The Bee's Knee

We were digging a trench in front of the volcano when it happened. The waves had been getting progressively closer to our play area, and while the hole we were working on had a pretty good wall in front of it, aside from a skimpy little moat the volcano was vulnerable. Kiernan wanted to help with the trench digging, so we were working on that together.

Suddenly Kiernan said, "Ouch!" He lifted up his knee, surprised. We both saw it at the same time. A little bee in the impression his knee had left.

"What was that?" Kiernan said, though I'm sure he knew.

"A bee, buddy. You just got your first bee sting," I replied, forcing a calm onto my voice that I did not feel. This calm didn't immediately pan out as Kiernan began crying in a high-pitched panicked cry.

I kept my calm as best I could, moving him to the blanket so that I could examine his knee. Wendy has spoken of being pretty severely allergic to bee stings for as long as I've known her, so this came to mind immediately. But what also came to mind was the time she stepped on a bee when she was pregnant.

Nothing happened, remember? I told myself, silently. Her foot got a little swollen and that's all. Calm down.

I wiped away the sand and tried to determine if the stinger was still there. Couldn't find it. Kiernan was still howling, but I could feel him calming down. "It hurts! It hurts!"

"Let's put some ice on it," I said, reaching into the cooler. "What do you think?"

"Yes." Calmer.

First I pulled out the blue ice pack thingy and put that on his knee. All that did was stain a bit of his knee blue, because the thing had a hole in it. I ditched it in favor of an actual ice cube which I wrapped in a paper towel. I rubbed that on his knee for a bit, then we looked at the sting site again. Just a little swollen. Like a mosquito bite.

A few more tears. Just a few. A few more minutes of ice. Laughter. Then it was back into the hole. The picture at the top of this post was taken probably five minutes after the incident.

Later he would proudly tell his mother about the whole thing on the phone.

For my part I took a bit longer to relax inside. I asked him a few times how he felt, how his knee felt and how his throat felt. Why? I don't know. I guess I had some idea that this question would help me determine if we were headed for anaphylactic shock or something. What I would have done if this turned out to be the case, I have no idea.

The thought that did hit me, when I felt most tense, was how utterly unhelpful that bromide about more people dying from bee stings than from shark attacks is. It seems I've read that a lot lately, as Kiernan has also been interested in sharks and just about every book about sharks mentions it. It came to me then that this should hardly be a comforting thought, even, ironically enough, fifteen feet from the Pacific Ocean.

In the end we had to worry about neither sharks nor bees. I do wonder, however, whether this will prove to make Kiernan less bee-phobic, or more.

I suppose we shall see.