Don’t Eat Bees

I grew up in a farming community near Ririe, Idaho.  With so many small farmers needing help with the potato harvest, it was a great opportunity to make a little money, even for a young girl like me.

(Debbie, age 9)

One particular fall when I was about ten years old I had the opportunity to pick potatoes.  I arrived at our neighbor’s potato field in the morning and put on a special belt that had a gunny sack attached to it and went to work picking potatoes.  A tractor dug the potatoes to the surface of the ground and we would walk the rows behind the tractor picking the potatoes up and putting them into our sacks.  We got paid by the sack.  It was hard work, but really quite fun.

At lunchtime we would all gather together in the shade and eat our sack lunches.  That morning I had asked my mom not to make me a peanut butter and honey sandwich, but to my dismay when I opened my lunch—peanut butter and honey it was.  I was starving and began to eat my sandwich.

I was busy watching the other workers around me and wasn’t paying much attention as I ate.  To my dismay my next bite felt funky as a stabbing pain hit my tongue.  I quickly opened my mouth and out flew a bee.  It had been enjoying the honey on my sandwich with me!  The bee didn’t appreciate the rough treatment my chewing was causing and it stung me.  My tongue hurt like a bugger and started to swell up.   I ran to the neighbor’s house and told them what had happened.  They had me lay down for a while while they made sure the swelling didn’t become serious.

Needless to say, I was kind of mad at my mom because she hadn’t listened to me that morning and made me a different kind of sandwich.  I felt sure that the bee wished she had listened, too.