The Wasp in the Window

Wasps! 😨Actually nearly anything with wings and a stinger...they have always been my greatest phobia. When I was a child of about six years, a few friends and I used to go wasp hunting with rubber band guns. We made our weapons from green Lincoln Log roof slats with a clothespin secured at one end. We would then stretch the rubber band bullet from the end of the wood to the mouth of the pin. When triggered, the missile would project way up to the second story apartment awning where the wasps had their paper nests.

I remember one Saturday when one of the large fiery red wasps dive bombed us after its house took a direct hit. Before I could react, it stung me in the middle of my right cheek. I cried all the way home. You might imagine I learned my lesson. Surely at least one of my higher IQ elementary-age friends would dissuade me from similar adventures in the future. NOT! The very next Saturday our unofficial gang went on safari again. You guessed it! We got the same result. Why that angry insect picked me as its target on consecutive weekends, I'll never know. The first sting had not even healed when this bug's bite landed in the same spot. Fool me once...and all that. I never went wasp hunting again.

To this day I am watchful and wary whenever one of those creepy critters is nearby. During my first faculty meeting as a new professor of education at Martin Methodist College, a wasp became trapped in the room with us. I appeared to be the only person dazed and befuddled by the presence of this unwelcome visitor. I followed it with my  eyes as it flew among the overhead lights during the entire meeting. I don't think I gleaned much from that hour. You may ask, "So what's new. It was a faculty meeting?" It seems to me a fairly immature way for a middle-aged man with two graduate degrees to act. All I can say is that this is my lifelong phobia.

Somewhere betwixt these two events, I found myself driving my car alone one day when a wasp decided to land on my neck and tread lightly down my shirt. It was all I could do to ease the car to an abrupt stop, reach behind and somehow squish the intruder to death in the folds of that garment. I jumped out of the vehicle, hurriedly untucked, and dumped the bug on the roadside.

All three of those stories came to mind recently when I discovered a wasp on the outside of the dining room window of our home. No, it couldn't get at me. The window was locked impenetrably. Scary memories still permeated my psyche. Over the next few days I spied the same insect on that window again and later on the living room glass. I wonder if wasps can be reincarnated to return and renew past acquaintances with humans? Haunting! Alas, that's the way with the shelf life of any irrational fear or phobic fixation.