What’s the Buzz? Tell Me What’s Happening

There were bees at lunch.

They were yellow jackets or, as my lunch partner called them, asshole bees.

One landed on the lemon hooked on my glass of iced tea. My friend told me to put the lemon on the other side of the table so I did, but the asshole bee kept buzzing around my drink. And then my salad. One landed and walked across a hefty slice of avocado toward the roasted pecans.

My friend told me not to swat at the asshole bees because then they get angry and attack, something he knew from experience, a frightful experience. Suffice to say, he now keeps an epi-pen in his car. Despite this, my friend didn’t want to go inside and I knew why. We were sitting under the world’s bluest sky.

Nearby, a man was painting picnic tables a remarkable vivid blue. Three little kids sat cross-legged next to him to watch. He rolled his blue paint-dipped roller across the drab weathered wood of the old picnic tables and I envied him. The magic of paint – making old things alive again.

My friend, who has been at war for months with a ferocious cancer, rolled a joint while we waited for our lunches. He told me he would beat the cancer and gave me the rundown on his latest health stats. “I have no doubt I’ll beat this.” And the way he said it, the brightness in his eyes, and the grin that teased at the corners of his mouth convinced me. He would will himself well.

The sky and the tables would be blue – the best blue. I could see it in my mind’s eye, despite the bees or because of them.

__________________

Photo by The Matter of Food on Unsplash