I have lived just about six decades without experiencing a wasp sting but that changed Saturday night. And while I'm extemporizing to my smart chorus here, I have to say I still shake my head at the phrase, "Bitten by a wasp." Indeed, they have terrific mandibles and claws, but they have to eat and also use these for building the little egg-bearing structure, which for many of us is the main reason for attack---by sting.

Dad and I had just returned home from church, with Mom not having attended about a month now, and I closed the garage door after locking the car, with Dad headed inside. I felt what surely was an insect bump me on the head where my barber is yet kept in business and looked for maybe a scarab. Dad was doing his increasingly infirm moan (and I know for whom the bell tolls, church and other), this time about his "good" glasses missing. I hoped they were not in church, and in my diminishing fortune there they were almost off the front seat. But on closing the garage door I felt a small entity strike me on my back just below the neck and this moderately bold move resulted in a burn slowly ramping up.

I saw a few of the creatures, too, but not their "lantern". Darn, my first time. I informed the folks and Dad kept trying to direct me to something medically appropriate, and when I kept finding only miscellaneous cosmetic and dental items, multiple specimens generally squeezed out as per our family, Dad asked Mom where things were. Alas, dementia is taking over more and she barely responded. I finally found some Hydrocortizone, but the sting, while annoying, wasn't crippling and seemed to be subsiding.

But the folks' neediness and my naivete took care of the latter-day school biology research. Besides mentioning something had got him on the arm, whether opening the door as he insists on doing when we get home or earlier, Dad said they needed a bag of cereal from the garage. Oh, great, I see where this is headed---and with a bonus. I knocked on the garage door, apparently not having heard the expression about hornets' nests enough thousands of times, and sure enough sensed another bombardment, and this time one got my left ear. Only a bump, I hoped, but there was the little flame coming up again. This one lingered a bit longer, but my general feeling was indignation. I still didn't see the nest and the general feeling of the insects being anywhere and everywhere above where the door met the garage, like a grease ant colony does at ground level, came into play. Wasn't that the tone of the Cold War?

Just the general feeling of the quick, "You shouldn't be here---we mean it!" attack reminded me of various childhood traumas. Which of course leads to "y" chromosome aggression. Well, I knew where the ointment was and surely they had insecticide. None to be found, so I drove a mile over to Target, where the scrambling and yelling of the Saturday afternoon kids reminded me, with mumbling inner dialogue a-building, I can do a darn good impersonation, Irish Catholic and all, of that other "wasp". Kept to myself, of course, but reflected in my surly rushing through the aisles.

Right after answering an employee's query what I was searching for, there it was 10 feet away: aerosols of six-legged demise. The one labeled for "flying insect" didn't list my (yeah, right, "my" my ---) adversaries but calm down, Dan, here's the wasp stuff. Formidable looking, too, with that bullhorn nozzle. So back home and after sensibly breaking the tab and giving (all right, "firing"---didn't I just post about little boys?) a short test shot onto the pavement I let the top of the garage door have it in a sweeping and manly here's-where-it-all-pays-off gesture. Yes, I see why this is a wasp spray bottle, for if it had been water it would have crushed them anyway.

A few came down but not far, and it was then I spotted the lantern. By then, maybe one was headed across the street, "toasted" I couldn't tell, and several were down. The two I saw on the lantern were probably dead at their posts but it didn't hamper my final burst of generosity. Now the scene had the just shut down feeling of the aftermath of cinematic war but the drips of inefficiently applied insecticide reminded me of after a storm.

Now, I suppose I would be expected to make the analogy of being one of those almighty slaughter-masters and future governors from the aforementioned movies, but no. I was simply a guy who wanted to do parents' duty and get home to read his "Uncut Magazine" and L. A. Weekly to the lullaby of up tempo jazz over some Mt. Tam Pale. But I had been stung and there were threats to the indigent parents, and more time to be consumed. Isn't that how a lot of destruction commences: "[I'm] peeved!"

Once inside with the cereal I blew across the business end of the can like the cliche gunslinger of yore, but Dad couldn't see it and Mom probably didn't get it. Served me right.