Fiona had done jobs enough jobs to save up $1.50 and spent it (along with $48.50 from mom) on a hermit crab named Crabby Patty. Check her out.

Darrow just called to tell me that, according to the ultrasound, they're having a girl. She's also completely healthy. Darrow sounded happy. He said he was going to start shopping for shotguns now.

 

Yesterday we put up a Jobs board in kitchen. Fiona has four jobs she can do:

Every time she does a job we put a sticker on the board: blue star for making the bed; green heart for taking the plate to kitchen. When she gets ten stickers she gets 25 cents. When she has enough money, she can buy a goldfish.

 

So far, she's pretty excited about it. She made her bed yesterday and this morning and she was ready to take her plate in this morning. She didn't seem too enthused about trying something new to eat, though.

I know you've been waiting for it. Here's the final version from Darrow's point of view. As you might expect, its a bit more vividly told than my version:

 

 

“Sting sting ha ha
Bzzzzzzzz
Sting sting
Bzzzzzzzz
Waspman, you're gonna get buzzed
Waspman, you're gonna get stung”

-The Who, Waspman (1973)

 

In those summers before Star Wars, before KISS, while W was still doing blow, Super Bowls were in the single digits and when the aftermath of the over-indulgent 60s were toddlers like my brother & I, it was still ok to do stupid shit like – um - stick a tomato stake into a yellow-jacket’s nest. Oh sure, now you’ve judged me. What a dumb-ass kid. My critics will charge “he should have known better,” or, “where was that four year-old boy’s mother as he was sticking a tomato stake into that yellow-jacket hive?” My defenders will rally to my side and claim that it was youthful indiscretion or outright innocence. This type of youthful indiscretion would be the same as the one that led me to drop a deuce on my pre-school’s playground. And let’s face reality bleeding-hearters everywhere: innocence is really ignorance with big brown, puppy dog eyes.

The now infamous ‘Yellow-Jacket Incident of Starnes Road’ has become the number 1 embarrassing story about me at family gatherings. YJI has beaten out such great stories such as me running across a highway naked when I was 7, getting arrested for writing a bad check totaling $19.54 when I was 20, and my 6 year stint as a community college student (in my defense I was part-time). And from what I remember of YJI went something like this-

In the summer of 1975, when I was four and about to enter kindergarten, I came to realization that I needed a baby bunny. I have no idea where I got the notion. I’ve always thought it was from seeing that fucked up movie Watership Down in which a baby bunny prophet warns that their rabbit warren was going to flow with blood. But that could not have been right because that movie came out in 1978, and by then I was far more interested in space battles than fuzzy rodents. So the origin of the bunny catching idea is lost somewhere in the seventies. What I did know was that bunnies lived in holes in the ground and I wanted one.

To catch one I needed to be sly, I needed to be nimble, I needed a tomato stake. I cannot remember where I got the tomato stake, nor can I remember at what point I discover the small hole in the embankment across the dirt road we lived on. What I do remember is kneeling before the hole and thrusting the tomato stake like a hunter possessed. It only took a few seconds for the inhabitants of the hole to spring into action against the assault.

From within the hole something that sounded like a thousand tiny engines cranked up in unison. I can only imagine that the noise was amplified by the by the particular acoustics of said hole. In that frozen moment I came to realize several awful truths: 1) baby bunnies are not the only creature that live in holes, 2) nature has many ways of scaring the living hell out of you, and 3) I was about to be brought into a world of hurt. The yellow jackets vomited forth from the hole. They were both continuous and relentless, vectoring straight for me. The insects did not waver, they did not pity. I sprung to my feet and began to run toward our house, a couple of dozen yards away. That is when the stinging began.

I screamed. I screamed a scream unparalleled in the history of screaming. It would have shattered glass, ended battles, or diverted the course of rivers had any of those things been nearby. I slapped myself wildly and hard. Running to our front door I caught a glimpse of my older brother. He was up a dogwood tree in our front yard. Whether he had climbed the tree because of the yellow jacket threat or before it to catch a safe front-row view of the action I will never know. There was this strange look of curiosity in his eyes.

As I came to the front door one thing would override the pain, stinging, and fear. That thing was the idea that I may get in trouble if I entered the house enveloped in a cloud of stinging insects. I knocked and stood absolutely still, hoping my mother would not be mad. She must have heard the screams from inside because the door opened almost instantaneously. Her blue eyes blew wide open when she saw me, my tears, and countless little creatures dropping stingers into my flesh. Immediately she began to slap me wildly and hard.

