There are some places where a bad mood doesn’t fit.  Like last weekend’s Firefly Fling at the Botanical Garden where little girls show up wearing faerie wings and grownup girls walk around fully clothed in faerie costumes. Troy was asked to sing this year, and though we weren’t exactly sure this was our kind of thing Huck and I decided to come along.  To be safe, we packed many books, a few decks of cards, snacks, water, a picnic blanket and 3 camping chairs.  Upon arrival to this very pink affair, a bee stung one of my toes and sent my flip flop flying as I hopped around screaming. Troy was unable to help much, what with his singing gig in the Fairy House.  I began hobbling around with what felt like a butcher knife repeatedly stabbing my toe, asking everyone who looked like a volunteer for a first aid station.  We ended up in a behind-the-scenes backstage kind of room surrounded by four grown up faeries fixing each other’s wigs while I held a baggy full of ice on my poor toe.  I could hear very loud children’s music coming from a nearby stage, and I knew things were bad when I realized I wanted to kill all the faeries.  After a few minutes of this, Huck and I began wandering around the hot gardens searching for the Fairy House, me limping and Huck carrying too many things for a person his size.  I have a hazy memory of friends shouting hellos while I angrily waved and growled, “I just got stung by a bee and we can’t find Troy.” Huck kept kissing my arm, because he hates it when I’m upset.  Several faery grown-ups blew bubbles in my face. We never found Troy and instead plopped down in the hottest, loudest, most awful spot we could find and waited for our guitar slinging celebrity to appear so that he could take us home.  Because there is nothing lonelier than being miserable while surrounded by people having the best night of the summer.

Another place a bad mood doesn’t fit is summer camp.  Due to a difficult set of circumstances that included a huge construction project, new licensing requirements, multiple thunderstorms and intense heat, my job was usually overwhelming.  Camp for me mostly meant putting out fires, mass emailing, apologizing, explaining, calling parents, talking to misbehaving children, and organizing complicated schedules.  Some days felt like a hundred bee stings.  Camp for everyone else meant roller skating, movies, popcorn, wii, computer games, art projects, Airheads, learning about other cultures, celebrating birthdays, fencing, martial arts, ball games, swimming, water balloons, sprinkler parties, dance parties, Minute to Win It, Gator Golf, snow cones, lemonade stands, bowling, laser tag, card games, trampolines, and hours spent with best friends.  One little girl loved to stand in my doorway to watch me work, with a look on her face like she understood the difference between her camp and mine.  She and a few others wrote jokes to tape on my office door. Why didn’t the cheese pizza fit in the oven?  Because there wasn’t mushroom.  Summer’s gift was the occasional ability to come out of my stress bubble to see that I was surrounded by people, both big and small, having crazy fun and deciding to join them.  Sometimes it was impossible to resist the happy all around me.

Yesterday was the last day of camp.  That morning I opened the back door and a bee flew into our home.

No stings this time.