My skin sizzled on the burning summer pavement. Outside I sat, accompanied by my neighbor in the torridity of summer. There was a slight, brisk wind, the smell of perennials passing by my 5 year old nose. Boredom was setting in until it was pushed out with the urge to climb a nearby tree. As I approached the tree, the grass surrounding it tickled my ankles like little fingers and the branches above danced in the wind. The tree bark was dark brown and looked polished. It was slippery at first touch. The pure sweat on my palms quickly changed that.
From there it was one foot after another, my hands clinging to two branches above me. I could hear the scuffle of the leaves above. Heaving myself up, I continued to go higher and higher. I was soon met by a small buzz.

Then another.

Then another. As the buzzes became louder, they became constant. It wasn’t long before I was greeted with a swarm of bees who erupted from frow what looked like a worn out soccer ball but with closer inspection was really a beehive. I released a wide arsenal of screams including a new one I’d never imagined could’ve come out of my mouth. A collage of stings were pasted onto my back, my legs, and my arms.  Slipping back off the polished bark, I fell out of the tree and landed with a thud on the grass several feet below. My body performed a piece by Beethoven, each part of my lean frame playing an instrument of pain. Aching came about, deeper beneath my flesh than I ever thought any aching could go. Being 5, never having experiencing that caliber of pain, my soft, fragile eyes burst with tears as I rolled back onto the sizzling black top. Soaked in boiling tears, I ran inside to get some help. My dad sat me on a chair and came back with three things: bandaids, ibuprofen, and a spray can of some sort. What was in the can was a mystery and remained a mystery. All I concluded was that the next day, as I walked by that tree time and time again, I never heard that buzz again.