The irony wasn’t lost on me.
Precisely the same day that I shared my most recent Adventure, the one where I helped Dad take down that wasp nest with a DIY blowtorch, a wasp came by to let me know what he thought of it.
He, uh, didn’t like it.
While going for a rebound playing basketball outside, I suddenly felt this immense pain on my left ring finger. Like someone had taken a hot needle and slammed it into where the finger connects to the hand.
I stopped in my tracks as the ball bounced away from me and looked down at where the pain was screaming for my attention from. And there it was, this little triangle shaped grenade that exploded and shot venom down underneath my skin. It had a white, stringy little piece of, I guess, a mucus membrane or something, hanging from where it had been attached to the wasp who’d decided he didn’t much care for what I’d written about.
In all my years of writing, I’ve never once been injured for any of my publications. Sure, I’ve been yelled at and threatened with lawyers (and who hasn’t, really) but I’ve never had someone take a swing at me before.
And it kinda feels like that’s what this was.
That pain stuck with me throughout the day, for like eight hours. Its pulsing sensation of discomfort was a frequent reminder that kept me thanking all of my lucky stars that I wasn’t allergic to this. I was surprised at how long its searing discomfort stuck with me though. It was exquisitely unpleasant.
But thankfully, it’s been years since someone’s disliked my writings enough to let me know about it, especially creative endeavors. Who gets mad over me writing about a memory or a dragon or whatever? But working in a newsroom, people called all the time to make sure I knew that they didn’t care much for this particular story and that I should instead have written about this other story. It was usually about them or their family. They were biased or anything though.
My favorite phone call to answer was when people would do me a big favor and let me know there was a typo in the newspaper. Sure, the other 30,000 words or however many were in there that day were correct, but one of them was wrong and it was important that I be made aware of that.
Oh well.
One time, someone came to the office in Indiana and demanded to speak with me. I recognized her right away; she was the woman who had pleaded guilty earlier that week to a lesser drug charge in order to avoid prison time. In exchange, she’d give her testimony to take down another suspect in the same case. She asked me, well more like she yelled a question in my direction once I made it up front to speak with her, just what gave me the right to publish things like that in the newspaper?!
-Uh, the first amendment?
And that was that. Really, it was about the only answer I had for her. And I guess it worked. She stood there, stunned and at a loss for what to say next. I don’t know what she was thinking she was doing, or what she hoped to accomplish by coming around, but I thought I’d done my part by answering her question as truthfully as I possibly could have. I mean, I guess she could have always asked the editor, but I have a feeling he’d have answered the same.
Only one time has a lawyer actually ever come by to visit me after their client told me they’d be contacting them.
He was on my side in the matter, though. However, it turned out I had made a mistake worthy of correction. In that case, some person was upset that I’d published her story of criminal wrongdoing. She demanded a retraction, but there was no way I was going to do that, much less did it require one.
However, as it turns out, I’d gotten it wrong. The lawyer, cool guy, by the way, said she’d actually pleaded no contest and I’d printed that she pleaded guilty. Those are essentially the same exact thing, except one admits guilt, obviously. She, with her plea, decided to neither admit nor deny guilt and chose to simply not fight the accusation. Either one leads to the same outcome.
His client though was very unhappy that she was in the newspaper to begin with. But what he couldn’t understand was her insistence at the matter - a correction would only put her in the paper again. But, if that’s what she wanted, was I able to do that?
Of course!
But let me be clear, it wasn’t spite. Even though she had tried to add me as a friend on Facebook (and seeing her name in my requests threw me for the biggest loop and was the fastest I’d ever denied one), I felt obligated to print that correction. I was factually wrong and the newspaper is the public record. It needs to be correct, and if it isn’t, it needs to be corrected.
But diplomacy is not a wasp’s strong suit. They don’t work through lawyers. The legal system has no bearing over them. They don’t pollinate anything. They are nature’s destroyers - a hateful dagger that will slam into you for any reason.
And apparently they can read.