The other day, as my youngest and I were sitting the car at a stop light, a bee landed on my arm. My left elbow was resting on the door, and the bee landed right on it, then started walking around.

“Daddy, daddy,” the little guy shouted. “There’s a bee on your arm!”

“Yep,” I said. “Kinda tickles.”

“But he’s going to bite you!”

“Nah.” I watched the bee walk along my forearm. He was one of those giant bumblebees that look too big to fly. “Bees aren’t interested in me. They just like flowers. They take the pollen back to their hive.”

“But what if he did bite you? And took the blood back to all the other bees.”

“What? You’re silly.” 

“Yeah,” my son laughed. “Then he would tell all the other bees that it came from a big flower.”

“I am not a flower.”

“A big hairy flower,” he shouted. Then he started pretending he was a bee, telling all the other bees how he’d gotten the sticky red pollen from the big hairy flower. How they should all go check it out.

Big Hairy Flower? Sheesh.

The stop light turned green and I hit the gas. The bee was carried away in the wind.