Everything hates me.

Ellis got new sidewalk chalk for her birthday, so her and Adrian were aching last night to get outside and use it. They each had their little hands full of chalk as I opened the back door to let them onto our back porch.

This is when I screamed like a pre-pubescent gay boy, slammed the door shut, immediately ripped off my shirt and started running my hands through my hair in a painful motion, slapping at my neck and punching the air.

There was a wasp. I am afraid of wasps. I'm afraid of anything with a needle ass that wants to puncture my skin, naturally. Wasps however, are in their own ballpark of debilitating and clothes-ripping-off fear.

Take whatever it is you are afraid of, multiply times 10, and I would rather have that many of whatever you're afraid of in my mouth than be alone in an enclosed area with a wasp. I am being 100% literal when I say I would rather have 10 snakes in my mouth than have a wasp in my house. Or yard. Or life.

I'd like to go over all the times I have been stung by these little Antichrists.

1. 1990, 7 years old. Before this, I had no fear of stinging Lucifers. I didn't even notice them. We had just won a soccer game, I was doing a sandwich with my dad and drinking a Hi-C orange juice box when I felt a dainty little tickle on my finger. I glanced down just in time to see a black and yellow gangsta wasp, plundering my finger with no remorse, in a selfish attempt to get to my sugary drink I had rightfully earned with my 2 goals. I started yelping and throwing my finger around, dropped my prized liquid, and sat down on the ground and cried. I was crying for my future. From now on, it would be completely tarnished by a condemnation of fear of this new-found enemy.

2. 1995, 12 years old. I was hard at work at middle school softball practice, in which I rocked the B team like you wouldn't believe. My coach asked me to carry a cooler full of water down to the dugout in hopes that the heavy lifting might improve my pitching muscles.

I carried it across the football field and had to stop and use my inhaler a few times. By the time I finally reached the inside of the dugout, my arms were so tired that I had to use the last tiny bit of strength in my limbs to lift it onto the bench and slam it down. I leaned over to catch my breath when I noticed a Saddam Hussein cloud of black wasps. I noticed them because I had just set a 530 pound cooler on top of their home and they were going to take it out on my sweaty face. I took off running, unfortunately not fast enough which is probably why I was not on the "A" team. I could feel them in my shirt and and in my ears. The first one bore into my back and brought my to my knees. I treated it like an elementary fire drill and stopped, dropped, and rolled. There was one stuck in my sock that got me 2 or 3 times as I kept stop, drop, and rolling over him. One took a stab at my neck and another on the upper arm. I was wailing like a maimed hyena in labor. By the time it was over, I accepted defeat. I bowed in respect as I passed the wasp nest on my way to the nurse's office.

3. 1999, 16 years old. My parents spoiled me rotten and provided me with a 1985 Toyota Camry with 200k miles. My dad paid $550 for this boyfriend-magnet, and it showed with its many fails. The air-conditioner went out every other weekend. You could start the car without a key using any object including your finger or a strong directed breath. Because my air-conditioner was broken, I had to leave the windows down. My friends would move my car without telling me. Oh how funny they were as they drove off in their BMW's and Celicas! One day, it got moved out by the baseball fields and after trekking across the parking lot and covered in sweaty misfortune I plopped down in my seat and took off driving, hoping the wind in my open windows would dry off the sweat so that I could get a man.

As I'm driving with my windows down, I feel a tickle on the back of my neck. "Don't freak out Mar Bear...", I tell myself. I was attempting to not let my fear of vespines consume my existence. Then I felt wings flapping in my short hair and a subtle buzz against the seat belt. I was at a stoplight and jumped out of my car with it still in drive, and took off sprinting down the median, bending over and slapping my face and neck. I had barely gotten out of the car when the wasp laughed at me and put his devil needle in my neck. A nice man stopped to comfort me, get Candita the Camry from out of the middle of the intersection, and make sure the Prince of Darkness was no longer in my car. He asked if I wanted to go to the nearby Denny's so I could put a tea bag on the sting. I didn't really think this was a proper time for him to be trying to get some of this, so I drove off.

4. 2000, 17 years old. I had sprained my ankle doing something awesome like singing or tap-dancing and was on crutches for a few weeks. I was leaving school and walking out to my I'll-never-get-laid-mobile when I was suddenly accosted by a giant, angry, republican hornet. I had on my backpack and was carrying my purse and my guitar case. I was also carrying an illogical and impossible phobia, 10 years in the making. This phobia caused me to once again attempt what I like to call the "Swat and sprint". Swat and sprint is hard when you're broken and walking-device-infused. I fell onto a curb and was pierced in the very arm that I was using as my swat tool. I think I actually stung myself. When it landed on me I slammed my other hand into its stupid body, which caused the stinger to go into my skin. Then I flung it onto the curb and watched it die while I tried to find hydrocodone in my purse.

5. 2010, 27 years old. There is absolutely nothing interesting or funny about this incident. I was simply coming out of McDonald's about to eat my feelings and got stung on the knuckle. I just kind of sat there in shock that I wasn't even allotted the attempt to do a swat and sprint. Wasps use trickery and stealth to ruin your world.

While these are in chronological order, I would like to finish with the tale of 1991 because it contains a strong moral of the story.

I had been stung the previous year at my soccer game and my fear of this creatures was thriving strong. I was playing by myself in the backyard one day, unsupervised, when I noticed a nest of assholes in the corner of the fence. Then I noticed a few were flying around me and I took off sprinting and swatting. I was about to run inside when I noticed one of the wasps that was pursuing me had gotten stuck in a huge spider web. I slowly turned about and picked up the rusty sharp knife that was lying on the back porch of our 3-children home. I held it in front of me, and shaking, went to watch the spider kill the wasp up close. I got up the spider web and saw the wasp writing and shaking and twisting, trying to free itself. I began to feel sorry for my enemy. He obviously wasn't such a bad little guy. Maybe he was trying to get free so he could go get a snow cone. I know how that felt, I wanted my mom to wake up and take me to get a damn snow cone.  I took the knife and poked around my new friend, muttering words of truce and peace. I finally freed him and as he tugged away from the sticky string,  he ripped up the white flag and pincushioned my wrist.

Why. WHYYYYYYYYYY?