Allergies: Everyone gets them, everyone hates them. Fortunately modern medicine has been working on compensating for this shortcoming in human anatomy for years, and we've developed all sorts of drugs to help. Such as Benadryl.
Bees: They fly around, collecting nectar and distributing pollen, not meaning anyone any harm. That is, of course, unless they're disturbed.
Me: Not allergic to bees. For future reference.
Once upon a time, I was in marching band. Actually, way more than ONCE upon a time... Anywho, it was band camp (I know what you're thinking, "this one time at band camp...") when it happened. We were setting drill on the field, I was carrying my clarinet as usual and minding my own business. A well-meaning bee was flying along, also minding its own business, and decided it was tired and needed somewhere to sit down and take a rest. Fortunately, I apparently have very soft, comfortable hands and the bee decided that would be a nice place to sit down.
I don't have a problem with bees! I don't! I wouldn't mind at all if a well meaning bee decided to come sit on my finger. Unfortunately, this particular bee startled me and also managed to get in the way of my fingers as I played, so I attempted to brush the bee off. This startled the bee, who stung me and flew away. Up to this point, I had managed to go my entire life without being stung by a bee, so I had no idea whether or not I was allergic to bees. Fortunately there was a well meaning mellophone player who WAS allergic to bees and offered to stab me with his epi-pen, but I opted for the Benadryl option. I've always had kind of a weird reaction to Benadryl, but this time was something special. See, he decided that, just to be safe, he should give me TWO.
(DISCLAIMER: The following passage may contain indirect drug references. Do not try anything mentioned in this post.)
Benadryl, I learned, causes me to hallucinate. Badly. Not, like, pink-elephant hallucinations, that would have been enjoyable. These were fractured-reality hallucinations. It was like I was stuck in the weird limbo between waking and sleeping, where nothing is quite right and it's sort of terrifying. I sprawled on the grass next to the field and tripped out for a while. I thought Rikki's dad, who was a scruffy-looking man with a ponytail, was a guy I liked at the time, who looked like a 12 year old. I thought it was 5:00 in the afternoon when in reality it was like noon. But there was one thought that managed to stay afloat on the drug induced confusion was this:
"The trumpets are out of tune."
So, moral of the story, don't do drugs. Even if it makes you have perfect pitch for a while.
--Saffron
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