The bee, the braid and the banana

I grew up in sunny southern California and everyday at school, we would head outside and eat our lunches at pinic tables, surrounded by our friends. I didn't realize what a luxury this was until I moved to the midwest to raise my family. Outside eating is pretty much unheard of in the midwest. Anyway, one day, when I was in the 5th grade, my friends and I were talking, laughing and chewing when all of a sudden, Doris, one of my friends, jumped up and started to flail around like she was on fire.

Doris was a cute little thing with long blonde hair that her mother braided into two pigtails each day, and on this day, that would prove to be a problem.

"Get it out!" she screamed. "Get it out!"

The "it", as it turns out, was a large bumble bee that had flown into the curly little neck hairs at the bottom of the part in her hair and had gotten himself hopelessly entangled. For every panicky, gyrating move she made, the bee matched it with buzzing and twisting and, well basically, bee flailing.

It took us a few seconds to figure out exactly what the problem was, and a few more seconds to look at each other and scream "DO SOMETHING!!". Finally, in the inestimable wisdom of a ten year old, another friend , Lisa, grabs her half eaten banana and shoves it smack into the bee and the neck hairs, thus forever silencing the buzzing and flailing and saving the day.

"Okay. It's okay Doris. It's dead" she announces, trying to calm her down while we all gather around to help. There is a fair amount of back patting and soothing words and then, the inevitable. Someone gets a closer look and says....."EW!".

"What?" Doris asks.

"Ew! Gross!".

Now, "ew gross" may be a fun filled, move over let me see, phrase to a pack of little boys, but to 5 fussy little girls it could only mean things were about to get worse. Doris reached up to feel the banana/bee part in her hair and the minute her fingers encountered the goo that was a mixture of banana slime and dead bee guts, she broke into tears.

"Get it out!" she sobbed. "Get it out!".

A teacher finally heard the comotion and came over and took Doris to the nurses office to begin the clean up and bring life back to normal.

Okay....So here is what I learned from this....

As much as we try to prepare for what might lie ahead, whether for our family, our health or starting a business, there are going to be things that just happen out of nowhere that will have to be dealt with. Truth be told, you just never know when a bee will fly into your braid. So just stay calm, grab the nearest half eaten banana (so to speak) and go for it. Even if the problem solving gets a little messy and you have to clean up some slime and bee guts, you will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that you were able to respond to the unexpected and deal with it.