Beyond a softball-sized fibroid named Betty, I’ve never birthed anything other than the rare idea. The brains of women forget the excruciating pain that accompanies childbirth, and this neglect is what ensures the continuation of our species. That theory has since been debunked. But it’s hypothesized that the memory of severe pain is lessened if the overall experience was positive, but is heightened if the overall experience was negative.
Oddly the only insect sting I ever received was from a wasp. My main memory about it was being angry when I learned that wasps don't die the way bees do (but now that might not be true: do bees die when they sting?) because that felt unfair. In retrospect the sting was perfectly fair: my friend Gerad and I knocked the wasp nest down with a stick; we started it.
One summer I looked up and saw a speck of mud in the corner of my bedroom ceiling. Over the summer I watched it grow and grow. For some reason I never really put together the wasps that would float around the house from seemingly nowhere and the surprising stickiness of the mud clump growing in the corner. Finally one day my mother saw it and exclaimed "How long has that wasp nest been there?" Oops.
I don't remember what dude she was dating, one of the three or four relationships that went nowhere after my parents' divorce, but he climbed up with a latter and removed it. There was still a brown stain in the spot for years afterward, until I moved out and Mom repainted the room to make an office.
Hhaha this story is great! I have to laugh at the fact that you are so incredibly intelligent and observational but as a kid you were about to share a room with a burgeoning community of wasps! And maybe wasps are the territory of step-fathers and boyfriends, not of fathers. And regarding bees, apparently the answer is "it depends" https://www.livescience.com/do-bees-die-after-stinging
Nice.
Oddly the only insect sting I ever received was from a wasp. My main memory about it was being angry when I learned that wasps don't die the way bees do (but now that might not be true: do bees die when they sting?) because that felt unfair. In retrospect the sting was perfectly fair: my friend Gerad and I knocked the wasp nest down with a stick; we started it.
One summer I looked up and saw a speck of mud in the corner of my bedroom ceiling. Over the summer I watched it grow and grow. For some reason I never really put together the wasps that would float around the house from seemingly nowhere and the surprising stickiness of the mud clump growing in the corner. Finally one day my mother saw it and exclaimed "How long has that wasp nest been there?" Oops.
I don't remember what dude she was dating, one of the three or four relationships that went nowhere after my parents' divorce, but he climbed up with a latter and removed it. There was still a brown stain in the spot for years afterward, until I moved out and Mom repainted the room to make an office.
Hhaha this story is great! I have to laugh at the fact that you are so incredibly intelligent and observational but as a kid you were about to share a room with a burgeoning community of wasps! And maybe wasps are the territory of step-fathers and boyfriends, not of fathers. And regarding bees, apparently the answer is "it depends" https://www.livescience.com/do-bees-die-after-stinging