ca. 1980
Running across the lawn barefoot, I was stung by a honeybee on the bottom of my right foot.

ca. 1982
On a school field trip on the Natchez Trace, a group of us disturbed a yellowjacket nest. Several of us were stung multiple times. I was stung twice on the belly and I swelled up horribly, sparking fears that I might be allergic.

ca. 1985
While laying on the floor watching television at my father’s house, I reached blindly over to grab the remote control (one of those remotes with only two buttons: power and channel up) and was stung by a wasp.

ca. 1987-88
A beige 1976 Grand Prix that was a hand-me-down from my mother. We put a tape deck in it (these were the days when you could do this yourself) and I drove it until the transmission fell out of it somewhere in Verona, MS. Putting a new one in it would’ve cost more than the car itself was worth, and so it went away.

ca. 1988
A red 1980 Ford Courier pickup truck purchased for $500. Well, mostly red. Parts of the body had been painted with a brush, and you could still see the brushmarks in the paint. The underside of the hood was yellow, which seemed to have been the original color of the truck. The engine—only slightly larger than a lawnmower engine—was blue. The truck had some kind of fuel-related problem that we only discovered when we idled it down. It seems that the previous owners had increased the idle speed to mask the problem. When it got hot, it would lose power, surge, and eventually sputter and die. We replaced fuel filters. We fiddled with the carburetor. We could never figure it out, and, to be honest, the truck really wasn’t worth spending money on to figure it out.

ca. 1989
An $800 1977 Toyota Corolla. Add in a cheap paint job (blue with metallic fleck) and some new tires, and it was a $1000 Corolla. One of my cousins donated a nice Pioneer tape deck (that I’m pretty sure was stolen). This car was awesome. It had an after-market air conditioner unit that, I swear to God, looked like someone had simply bolted some kind of window unit underneath the glovebox. You’d turn on the A/C and the whole car would shake and rattle like it was about to fall apart. It wouldn’t do more than 30 miles an hour with the air on. I should also point out that the stick shift had a black metal ball on the end. A black metal ball. In Mississippi. This is the car that is responsible for me wearing hats. I’d wear the hat all day and then put it on the stick so I wouldn’t burn my hand on the stick-shift in the summers. I drove this car until I went to college. I did not have a car for the first semester (perhaps the first year?) I was in school.

ca 1991-97
My stepmother’s (when new), then father’s (when she replaced it) silver 1984 Honda Prelude. The finest vehicle I had ever driven. 5-speed. Moon-roof. CD player (the one that eventually got Journey’s Greatest Hits stuck in it). Fast. As is the case with most well-made foreign cars, the interior began to fall apart long before the engine even began to think about going bad.

ca. 1996
Shelley had only been to New Orleans once, and had only done the touristy stuff, and so I took her one October. We stayed on Canal street and took the hotel shuttle in to the French Quarter every day, where we hit so many bookshops that we had to buy two new bags to get all the books home. While I was browsing the stacks in some chain bookstore (perhaps a Barnes & Noble?), I felt a tickling on the back of my neck. I scratched it, running my hand in between the bill of my backwards baseball-cap and my neck, and immediately felt a bee-sting. When I pulled my hand away, I found a honey-bee. In a bookstore. In New Orleans. In October. Stung by a bee.

ca. 1997
My mother, feeling increasing guilt over my step-brother having had newer cars than I had (and wrecking them all), somehow made a deal wherein a close relative’s 1992 Toyota Corolla was purchased. My step-father met me halfway between Stillwater, OK and Tupelo, MS, in Russelville, AR, where we exchanged vehicles. It had air conditioning that actually worked, unlike the Prelude. It was also pink, although my friend Sara claims that the color is called “champagne.”

July, 2000
Standing on the bank of the Rhine in Linz, Germany, just down from where a German Shepherd was playing in a fountain, a yellowjacket took interest in our friend Birgit. More specifically, it took interest in the green cloth on her backpack. Like any reasonable person, Birgit completely freaked out and began swatting at the thing and running around, while Greg yelled at her to be still, that it was only interested in the green on her backpack. This must have been a sensible, German bee, for it quickly noticed that I was wearing a green shirt and moved over to me, and I, like any reasonable person, completely freaked out and began swatting at the thing and running around. It stung me on my right forearm.

July, 2004
After driving the Corolla from Oklahoma to Utah, I become increasingly convinced of two things: 1) the Toyota is underpowered for people who live on a mountain, and 2) I need a truck. I purchase a 1998 Toyota Tacoma from a former student.

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