Sorry for the lack of bloggage, I've been pre-occupied lately. Battles with payoffice, Vodafone, Charli, as well as Grogblogging II tomorrow night (am I the only non-politico heading out to this shindig??) and Mother's Day this Sunday, I barely have enough time as it is trying to sort stuff out. BUT. I DID manage to squeeze in seven episodes of Nip/Tuck back to back the other night, so now my eyeballs feel like sandpaper. YAY! I'll also get around to replying previous post comments sometime this weekend, sorry about that. Anyways, here's a story to tide you over. Bear in mind that I am about FIFTEEN YEARS OLD in this story, which makes it all the more moronic, because I should've known better. God, I'm such a dickface.

I have a scar on the back of my right thigh, a battlescar, if you will. About the size of a AU$2 coin, it's a big reason as to why I don't do short skirts. That, and I'm not really into wearing short skirts -- they make me look stumpy like a Lego.

Many moons ago, Dad decided to build my sister A and myself a cubby house. It was hardcore, indestructable, a pink and blue monstrosity with a latticed verandah. A and I used it sporadically for whenever we had something to hide from Mum, like eating her mangoes or her apples or her little mandarins or macadamia nuts straight off the trees. Oh, and mass-murdering snails, but I've confessed to that already, so nyeh. But with the both of us girls getting on, the cubby house became derelict and covered by the citrus section of our yard. Immediately in front of the steps to the cubbyhouse was this citrus tree. I don't remember what it was exactly, but it bore fruit like mini-mini mandarins, supermega sour. Mum used to substitute everything lemon in her recipes for this fruit, and she used to go mental that the bees used to buzz around the tree. Never mind that it was right near our old play area, Mum really needed her fruit unscathed.

I found myself bored out of my brain one afternoon, and decided to venture out on my own to the cubbyhouse to check out what was in there. Stopping at the citrus tree, I watched the bees buzzing around, minding their own business, collecting pollen and plotting my death if ever I decided to invade their space. Well, hindsight has me guessing that last one, but yanno. So. Picking up a stick, I thought it would be a GRAND idea to POKE THE CRAP OUT OF THE TREE, knowing that it'd piss off the bees. I had no getaway plan, and to be honest, I didn't think it'd hurt if I got stung, because I stood on a bee once and it didn't hurt.

So there I was, poke poke poke. Poke. Poke poke poke. Jabbing away with a stupid grin on my face, I felt like God. Poke. Poke poke poke. Poke. Poke poke poke. Yeah, BourbonBird, you just found a way to waste an afternoon.

LIKE FUN I DID!

One of the bees started for me. Then another. Batting them away with one hand, they weren't getting close enough to sting me, so I thought I could get a few more jabs in. All of a sudden, ALL OF THEM started flying in my direction, where I then decide to quit poking and start panicking. Mum would've killed me if she knew I was hurting the tree, and I didn't want to die, so my McGyver senses told me to throw myself over the neighbour's fence. Yes, the same area I threw the frothy snails many years before. Sanctuary was in sight, and I was going to survive!

Hitching my leg over the cyclone fence, I could still hear the bees, so I shifted myself into double the speed. I must've been wearing something billowy (damn you, billowy clothing!), because I GOT STUCK ON THE FENCE, got stung on the back of my thigh, scratched the crap out of my arms and fell flat on my face. I got up, ran out the side-gate of my neighbour's yard, and walked right around their house to limp in casually through our front gate. Nobody spotted me, so I decided to sort this beesting out myself. Nobody would know, and life can resume to what it was before. Beestingless.

Scrounging around Mum's dressing table, I found what I had been looking for -- tweezers. I tried to get the stinger out in one go, but alas, it wasn't meant to be, the stubborn fucksting that it was. So I dug and dug and dug and bled and dug and scratched and finally got it out. Or so I thought.

Washing my hands and putting a bandaid on my thigh, I went off to hang out. Mum eventually noticed, and I told her I was stung by a bee. She was fine with it, asked how I got it out, I said I used her tweezers. She asked if I washed it with Dettol before and after, I said yes. She said if I didn't disinfect the tweezers, my leg would get gangrenous and black and it'd fall off from infection. She laughed, I laughed, and I told her that it was all fine, that I wasn't THAT stupid not to wash her tweezers, because she'd used them to pluck her brows. Like, ew.

But I lied.

I sat in my room, thinking of infection and pus and death and bees and my general painful comeuppance for being a twat. I thought of my Mum's fury that I jumped into someone else's yard, or the lecture I'd get on whatever possessed me to do something so stupid in the first place. I sat there thinking about me in a year's time, lonely and one-legged. All because I did something so dumb out of boredom. My life was over, I was convinced.

Maybe there was hope? Maybe I could wash my leg with Dettol on the sly? No, if I did that, Mum'd know I lied to her. I was so paralysed with the fear for my personal health and safety that I didn't do anything about my sting at all. I went about my day as usual, and through dinner and homework, I forgot all about it.

Waking up the next morning, I was reminded of the sting by the excruciating hellfire that was now oozing pus through my bandaid. Uh-oh. I went to the bathroom and searched frantically for some Dettol or Betadine. Nothing. Checked the First-Aid box my mother kept in the closet from her days as an at-home Daycare worker, NOTHING.

Eventually, mum clued onto the fact that I was limping, and took me to the doctor. Apparently, there was all sorts of debris in my gaping leghole, including SOME OF THE STINGER. Some more flesh had to be cut out, it had to be cleaned, I had to put cream on it, take antibiotics, and wear a bandage. Great.

Things were getting better and exam season was nearing. Sitting in school in Brisbane, it was always hot and humid. Somewhere along the way, my beesting got infected again and I had to up the cream, antibiotics and keep the dressing clean and fresh at all times. This meant that I had to sit in class on one pretty much the one arsecheek, like I had haemmorhoids that favoured my right side -- my 'best' side.

One day, at the beginning of an exam, my infection was flaring up, and it was burning like fury again. The exam lasted two periods, and halfway through, I could feel my leg weeping. I sped through the paper, then raised my hand at the risk of getting in trouble. The teacher asked what was wrong, from across the bloody room. I yelled out, 'my beesting is going to explode!' and was allowed out of the room to tend to my leg. I wasn't allowed back into the room, and I didn't care. My beesting HAD erupted from the sweat and dirty schoolchairs and the bandage getting all gammy, I was glad to head off to the doctor's again to have my leg cleaned.

Actually, for some reason, the infection was pretty aggressive and in the end, I had two fairly deep chunks of my leg taken out. Stitches weren't recommended, unless I wanted a puckery back leg, so my gaping leghole was filled with spack-like goo, which eventually healed in with the surrounding nubile and unfettered flesh.

So THAT is the story behind the scar on the back of my leg. As you all know, somewhere in all of that, Jess decided to step on my bandage after it had come loose one afternoon, so I fell flat on my face. Ha ha ha, real funny. We'll see who's laughing when she DIES.

The moral of this story is: Don't poke bees. They kinda hurt. OR. You could try THINKING THINGS THROUGH, which is something I definitely didn't do before all this hoohah.