Wow... Have I Been Away?

I haven't made a single psot to this bolg yet this year and it's almost half over already! So here's a short one...

The year was 1974. We were preparing to move from St Margarets to Duluth and it was our last night in New Brunswick. For the first time in my life I had someone I really didn't want to leave behind... my first beau. He was much older than I, and a "biker"! He rode a 1972 Honda CB500, and I loved it. It was a variety of different colours, starting with olive green and black, then black and gold, then blue and white. That last night we decided to take advantage of the warm evening and go for a spin on Highway 11 to Chatham (now Mirimichi). We were humming along a few miles from St Maggies when a bumblebee flew into the neck of my sweater and down into my bra where it became trapped. There it proceeded to sting my left breast. And sting it did!! The second I felt the initial pain, I hit Rick on the shoulder and he nearly dumped the bike. But we were able to liberate the bee and it flew off. It kind of spoiled the evening.

The next morning bright and early the four of us kids piled into the back seat of our Mercury Meteor sedan for the drive to Duluth via Brockville. It was crowded and hot back there. My bee sting was still very painful and I couldn't tell anybody about it because I wasn't supposed to be seeing Rick. So I suffered in hot, sweaty silence. For two days. Then it started to itch. How does one discreetly scratch the underside of one's breast when confined to the back seat of a car with an adolescent brother? I was never so glad to arrive at Grandma's in all my life!

It wasn't my first bee sting or my last, but it's the one I remember most clearly...