Bunk beds are not as awesome when you're a grown-up

When you're five, bunk beds are awesome. They pretty much guarantee you a spot at the cool-kid table. And they're a status symbol - especially if you're on the top bunk. Even at ten, at fourteen a bunk-bed is the coolest bed (short of a hammock or living with wolves) you could ever hope for.

At 23, not so much.

 For one thing, the bunk bed that's been around since you were a kid has gotten creaky. So when you come home at 2am after a night out it's impossible to quietly drift off - you wake up the other person in the bunk bed: your 21-year-old sister, who happens to have the bottom bunk.

And it's not ideal to bring friends home... or a man friend...

 ("Want to come back to my place? I have a really sweet bunk bed...")

 And sometimes you have to deal with ladder malfunctions. (coming up next)

So I live in a bunk bed. I could move out. I could get a normal grown-up person apartment... but........

Bees are jerks

I'm laying awake now reflecting on my three swollen, stinging welts and the conclusion is this: bees are jerks.

They make hives in weird places and get freaked out at the slightest deviation in their routine. In some ways they're even worse than rattle snakes: rattlers don't strike unless bothered, and at least it's all over soon after that. But bees are the aggressive kamikazes of the insect world and they'll get macho right up in your grill if you're within smelling distance, much less stinging distance.

I was out in the backyard watering the plants when I tugged the hose around a corner to the side of the house and it strained around a wooden railroad tie-style barrier. That happened to be the home of some seriously jerky bees.

As I was watering ten feet away I felt a stabbing pain in my left hand, on my thigh; two yellow jackets attached themselves there.

As I screamed and waggled away in my floral capris, dress short, and blazer, I realized I was being stung.

Worse, bees were stuck flying around between my shirt and blazer so I scrambled into the house tearing off my clothes.

And as my dad told me to run cold water over my hand... I felt something in my hair.

There were bees in my hair.

Those jerks were in my hair!

I tore not one, not two, but three yellow jackets out of my scalp before my dad administered the Wild West bee sting cure-all: baking soda paste, and liquor.

So now, after icing my wounds, applying baking soda, and drinking carefully prescribed glasses of Rioja, I'm sitting up in bed just thinking about how I will take my revenge.

Because bees are huge jerks. Are they as bad as mosquitoes? No, but they're still jerks.