Killer Bees
By S.E. Schaible
It was the summer after third grade and I was infatuated with my then-former teacher Ms. Aimone. She and Mrs. Yasner had an experimental deal where the two third-grade classes knocked down a wall to operate as one big unit, and one of my foundational memories of attraction was the way Ms. Aimone snapped her fingers and danced around her desk when she played Carole King's Tapestry record.
Most teachers touched a kid's forehead with the palm of their hand before sending them off to the school nurse, but my third-grade teacher used her lips on my forehead to gauge my temperature. If only I'd known this in September, I could have feigned a fever every other day.
Some of the older boys in the neighborhood were nice to Billy and me one day in July, which meant they wanted something. That something was, hours of unpaid labor. For once they had a brilliant idea: if we piled enough rocks to create a dam across Bear Brook behind Billy's house, we could form a deep pool to jump into, launching off one of the old oak trees leaning across the water. There was talk of a rope swing if we could manage to get it six feet or deeper.
We spent hours working on it. And soon enough, we did create an impressive pool. Walking across the brook you would normally be wet to the top of your socks, about 12 inches, but soon enough it was up to our chests. It was working. The older boys were determined to be able to jackknife into the pool from the tree before sundown. Word got out and other kids and siblings came and went helping in varying degrees of futility, most quitting within minutes. They were promptly run off and warned that they would have no access to the pool - ever. Vito's sister Sherry was a couple of years younger than me and couldn't pick up rocks much bigger than her fist, but she kept trying. Billy and I took a break and were soaking up to our necks in the newly formed pool when all hell broke loose. Several boys were screaming and running and Sherry let out a a shriek that I will never forget.
In her effort to be more helpful, she had wandered up the bank of the brook and pulled at a rock that was the gateway to an underground nest, unleashing chaos. Bees attacked her like you only read about. They swarmed all the other boys. Everyone scattered.
Billy and I had no choice but to take a deep breath and submerge into the murky pool. We would bring our heads up for a breath and bees were on us immediately. Back under the water we went, slapping our heads to release fierce insects both real and imagined. I got one sting on my ear.
We made a run for it and got across the yard into Billy's garage. Parents were notified and we heard that Sherry had been stung something like 50 times and had to go to the hospital. They said she had stings inside her mouth and nostrils.
The pool we created lasted only a couple weeks. The rope swing never happened, the bee incident halting the enthusiasm. Heavy thunderstorms dispersed all the hard work. When my fourth grade teacher, Mr. Falchetta, asked each of us to tell something we'd done that summer, I told the story about the killer bees. Some of the kids already knew about it.
I learned early in the new school year that our student teacher, Ms. Barbara, also used the lips-on-the-forehead method.