Bumblebees

Me and Woody.  That’s what I called us.  We were six and five in 1966, living on 52nd and Kedzie, on the south side of Chicago.  Woody carried a little red metal tool box that year, everywhere he went.  The handle flipped this way and that but fit perfectly into his little hand.  Summertime and big, yellow fuzzy bees were bumbling on dandelion tops. 

It was my job to stomp on them and his job to collect them and place them in the trays of his tool box.  We went walking around the block, back when kids could walk around the block, stomping and collecting bumblebees.  I would “kill” them and he would pick them up and put them in the toolbox.  Our collection.

The streetlights came on; our cue to go home.  Woody put our treasures under the bunk bed in our room.  I had the top; he the bottom.  He used to put his feet up and kick the wooden slats to send me a message.  I used to throw my dolls and toys down, wallside, sneak attack, to hit him back.  We giggled.  Innocence.

Mother heard a dull buzzing sound coming from our room.  It kept getting louder.   Upon further inspection, she detected it was coming from under the bed.  That morning we had gone to school so she took it upon herself to investigate.  The sounds were coming from inside Woody’s little red toolbox.

I would have like to have been a fly on the wall when Mother opened the box and hundreds of previously stunned bees came to life.