Within seconds we discovered a talent that we never knew that our mother had. She could slap off hundreds of insects and strip a child naked simultaneously, within seconds, on a front porch. The second the bulk of the threat was over she pulled be into the house and slammed the door so hard that it seemed to rock the foundation. Her fear for me, her youngest child, was an incredible testimony to maternity. She slammed the door to hold the threat at bay. The yellow jackets were no longer my enemy alone. They were our enemy, and we would battle them together.

Mom set me on the couch and went to the bathroom to run a bath. As it was drawing she came back to me with a pair of tweezers and began to pull the black little splinter-like stingers from me. When the bath was ready she brought me to it. She intended to me in. The plan went astray when I spotted the carcass of a single yellow jacket floating in the water. I screamed a scream that was in no way less effective as the one I had let out earlier. After spooning out the body of the little bastard tyrant and, after a minute or two convincing me that the danger was over, mom put me in.

The hours afterward are hazy. My mother dressed me only in underwear. There was a doctor’s visit. There was giggling from the doctor when I told him my plans of getting a baby bunny. There was a visit to a drug store in which I stood in the middle of an aisle and there were people who gasped at the sight of a half-naked child covered in stings. I remember being in the car, in a parking lot, as my mom put orange lotion on my stings. It was the craziest shade of orange I had ever seen.

I remember having little white scars on me for months.

It was the most damage I had ever received in my life save the time my best friend accidently nailed me in the cheek with flaming marshmallow.

And that was it. Nothing happened. My mother did not sue anyone. No one from HRS showed up at her door to investigate. I was not traumatized for life; yellow jackets do not make me run to the hills. My mother would not spend the rest of my childhood following me around, keeping me safe. It was just an incident. In the child-proof world of today I wonder if any of that would be true.

YJI was something that had no more ramification than becoming a talking point at every major family gathering. The personal impact of which no more serious than me rolling my eyes and saying, “here we go again . . .”

I know it was a warm, sunny day and I am thinking that it was during the summertime when I was off from school. Also, Darrow was very, very young, younger than Fiona is now because he was wearing only underpants. I am thinking it was the summer before he turned 3 years old. That would be the summer of 1973. We were living in the Starnes Road house and you were all playing outside on the dirt road. I believe it was Jomo and Bobby and Jay Newman and Darrow and probably Shawn and Dionne Grimes. It was midmorning.  

All of a sudden I heard a bloodcurdling scream. I knew it was Darrow (we called him Wolfe) because I had heard the bloodcurdling scream before. I raced from the house and there was Darrow racing towards me with a swarm of yellow jackets surrounding him. When I picked him up he had about 20 to 30 yellow jackets, clinging mostly to his back. The screams continued. I raced into the house, placed him in the bathtub and ran water over him to get the yellow jackets off. I don’t remember getting bitten at all, but I was so frightened. My main fear was that he would have an allergic reaction to that many yellow jacket bites. His father is very allergic to bees. An allergic reaction would have been life-threatening. When I had removed all of the yellow jackets and his clothes, I wrapped him in a towel and held him in my lap until he stopped crying. Then I called the doctor. The doctor was at the hospital. I waited and waited for the doctor to call back, but it seemed like hours, so I called the hospital back. I told them it was an emergency and if the doctor didn’t call back soon, I would be bringing Darrow in to the hospital. The doctor called back. He said to give Darrow a double dose of the Actifed that I kept on hand for earaches. Let him go to sleep, but watch him closely for a rash or swelling. If either of those things occurred, get to the hospital as fast as I could.  

I watched him all night long, but none of those things occurred. Luckily, Darrow did not inherit his father’s bee allergy. I learned later that he had been encouraged by his older brother to poke the yellow jacket’s nest with a short stick. I don’t think he ever did that again.

The great yellow jacket attack is a piece of Fisher family lore. I’ve asked my brother and mother to independently write down what happened that day and I told them I would do the same. I want to see how we three remember the same event. What are the differences between our stories? What do we agree on? Here’s my version:

It certainly happened in the mid-1970’s. I’m guessing summer of 1975 which would make me six and my brother Darrow five. I think it was the summer because it was warm and it was day time and we weren’t in school. Our mother, a school teacher, was also home that day. It could also have just been a weekend.

A tobacco stick is a long, brown, grainy and manufactured. They’re used in gardens to support vine vegetables like tomatoes. It’s about two adult fingers wide and one thick. The one Darrow was playing with was about three and half feet long. He would later tell us that he poked it down that hole because he thought there were baby rabbits living there.  

We lived on Starnes road in on the south side of Tallahassee. The house was a red and single storied and it that backed up to Lake Munson. Starnes road was hard dirt with dirt ditches on either side. I was climbing in the dogwood tree closest to the front door of the house. We had a green Datsun B210 parked in front of the house. Darrow was on the other side, the north side, of the road. I think out mother was inside.  

