Last night my husband hosted a Texas Hold-em card night, so I was left to the wrangle the kids, with the help of my friend. Early evening, we decided to take the girls outside on the patio swing and read some books. As we stepped down the deck steps, a swarm of wasps flew out from underneath and stung my younger daughter, G, in the leg. She of course yelped immediately, and the tears and the screams started flowing.
We brought her inside and put some ice, kisses, and eventually a Strawberry Shortcake bandaid on it to make it all better. G is a tough little kid, so the cries really didn't last long, considering. She just intermittently would look down at her boo-boo, put on her pouty, bulldog face and say, "Pep-pa kill that buggy!" Pep-pa is my girls' name for their grandpa/my dad, whose name is Pep.
Yes, that's right, Pep. Of course that's not his real name, but he's been called Pep nearly his entire life. I was well into elementary school when I first learned that wasn't his real name. He had always told me that he earned that nickname because of a combined love of Pepsi and his his incredible spunk and energy (i.e. "Pep"). Not until my 20s did I learn the real story of "Pep" from a cousin who was in town. According to this trusted source, around the age of six, my father was hanging out with said cousin, and they were going to eat some pizza. Apparently, my father didn't know what pepperoni was. No one could understand how this 100% Italian child could possibly not know what pepperoni was, so everyone started calling him Pepperoni, Pep for short.
But once again, I digress..
My daughter's "wasp incident" brought back a most hysterical memory involving my husband.
In the middle of the night one summer evening, my husband suddenly jumped out of bed, screaming, and ran out of the room. He dove onto the couch, clutching his buns, apparently writhing in pain. I followed him out, not knowing what had happened, but assuming that he was just having a bad dream. He started screaming frantically that a snake had bitten him on the butt. Trying to hold back my laughter, I kept saying that he was just having a bad dream. He then showed me the big welt on his bum. He was insistent that a snake had bitten him, not rationalizing that this was next to impossible, living in suburbia with a bedroom on the second floor. Determined to both prove me wrong and rid our home of this creature, he grabbed a flashlight and crept back into the bedroom in search of the snake like the Crocodile Hunter. Why he needed a flashlight I have yet to understand - we did have working electricity! He tiptoed into the bedroom and threw down the blankets. And there, in the place on the bed where he had been sleeping, was a flattened, squashed....wasp.
Being the manly man that he is, I'm sure he thought a pain such as the one he endured just had to be something as treacherous as a snake. It was a shot to his ego (and a bigger shot to his rear) that it was just, as G would say, a little buggy.
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2 comments:
Do you really think that you over-analyze? After all "analyze" means to separate into parts or basic principles so as to determine the nature of the whole; examine methodically. According to my dictionary (1), the word comes from the Greek "analusis," meaning to loosen throughout. Does that sound like you? ;-)
The word "over" has 14 definitions as a preposition and three as an adjective. The latter include "excessive, extreme."
I just don't get this "over-analyzing" stuff. I wouldn't recognize it if I saw it.
(1)The American heritage college dictionary, 3rd ed. (1997). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p. 48.
Signed, BS
BS, I think the analysis you provide perfectly reflects what I mean by "Over-analyzing"! That's exactly the kind of comment I would have made. Perhaps we should share the title. ;)
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