The Beekeeper

(it's only fear, after all)

Do you have any irrational fears? You know, like Indiana Jones has with  snakes? Or are those actually rational fears, just taken to extremes? Anyway, you know what I'm talking about here. A deep-seated fear of something real (but unpleasant). For some people it's mice; for others it's spiders, bugs, whatever. I'm not talking about completely irrational fears here (e.g., any number of well-used dreams, such as the "I'm-a-fraud-and-everyone's-going-to-find-out" nightmare, the "I-overslept-during-the-final-exam-and-showed-up-dressed-in-my-boxer-shorts" one, the "killer-wasps-are-attacking-me" one and so on). I'm referring to excessive fear of something real.

Well, I have one such excessive fear: I'm afraid of wasps (the insect, that is). I even remember when it got started - I was about 4 years old, running around barefoot in the back yard, and I stepped on a wasp. That sting HURT. At least, I remember thinking that at the time. Next time I saw a wasp? "RUN AWAAAAAY." It just seemed like a good idea to stay out of their way. I've been stung a few times since then, and it has never been quite as traumatic, but I never seemed to get over that deep-seated fear.

Well, fast-forward about 25 years. It's October and we're in the process of selling our house, and on this particular Sunday our contracted buyers are conducting an "engineering inspection" of the house. That's where a guy who refers to himself as an engineer charges home buyers several hundreds of dollars to walk through the house and point out the obvious flaws so they can use that as "wiggle room" to re-negotiate their contract with the sellers. Anyway, for show they poke and prod about quite a bit. Well, that evening I walk into our living room and there is a dreaded wasp flying around in there. While my good old instinct is to run away, I now have a wife, a 4-year old and an infant to protect from this horrible beast. So, armed with yesterday's newspaper, I hunt down and kill the dangerous bastard. Oh yeah, don't mess with me, punk. Hey, wait, there's another one. Deep breath. Whack. Jeez this gives me the creeps. Thank goodness it's October and they're sluggish. Wait, did something move over there behind the draperies? AACK! Five more! What the hell is going on here?

Ok, I admit, at this point I did run away. ;-)  I went into the kitchen, grabbed the yellow pages and started calling exterminators. Here's one for you: how many exterminators are sitting by the phone on Sunday evening waiting for your "emergency" call? I can tell you, at that point in time the answer was zero. But I left messages for a few - a guy can always hope, right? Ok, think - what should I do here? Well, I found my wife upstairs with the kids, explained what was going on ("WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!!!"), and we came up with a game plan. She would take the kids and go to her mother's for the night, and I would stay behind and guard the castle. Hey! Wait a minute! I'm the one with the irrational fear here! Aw geez.... So now it's just me and..... now they're all over the place! Alright, they pushed me too far this time. Somehow, my irrational fear got transformed into anger. I was a lean, mean wasp-killing machine. Wasp-postal. Yup, there were 47 notches in my rolled-up newspaper that night. I was smugly celebrating my victory when I happened to glance through the fireplace glass doors to see.... what appeared to be hundreds of wasps crawling around inside the firebox. Run away time again. What do I do now? There was no way I was going to open those doors armed with my rolled-up Times. Well, as I always say, when in doubt turn to.... duct tape. I grabbed some 6-mil thick plastic and a roll of duct tape and sealed that fireplace up tight. Now, if I only had some spray wasp killer, I could go outside and gas those buggers through the fireplace air intake.... but where am I going to get wasp killer at 11 PM on a Sunday? Nowhere. So... off to bed.

I'm glad I don't own a gun, I probably would have slept with it under my pillow that night. I mean, even though I was 47-and-Oh, the irrational excessive fear was still there - fueled a bit by the hundreds of wasps crawling around in my fireplace. The next morning I had to be in work early, so I left the house after a cursory check for more wasps. My wife and children came home sometime in the morning, just in time to field a call from one of the exterminators. He suggested that even though there didn't seem to be any more wasps in the house, it would be best if he came over and "dusted" the outside of the house for wasps. So, early that afternoon when I finally got out of my meeting or whatever, I called home and my wife proudly explained to me that it was all taken care of. Whew.

Well, when I got home that night she casually mentioned to me "Oh yeah - the exterminator wanted to know if he should dust in the fireplace, but it looked like you had it sealed up for some reason so I told him not to."  Noooooo! The nightmare is still here! Ok, this time stores are open. I run out and buy 3 cans of wasp killer spray, send the family away once more, and empty the cans through the air intake into the fireplace. I let it sit a while, and then with great trepidation ripped off the plastic and duct tape. I immediately started a roaring fire in the fireplace (very roaring - the wasp spray is highly flammable), and at that stage I knew these wasps would bother us no more.

Later, after I had stopped shaking, I began to analyze the events of the past 24 hours. Somehow, this felt good. I am irrationally afraid of a single wasp, yet I just successfully eliminated hundreds of them from my home. Why was I successful? Well, the obvious answer was I didn't have a choice, but when I looked beyond the obvious I realized the single most important factor leading to my success was that I tried. I didn't get over my fear (to this day I still flinch when I see a wasp), I just took care of business. This turned out to be a somewhat bizarre turning point in my life. I began seeing things I was afraid of as challenges instead of just fears. Nervous about public speaking? Go out and speak in public. Shy about meeting people? Go introduce yourself to someone new. Will you get stung? Maybe, but it is just a "sting." You survive it and get to try again.

(Ha! And you thought this was just another stupid story!)