I didn’t see him poke that stick into the yellow jacket hole. I do remember when he started yelling from all the stings. He was slapping himself and trying to knock them out of his hair.  

Our mother came out of the house to help him. I think she took all his clothes off and put him into the car and took him somewhere. The drugstore? Why would she take him to the drugstore? Maybe I’m remembering that part wrong.  

I stayed home. I don’t think she would have left me there by myself so I think she had a neighbor watch me. Possibly Wayne was living with us at that point.  

I think I remember that he had stings all over his body. I would guess that there were dozens.

Saturday through Wednesday was Cincinnati. Audrey and Alice were married on that Sunday. Maureen performed the service. We in the audience rang little bells and, after the jumping of the broom, Fiona went up with the children and got flowers from the newlyweds. Afterwards we played croquet, bocce ball and a game called corn hole—played with beanbags—which the boys from San Francisco found especially hilarious, as did I.  

A few things I noticed about Cincinnati: motorcycle riders don’t wear helmets, people smoke in public, restaurants play old rock like Lynyrd Skynyrd, there are fireflies at night.  

Back at the house, Alice showed us how to turn a regular baseball cap into a rally-cap. Later, Alice wore Sara’s ‘Too Many Welches’ baseball cap in non-rally-cap style. Someone asked about children and Alice said she wanted to adopt a black baby.  

Bob had a golf cart with five American flags on the front for Memorial Day. Kathleen, Fiona and I rode it to the pool and swam around. The water seemed colder than in Seattle. Later that night neighbors had fireworks. Fiona sat in the golf cart with Maureen and screamed when the fireworks shot up.  

On Tuesday, we were took Bob’s boat on the river. He was docked at a restaurant pier. Alice and I carried the cooler through and the bar-maid complained that we should bring it through at the pump station instead. I told her we didn’t know it was a problem and that we would the next time.  

On the boat, Kathleen, Fiona and I sat in the back. Bob and Nancy were in the middle with Bob steering. Alice and Audrey were at the front. Bob went fast until Fiona got scared and then slowed down so that Alice and Audrey got drenched. On the Kentucky side, there was a wrecked-up barge called the U.S.S. Nightmare they use as a haunted house on Halloween. There was a Hooters on the Kentucky side that Alice had a story about but I couldn’t hear it.  

On Wednesday, we were off to the airport in the morning. There was an accident on I-75 North on the way to Dayton—motorcycle rider versus semi. We missed the flight and had to stay in a hotel room overnight until the next flight O’Hare-to-Seattle. For dinner, Kathleen had ‘Ohio Style’ taco salad which had seven small cripsy tacos on the side.  

After dinner, Kathleen took Fiona back to the room and I stopped in the bar for a drink. I had a Dewer’s and the bartender and I watched Jeopardy. The last answer's question was ‘Who is L. Frank Baum?’. The bartender knew it but I answered first.  

We flew back on Thursday. Fiona slept most of the way because we he gotten up so early.

 

Fiona invented 'pointener' yesterday for pencil sharpener. I think its a lovely word.

Over the weekend Fiona wanted to play hide and seek. My handicap was that I had to hide with a large guitar in a case. Kathleen found this hilarious.

Another swim lesson for Fiona last night. Her teachers said she had been talking about it all day and was really excited. She and Shalia swam around the pool practicing holding breath under water, jumping from the side, strokes, floating on the back and so forth. Sometimes they stop and talk and it looks like they're telling secrets.

 

Toward the end Jean-Paul came out to the pool's edge and Fiona smiled, waved and yelled "Hi John-Paul!" from across the middle of the pool. I hadn't seen her so animated about a particular person before.

 

I asked Shalia if she could do an hour lesson instead of a half hour. She usually leaves at 7:00 and would have to stay until 7:30. She agreed and extended the next three lessons.

I've been thinking about going for a hike on Green Mountain: http://www.washingtonhikes.com/2000/greenmountain/

I did this hike with Kathleen and my parents in 2000 or 2001 and it was really something special.

Fiona's decided to limit the pet names that we can use for her. All are verboten except for Nugget and NeckPuppy.

 

NeckPuppy is also the name of a neck pillow that she got at the airport. It's red and has a puppy's head at one end.

We went to the Irish Pub at the Bella Botega. Miles taught Fiona how to blow bubbles in her milk with her straw and Fiona showed him how to crabwalk with two grownups holding your hands.

 

The weather is still cold. I think its usually warmer this time of year.

On Saturday Fiona's classmate Jake had a party. There was an inflatable bouncy house and the kids jumped around like crazy. Ocassionally, a kid-avalanche would roll out of the door and onto the grass. Later there were ponies. Fiona rode "Marshmallow" twice and had a grand time.