“Don’t try to squeeze the bee stinger to get it out; it will only push out more of the venom.”
Huh… how did I get through all these years of life (including many bee stings) without knowing this? It turns out that while I was living in ignorance, an entire debate was being held about whether how you remove a bee stinger really matters. And guess what? It turns out it doesn’t. Searching through numerous online treatises on this subject I found all of the recent ones in agreement: The important thing is not how you remove the bee stinger… but how quickly. The faster the better… no matter what the means. One author points out: The moral of the story is to do what animals do: Get the stinger out! When animals get stung, they don't reach into their wallets for their library card to scrape out the stinger. They bite it off or rub up against a tree or scratch with their paws. Animals instinctively know that if it hurts it needs to go, the sooner the better. (Source: Article by Rod Brouhard, About.com; http://firstaid.about.com/od/bitesstings/f/Remove-Bee-Stinger.htm) It makes me wonder what other lessons we might learn from different animals… - Hibernate in the winter - Use camouflage wisely - Taste something before shoving it in your mouth - Roll in the mud to keep bugs from biting - Huddle together to stay warm - Let other animals help you get clean - Lay around looking tough while the female lions do all the work Okay, so it clearly doesn’t work for every situation, but it does provide some useful insight. It feels to me like sometimes, in our desire to humanize our world, we lose track of the beauty of nature. So much has been figured out for us. But I believe that with less time spent outdoors, away from nature, comes less of an ability to understand those instinctive lessons. Perhaps this is why the Native American lifestyle is so intriguing to young children. A world where animal spirits help guide decisions makes sense to them in a way it can’t for adults who now need planners, iphones, autos and blenders to survive. As you might be able to guess, I never made it beyond Brownies as a Girl Scout. Perhaps I would have learned some of these lessons had I remained in the organization… but only if I went outdoors. Because while outside a bear was rubbing up against a tree…inside the leader was apparently teaching them the proper way to remove a bee stinger.
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“Someday you’re going to thank me; because if you go out with girl and eat like that in front of her she’ll never go out with you again.”
I was trying hard not to laugh as I quickly opened my log of overheard comments. I imagined the child’s response: Gee, thanks for the advice mom….I’m only 5, but I’ll take it under consideration. To be fair, I’m not really one to point a finger for a mom saying something silly. I know my husband and I do it all the time with our daughter. One of my favorites is when we ask her a question with an answer we already know…. Like, do you want a straw in your drink? I can just hear her reply now, though she never says it out loud; Duh! Do I ever not want a straw in my drink? The cliché terms of parenthood fall from our lips as if we hadn’t heard them a million times already from our own parents: if your friends jumped off a bridge would you? Your eyes will get stuck that way. Someday you’ll thank me. One of my favorites was something my grandmother used to tell me… you wouldn’t want the ambulance drivers to see you in dirty underwear if you got in an accident, would you? Which kid is really going to care about that…. Or, to be honest, any of those things? And maybe that is the reason we say them. It is not so much the specific behavior we are trying to change, but more the idea that there is so much more to being a person than the ability to squeeze our mouth full of pound cake. As adults, though, perhaps we should reconsider this. Let’s imagine that this young lady on some future date refuses to go out with a boy who acts silly by stuffing his mouth full of food. Hmmmm, do we really want our son dating her? Or…. How many times in our life have we followed friends on some outrageous activity and pushed ourselves beyond our comfort zone by doing so? And, while I don’t wear dirty underwear anymore (I think I stopped grabbing the nearest pair off the floor when I was about four, just to be clear); I will occasionally re-wear a pair of sweats or a dirty shirt. I consider it my own little way to conserve energy. The point is… our children may, or may not, thank us for this handy advice we dole out so easily. True, I would hate to think of my daughter getting a mouthful of cavities from eating too much candy. But I hope she is learning to not do that by watching how I eat, rather than by my telling her: your teeth will fall out if you eat that all the time. One last thing… no more screen time for you today; after all, I didn’t just fall off the pumpkin wagon. |
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June 2020
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