memory.

I grew up here for the first part of my life. I learned a lot about life and nature directly out of my own backyard, which happened to be a lake-front meadow in the Tahoe Keys. I remember, late spring when I was 5 years old, I had just received my own Darkwing Duck foam-disc shooter from a mail-away cereal box offer and my brother and sister took me out to the meadow to test it out. I recall shooting off all the discs right away and then running to find them in the tall grass of the meadow (which irritated my skin, but it never stopped me from going). Mid-run, I met my first bee. I had first thought it to be a fly, so I instantly swatted at it with my ever-cool Darkwing Duck gun; unfortunately, the bee retaliated.

 

I remember such confusion when I started feeling a stinging feeling just to the left of my left eye (right in the corner, narrowly missing the white of my eye); I had no idea what a bee was and here I was suffering its wrath on a part of my body that I don't think I had ever associated with a "feeling," espcially one of pain. I ran inside and my pops taught me about the birds and bees (literally).

 

I narrowly escaped being blinded by a bee's stinger at the age of 5 and I don't think I played with that Darkwing Duck foam-disc shooter ever again.

Life lesson learned.

Done