Dances with wasps

copyright 2005 Dale Hansen - no reproduction without permission

P.S. Happy Brithday (today) to my wonderful wife who lets me win once in a while

Just on the edge of the woods where my back yard ended, there was an area my brother cleared out to raise rabbits. By the time I was old enough to be outside alone, he was grown and gone and the only thing left of the rabbits were rusted cages..

Near these was a large patch of mud, which never actually seemed to dry. In the middle of this eternal muck lived a colony of mud wasps.

My cousin who lived in the big dark metropolis of St. Paul came out to our rural house one day with her mother. As the grownups visited, she and I went out to play. While we were running around, slinging plastic Real Old West rifles around, she strayed toward the forbidden zone. I frantically called her back.

No female of any age has ever done anything I’ve told, asked or pleaded with her to do until I have explained it in minuet detail first. This can be inconvenient when there are mud wasps involved, as they are notoriously impatient creatures.

Even after my detailed and breathless explanation, she didn’t believe me! In her world, there were no such things as mud wasps, so I had to be making it all up.

Women.

I had to prove it to her. Fine! We stalked slowly over the site I had marked months ago as the danger zone. I pointed to what, as far as I was concerned, was the entrance to hell. I knew that in that innocuous little hole, thousands of air-born poisoned-tipped guided missiles waited for an unwary foot or bouncing ball.

“There”, I whispered, trying not to wake any wasps that might be slumbering under the soil.

“It’s just a hole!” she yelled, obviously angry. She STILL though I was trying to trick her!

HUMPH.

Women.

Ok, well, now what? As if in answer to my plea, one of the monsters arrived. He came back to the nest, probably from a long day of terrorizing children who didn’t believe in mud wasps. “Look!” I whispered feverishly. “See?!”

While we watched, the miniature fiend crawled into the hole I had just pointed out. I was vindicated! I was proven right beyond all doubt, beyond all questions! Thus began a long tradition of thinking I'd won arguments with women.

“Oh, he just went in the hole for some food or something.”

That was 30 years ago, and I am no closer to understanding the opposite gender today than I was then. Nothing short of an engraved invitation from the Queen (wasp) to tea would have convinced this girl that I, a mere male, actually might know what I was talking about.

“No!” I protested, in my frustration born of using logic against such an implacable foe as a pre-pubescent female, I entirely forgot to whisper. “There’s an entire colony in there! There are thousands of them in there!”

“Wasps make their nest in trees and in telephone poles, they do NOT live under ground!” She said with all the conviction of someone who has all the necessary knowledge and no need of evidence.

Now, I’ve never been good at chess. I love the game, but I’m lousy at it. I don’t think about the consequences of my actions before I do them. My life philosophy is “whack it with a hammer.” In this instance, whack it with a plastic Real Old West rifle.

In order to get her proof that she so obviously needed, I took my rifle in had, griped the end of the barrel and proceed to pound the @#! out of the wasp’s nest.

That woke everyone up.

In 1978, when Superman the Movie came out, the tag line we heard so often was “you will believe a man can fly”. I already knew that: I did it that day. The plastic Real Old West rifle I never let go of flew off in one direction, and I took off in another. I think I hoped that the wasps would follow the thing that hit them, not the hand that held it.

My cousin stood stock-still, feet planted firmly in the mud, inches from the hole that was spewing miniature demons. She stood there watching the entire thing.

She didn’t get stung once.

Women.

I, on the other hand, collected a dozen little warnings on my back as I broke the land speed record for Red Wing, Minnesota.

Sometime later I lay on the floor in the living room so Mom could lather ointment over my battle scars. I was asked to explain how I got them. I mumbled something about mud wasps and how my cousin wouldn’t believe me. I didn’t have go into detail about my moment of stupidity.

My cousin did that for me.

My mother and my aunt nobly tried not to laugh. I will give them that. Then my cousin looked at me and with straight face pronounced that I may have been right about the wasps after all.

Women.

I went through all of that to get just one of them to believe me. Having succeeded, I should have felt proud, but as hard as the other two women were laughing, it deadened my sense of triumph.

There is one thing I have learned about the “fair sex”. If you break even, call it a victory.