screaming “WHY DON’T YOU BELIEVE ME!!???” This shut me up good and proper.

The adrenalin was now pumping through my body. I was shaking and coming up with a master plan of escape. I was trying to remember clever movies where clever people hid in air ducts or played dead or snuck out windows.

Okay, so I am going to try and act all tough when writing this. Truth is I did start thinking about what I would do. That part’s legit. But the first thing I did was.. go on Facebook and message my Mum in Texas.  I also made sure I had my uncle’s number on my speed dial. He knows these kind of people. He has a harley. He is in Tasmania. Texas and Tasmania. Very practical people to reach out to.

The nurse came in to put me in a gown. She said I had to stay and sleep so they could monitor me. She asked me to take my top off. I was severely shaking now. Impending shoot-out and 17 redbulls injected into your bloodstream will do that to a girl. I accidentally knocked the gown to the ground when she was holding it out for me. Strip Show in Ward 1! Come one Come all! Everyone was very polite and tried not to look.

(She did ask me why I hadn’t told them the swelling had spread to my chest…. I said it hadn’t… …….  ……..Ba Boom Boom Cha!  …. …….  …. Okay that didn’t happen)

Anyway the man kept screaming. The kid next to me started vomiting and bit his mum on the arm. In close proximity to each other. Pretty gross. Police swarmed the ward. Despite the crazy leather clad man of the underworld, and the puking growling teenage boy, I could tell they were still concerned about Elephant Woman over here. That wasn’t pleasant either.

The receptionist came in and asked if she could send my “friends” home. Apparently they were trying to talk to the patients in the waiting room and guess what was wrong with them. She was too tired for boys like them. I agreed. I said welcome to my life. But she couldn’t really understand me. I had a fat lip.

She sent them in to say good-bye. I could tell they were very taken by the unfolding crime scene. They were watching the Cray-Cray man and got a bit excited. I’d like to say I sent them home for their safety because of the massacre threats. But truthfully. This was my thing. I really didn’t want to share.

I gave very good instructions on how to get home. It was two kilometers away. They pretended to listen to me while actually listening to the story happening around crime corner about where the bodies were buried. Then they left. The two worst drivers in the world. One of whom said when he arrived 2 days ago “I don’t know how to use all these traffic lights.” But I don’t want to name names…

I got a phone call half an hour later. They were home. Safe and Sound. They pulled out of the hospital and saw cop cars. One flashed at them. They thought they were done for and took a quick corner. Hearts beating fast. The policeman made no attempt to chase them. He was clearly heading to my arena of much more interesting CSI, NCIS, The Mentalist type of crime case. We didn’t have time for petty ‘traffic control’. The boys soon realized that their headlights were off. And it was 4 am. Probably why he flashed. As I have said at least 3 times in one way or another. Idiots.

Anyway back in the ward. The big scary screaming man got locked up in a bulletproof glass room which he tried to break with his head. It didn’t work. I don’t know whats happened to him. I’m guessing he has a pretty solid headache. No one came with guns to kill us all. I know right. Buzz kill. (ha, get it?) Anyway…

The vomiting boy fell asleep.

As did I.

At 8 I got discharged. My mouth was pretty much the same. But my throat wasn’t itchy. So Doc said I could vamoose. I was sad to leave my new friends but I knew BBQ left overs awaited me at home. Plus I wanted to snuggle Skipper. I knew he would understand my plight. He gets made fun of all the time.

Matino came into my room in the morning and said “Is it true?!!! Did you get bitten?” He saw my face and the hilarity began all over again. I had had enough! I promptly banned him from using anything fun in the house. He isn’t allowed to touch anything now for 2 weeks. I realize he copped the brunt of my frustration. And his main crime really was just sleepiness. But I don’t care. He has now gone to the trouble of finding the dead bee in the carpet. Thats what happens when you aren’t allowed toys. He is trying to put it between two bits of glass for us to hang on the wall. This is all going on while I write this story. The story of beeing stung in the face.

Morals you ask?

1-  I like honey. I admit. But I would be more than happy to forever sacrifice the creamy goodness if I could personally taser every single bee that ever lived. Bees suck heaps.

2- Get smarter friends.

3- In the future when taking selfies to document your decent into the circus… make sure your hair looks pretty at least.

Adios.

Ps. Ed’s first favourite nut is ‘The Almond’. Incase the suspense was killing any of you.