Toward the close of a beautiful day, my family sat beside the charcoal grill as hunger-inducing aromas billowed from beneath the reflective black dome. I sat with them, enjoying the last of the evening's sun, when a frisky bee took interest in my reposed form. He flew close to my ears with a miscreant's zeal, trash-talking his game in an immature buzz of speech.

I ignored him for the most part as he zoomed my head in patience-wearing constancy...but then he got personal. Really, really personal. His attention turned elsewhere on the map of my body while my legs clamped together in response, and if you can't guess where his attention was newly focused then I guess you're just not thinking hard enough.

I bit my lower lip and whimpered. Debbie looked over and laughed at the bee's rapt attention. No good. I looked at Mom, my eyes darting between her and the now fiendishly cackling bee. "You must be sweet," she surmised on a grin. I blinked rapidly and smartly declared to my audience, my audience who clearly did not understand the severity of my plight, that I did NOT desire a bee sting, much less a bee sting THERE. They all giggled and and made merriment of my situation. The difficult part to accept in this story of seeming cruelty, is that I think they were all perfectly sober at the time.

"Must be that damn honey mask..." I muttered in jest, and more to myself than anyone. Laughter halted and the small voice of my aunt Debbie asked why I would apply a honey mask THERE. I looked at her like she was mad, had grown a second head, and was doing cartwheels in harlequin dress. "I wouldn't!" I cried with indignation. I could feel the blush burning across my face, even though I was joking about the honey in the first place. Seriously, though! Honey...THERE! Why, it's terribly absurd!

Then, my embarrassed haze thinned and my thoughts rang true, on course. These poor sober fools have no idea the discord of my mind, the inequity between a thought pattern and its verbal mate. "I would have applied it to to my face," I clarified. From the perplexed looks, I could tell this was strike two.

Obviously needing the dots connected, and who wouldn't, I finished, "...and I practice Yoga?"

Brenda barked her laughter to the tree tops, trying to cloak a snort, as she rocked hyper-actively in her chair. My mother made to hide a smirk of her own and forced decorum as she snickered, "Too much information." And yet, for it being stated as such, the topic did not drop all evening, and certainly not by her hand.

Oh, and for those that care, I managed to survive the evening unscathed, leastwise by bee.