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When I was in third grade, I lived in the ghetto. The part of town you can drive through during the daytime, only if you look straight ahead and don't drive too slow. I went to a ghetto school and played ghetto games with my ghetto friends. Section 8 paid for the tiny bedroom I shared with my sister. Welfare provided the big block of government cheese and the massive tin of peanut butter every month. My dad had a pit bull named Buddy, and a trailer in the back yard where the people he sold drugs to stayed on occasion. His work truck stayed parked out front on the cinderblocks for tires while he was "away", read: in prison. My mom entertained "friends" in her bedroom with the door locked and if my little sister needed her diaper changed, most likely it was me changing it. This isn't my story though.

My story is about the bees in the mattress. We had a mattress and box springs in the back yard. It leaned against the side of the garage. I was playing with my (stolen) collection of My Little Ponies in the back yard and one of my dad's (or mom's?) clients was playing Frisbee with Buddy. Buddy jumped onto the mattress and started tearing it up. I heard this odd buzzing from inside of the mattress, and being the precocious little girl I was, I ran over to the mattress and looked inside, just in time to get a face full of bees as they swarmed out of the mattress. I wasn't immediately stung, as the bees were just as confused as I was, but some did get in my mouth and when I fell on my ass in shock, biting my tongue in the process, I got stung by the 3 or 4 that I hadn't swallowed.

That started me screaming, but I was too scared to run away, which was probably a good thing. I felt someone pick me up and the next thing I knew I was naked in the bathtub with cold water spraying down onto me. Turns out drug addicts aren't completely useless.

The current resident of the druggie trailer had picked me up and rushed me inside. He even picked out every bee that was tangled in my hair while I was sobbing in the shower.

By the time my mom got home, I was lounging on the couch, sucking on my 15th Otter Pop. The random druggie had driven down to the store and bought a couple boxes for me. I sucked on ice cubes until they started getting slushy in the freezer.

Well...time to go...