I’m an average citizen, like you. I could be your neighbor, your co-worker, a member of your extended family. I’m also one of the many, many people who recently voted to release millions of furious hornets into the air all around us. And I can already say I regret that decision.
Initially, I didn’t really want to choose between unleashing endless legions of angry stinging hornets and not unleashing them. Frankly, I wasn’t particularly excited about either option. But not releasing the hornets just felt like asking for more of the same, you know? I wasn’t voting for releasing the hornets per se, so much as I was voting for the change that releasing the hornets represented.
But their indiscriminate swarming and stinging – which I had believed to simply be an animal kingdom illusion, like that little bird on Planet Earth that makes itself look huge – has now carried over into their actions. Actions that seem to consist solely of swarming and stinging. And that is NOT what I signed up for.
I’m not going to act like the idea of the stinging didn’t become part of the appeal, mind you. There are definitely people out there who have gotten too comfortable – and people who think they’re better than me – and I couldn’t wait to see the looks on their faces when we let those hornets out, and the hornets were stinging them. Many people (particularly those with allergies who would be the most immediately affected) tried to tell me it was a stupid idea. It only made me want to stick it to them more.
And I know in the days following the vote I was a pretty sore winner, I know I tweeted and facebooked a lot of you like “they’re out now, deal with it” and “ha ha cry some more, now there are hornets.” I know I started an online business selling coffee mugs that said “The Hornets Will Sting You”.
But now that the hornets have pretty much blackened the entire sky – and are surrounding MY house as well, for reasons that are beyond me – I’m wondering if I really acted in my own best interests after all, re: the hornets.
In the days and years ahead, we’ll ALL face challenges in this new, hornet-occupied world. And I’m sure the time will come to examine the cultural climate that led to the release of millions of hornets even being on the table as a thing we could vote for, in retrospect it should not have been. But the important thing, now that they’re all over the place, is for all of us to unite and understand each other.
And please, while you’re running from all of the damn hornets, and they’re stinging your body and face, spare a thought for me and the part I played in letting them out. Because I feel bad. And I think in some ways, that’s worse.
