Xavier's First Bee Sting
Greetings to everyone.
Rebecca was out of town today. Xavier has Summer School all this week. After dropping him off at school, I passed the mini golf park Rebecca and I have wanted to take Xavier to. They have free hot dogs on Wednesday nights—all you can eat, if you pay for all-you-can-play.
I told Xavier about the plan and he thought it a good idea. He had wanted to go to a McDonald's play area, and I really did not want to get stuck inside for two hours while he ate nothing. I wanted to be outside, and free hot dogs seemed a great idea for a man doing single dad duty (I call it SDY; it's what I get to do when Rebecca is TDY).
I really did not expect Xavier to have much interest in the golfing. I figured a single course was all we needed. Reading that children under 12 get in for free, I thought "Jack Pot!"
Not so fast! Free hot dogs came at a price: an all you can play ticket (again, Xavier got a pass on needing a ticket). Well, an extra $2.50 still seemed a good deal for free dogs, so I ponied up. I told Xavier he had to eat one hot dog before we played any golf. As it turned out, we played one course, then ate a hot dog. Xavier had such fun, he wanted to play another course—I didn't think I would get him torn away from the first windmill we encountered on the first course, it fascinated him so. So, he happily ate his hot dog.
So, we struck an understanding: eat one hot dog for every course he wanted to play. I should mention that after the first three holes, play for Xavier meant exploring and experimenting with those holes which had two or more levels which had two or more pipes that carried your ball to the lower level.
Yes, Xavier, the little engineer that he is, wanted to understand how the piping worked, where the balls went on the 18th hole, how they got back into the golf shack, and everything else about golf ball plumbing. There were holes we spent fifteen or so minutes redoing as he watched how the balls traveled through the pipes or gutters.
Imagine his excitement when he discovered the 18th hole on the third course had a toilet seat as the hole! It's a good thing the course was not that crowded while we were there. We could take nearly all the time we wanted at any hole.
Somewhere in the middle of the second course, Xavier went to retrieve his ball, which he sliced two holes over. Somewhere in tromping across the rocks and landscaping, he annoyed a bee. It stung him on the leg.
It took a while to get out of him what happened. At first he stood scratching (and scratching and scratching) his leg. I thought either he got poked with a twig or bitten by a bug.
As the venom spread, Xavier started to cry as the pain increased. Interestingly, his leg never swelled up around the sting. It only looked like a rash around where the bee's stinger broke the skin. I think his incessant scratching knocked the venom sac lose before too much of it pumped into his body.
We sat for a while until he calmed down. We ate another hot dog, then took on another course, which meant we jumped the line from course to course to play his favorite holes in a random sequence, ending (you guessed it) at the 18th hole of the the third course: the one with the toilet seat. We finished the night with ice cream we bought at the park.
He talked about the mini gold all the way home. He wanted Mommy to come experience it too. So, we will be going back in the not-to-distant future I suspect.