The Day of the Yellow Jackets

A pathway to innocence

 As I close in on yet another decade of my life…a decade that has already left me behind. I search not for the latest gadget or a piece of hardware which will make my waning years more bearable…an additional piece of technology that will undoubtedly aid a young person’s journey to a place I’ve already been.

Instead, my mind returns to a path through a gate to an old farm house that was home for an innocent four-year old boy back in 1949 and the soothing sound of a dog named Jack, playfully chasing me over an acre of land…an acre which seemingly had no end.

Instead, it was my entrance to a new world — a world without a smart phone or an Internet system capable of taking me a million miles away in an instant with a push of a thumb.

How did I survive in 1949? How did my grandparents survive? How did they put dinner on the table? How did they order pizza and have it delivered? Of course, they didn’t. The pizza, I mean.

The food came from the garden. The tomatoes were fresh. Of course, there was something called Okra…something that everyone seemed to love to digest…even Jack! But not me.

It was a learning experience from the dinner table, to the grassland outside my bedroom window, to the dirt road that led to the railroad track, to the pond where the crappie lived.

That summer I learned a valuable lesson: Stay clear of yellow jackets.

Jack and I would play with a little red ball. I’m sure I hit every window of the old farm house at one time or another with that bouncing ball…and we would chase the elusive oval…everywhere. One time: into the bushes, near the front porch.

Quick on my feet, back then, I recovered the ball in just seconds only to emerge with two yellow jackets attached to my lips. I didn’t need a dictionary to tell me what I had latched onto.

Nowadays, just google it and you’d find: A wasp. A member of the Vespidae family, a group of insects that have folded wings and pronotums and look like a triangle when you witness the insects from a lateral point of view.

From my point of view at the time: It hurt when stung, as I circled the farm house a hundred times. My grandparents assumed I was playing Cowboys and Indians as I padded my overgrown lips, over and over again.

And indoors I remember…the cold mornings and Grandma’s quilt up to my nose…the handwoven quilt that kept me warm, until the sun came up…and time for me to get up again and explore…and learn…and be free.

No CNN…no ESPN…maybe a newspaper on the porch once a week, its arrival signaled by Jack himself, as we both watched a cloud of dust disappear — an old pickup truck chugging back down the road and back to town.

Of course, I couldn’t read then. But time would go by fast enough. I would learn to read, and write and eventually loose my age of innocence and fast forward to now: to the year 2022.

Robots are coming…coming to make everyone’s life easier. Technology is through the roof and beyond.

A robot may be programed to do a lot of things. But one thing the robot will never do: Live life and be able to recall: The Day of the Yellow Jackets.