It’s hard to say if this is my earliest memory. I have flashes of memories with no way to verify how old I was, and others where I’m uncertain if it’s a memory or just something I’ve generated from a picture I’ve seen and the story that was told to me.

I have two younger sisters, so I can roughly base my age in an early memory on whether one or both are present. In this particular memory, my youngest sister was not there, so I must have been less than 5 years old.

It was a beautiful, sunny spring day and I was with my mom, middle sister, and grandpa walking in a neighbourhood. Actually, I wasn’t walking, I was skipping along, smelling the tulips in each of the gardens we passed. I remember a general feeling of happiness. The tulips were bright and beautiful and just at the early stages of blossoming, still pretty tightly closed.

I bent toward a red one to really inhale the scent and I was hit with a vibrating shock. I had snorted up a bee into my left nostril.

I imagine the bee wasn’t pleased with its new reality, going from a sweetly smelling tulip to a tiny, dark and wet orifice. So it tried to fly out, and when it couldn’t, it began to sting me.

The feeling was a burning tickling vibration as it stung and buzzed in my little nose. I remember trying to run from it (which was obviously futile), and my mom chased me with what I can only assume was a used Kleenex she’d dug out of her purse, yelling, “Blow! Blow!”

I can remember my grandpa in hysterics watching this event unfold, and finally my mother caught up to me. With one good blow, I ended the bee’s life, and both of our suffering.

Anyway, I always checked flowers before smelling them after that.

Written for Bloganuary prompt 3: What is the earliest memory you have?