It was a warm day, an especially nice rarity in Missouri in November, so we'd taken our lunch salads out to the picnic table. Scott had suggested we play either Sequence, Qwixx, or Splendor while we ate, and I chose Sequence -- hard for family members to believe, I know; my reasons being that we play Qwixx a lot, and judging from the wild swinging of the gourd birdhouse on the smokehouse and the branches and leaves on the backyard trees, it appeared to be quite windy out, in which case it would be challenging to keep all the Splendor cards, which are laid out in a 4 x 3 grid, from blowing away. With Sequence we'd only have to weight the draw pile and possibly a discard pile or two.
I mentioned the wind issue to Scott, but he looked out the window, walked out back, came back in, and said, "It's not very windy."
We played. We ate. And we battled a very persistent yellow jacket. Thankfully, there were no ants and there were no flies at our picnic, but this guy was nothing if not absolutely determined. Technically, he may have been of some other species of "social wasp," but I just call all those small, rather skinny, black-and-yellow-striped, winged insects "yellow jackets." Throughout our meal, we had to keep shooing him away from both my apple slices -- I offered him the core, but he clearly preferred my slices -- and our two salads. It finally got to the point that I had to keep waving my hand over my salad after each bite. Rude yellow jacket!
[Note: It was warm outside, but so windy that I had to pull up the hood of my hoodie to keep my ears warm. Having learned a few wifely things over the years, I said nothing, but when Scott topped the discard pile with his cell phone and re-arranged our discards under the edge of the board, he said, with a grin, "It sure is windy out here!"]
Our game was closely fought. Scott eventually constructed one sequence, and that forced me to play defensively. Against my husband as well as my stripey enemy. In a chivalrous attempt to distract the latter, Scott plated my apple core and set it off to the side. This did attract YJ's nephew, but his uncle remained firmly committed to sharing my salad. I felt angry, and I was soon to feel much more.
First, Scott made a second sequence. Rackum-frackum! We won't dwell on the fact that at that point I was only playing with five cards instead of the full complement of seven. That, although he had sing-sung our classic "Help the team..." reminder one time earlier. And after that I was very careful to draw a card every time. Who knows what happened?
Second, I took a bite of my salad, and I'm not exactly sure what happened, but suddenly something hurt. A lot. In my mouth! Actually between my teeth! Specifically, between my upper left molar and the tooth next to it. (At the dentist's office, my teeth are labeled numerically, but in some system that make no sense to me, probably because back in the day I had four permanent teeth pulled in order to have braces, and I later had my wisdom teeth extracted. To me, the first tooth in the back would be #1, but in my case it's some other number.)
Anyway, there was a deep and searing pain back there. It really hurt, and I while I had no idea how to relieve it, I did have a pretty good idea of who was responsible for it: pesky Uncle YJ! I rubbed my cheek and moaned and said things like "Wow!" and "Sweet Georgia peaches!" and "Good night alive, that does hurt!" and none of those declarations had the least effect on the deep, throbbing ache in my gum.
All I can figure is that somehow I'd unknowingly grabbed YJ in a forkful of salad, and he'd reacted in typical yellow jacket fashion. At this point, my questions were,
"How on earth long is this pain going to last?"
"Did he leave his stinger in my flesh?" and if so,
"Where the heck is the rest of him now?!?"
The thought that I may have swallowed a yellow jacket - or some part thereof - was unsettling, but having parented four former toddlers who swallowed various items of interest, let's just say that I was confident that everything would come out all right in the end.
I did take some Tylenol, and due either to that med's analgesic effect and/or the simple passage of time, the pain did subside, and I was no worse for the wear. I was even able to floss the crime scene painlessly at bedtime.
However, all things considered, the next time Scott wants to play cards in a hurricane, I think I will decline.
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