When I was a kid, my friends and I thought to mess with a nest of wasps. The nest, in question, hung low on a mango tree at the back of our yard, particularly close to a cluster of ripe, delicious looking mangoes, and its inhabitants played sentry, buzzing and circling around the bunch of fruit, menacingly clashing with each other from time to time to fall in a brown tangle of insect legs and wings near the tree's roots.
As children, we coveted the fruit, bits of sweet sunshine wrapped in skin, but we had each weathered enough stings to know that we daren't just walk up to the tree and pick them as we wanted, and so we devised a plan to have the nest removed.
Sheldon, our neighbor's son and the eldest among us, determined that we would knock the nest down so that the bees would have to look for a next home.
"They'd be angry for a bit and they'd buzz around, so we'd have to clear out when we hit the nest down," he said. "But then, they'll have to leave and we can go back in and get the mangoes."
The plan seemed foolproof. And if you had ever tasted a bit of Sheldon's chow, made with bits of the fruit seasoned with pepper and sugar and salt and grated bits of chive and bandana, you'd understand why everyone was willing to risk it all to confront the hive.
The first thing we had to do was to settle on an instrument to knock the nest off the tree. We settled on a crook stick.
Sheldon's father used the crook stick to cut grass. He didn't have a wacker or a lawn mower, was particularly suspicious of new-fangled instruments, and would often be seen on mornings, standing bare-chested, muscles rippling, hooking clumps of grass with the stick and then swiping low with a cutlass, sending grass blades flying everywhere. The crook stick was the perfect instrument to hook the nest and bring it all down.
And so, we set out one afternoon to evict some wasps, Sheldon as our leader and we, a few feet behind. As we neared the tree, Sheldon shared his battle plan.
"On the count of ten," Sheldon told us, "I am going to hook the nest and throw it down. Run and do not look back. One, two, three..."
We stood on the balls of our feet, ready to race the wind.
"... Four, five, six..."
And then I wondered if Sheldon would actually hook the wasp nest or if he would miss it and hook the mangoes instead.
"... Seven, eight, nine..."
And then it occurred to me that it might just be a good idea to hook the bunch of mangoes and pull them to the ground instead. That way, when the wasps settled, we could grab the fruit and run, and the nest wouldn't be disturbed.
"Sheldon," I began.
"TEN!" he yelled triumphantly, reaching forward to hook the nest as everyone else beat a hasty retreat.
The nest came tumbling down, exploding like a burst fruit, an angry black cloud flew up, storming towards us, and Sheldon dropped the stick and scooted past me, yelling, "RUN!"
I tried to see if any of the mangoes had actually fallen together with the nest, and before I could blink, my face was on fire. First, it felt like needles, a thousand needles, like my face was a pin cushion. Then everything burned.
I screamed.
There was a pipe in our yard that was constantly leaking and underneath it stood a bucket that collected the water. My mom used this water for her plants. I raced blindly to the bucket, and without thinking, dunked my head in the water.
For a few seconds, the angry, little insects held on tight to my face, their stings sunk deep. The water brought little reprieve. But then they let go, and through the pain I could hear my friends calling to me, asking if I was okay.
Later that evening, as Sheldon predicted, the angry wasps moved on in search of a new home. None of my friends wanted to pick the fruit anymore though. My face was swollen and round like a basketball and our parents were far more furious than a nest of wasps.
"You should have run like everyone else," Sheldon said. My friend had a knack for stating the obvious.
He paused and then added, "Or we could have just hooked the fruits and left the wasps alone."
Ya think?
Hi guys,
I've been interested in this community for some time but I wasn't sure that I could actually tell a joke. Like I was thinking that I needed to end every line with ba-dum ching, and then I got to thinking that maybe I wasn't that funny because which comedian needs to explain their jokes or even end their jokes with a cymbal crash?
So then I tried out a few jokes on a couple of friends, just to see how good I was, and no one even cracked a smile. It was a tough room, guys. I was hunched over, stitches in my side, tears in my eyes and everyone was looking at me like, maybe we had to be there to get it.
And so, I was having all these conversations with myself and others when it hit me: I was breaking a fundamental rule by overthinking things. 馃槄 And so, I decided to just tell stories. This is one.
I hope you enjoyed it. If you didn't, maybe you had to be there. 馃槀 Anyways, I look forward to continuing to contribute to this group and to reading and engaging with your content as well.
Have a great evening, everyone! And remember, one should never take oneself too seriously, right? Because where's the fun in that?
