Weekend Wordsmith

For the week of July 3RD Weekend Wordsmith has the prompt picture of a stinging bee or the word sting.


I looked at the picture and thought about stings. The rotten bee that stings, lemon juice in a cut, the sting of rejection, all those came to mind. Then for whatever reason I remembered Mohammad Ali's quote of, "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee."

From that quote I remembered my mom. Strange leap I know.

My husband, my son, and I lived with my mom. My husband was a huge boxing fan.

The fights would come on every Thursday night. My mom would tell him to go ahead and turn the channel to watch them. He did. At first, my mom would continue reading her book. Pretty soon however, she would occasionally lower the book and watch part of a fight. It wasn't much longer that the book was in her lap more than in front of her eyes.

She started asking my husband questions about the different fighters. He would answer but one night she was asking so many that he muted her. That didn't sit too well with her. She gave him her pat answer, "OH go to hell."

Once mom started watching she could be heard to say things like, "Hit him!" "Knock him down!" She would be as loud, if not louder than my husband when they disagreed with the ref.

Mom got to know the fighters stats.

It was always fun on Thursday nights to see and listen to my mom and husband having such a good time together. My son and I would go in the bedroom and read books or color.

Mom died in 1991. My husband stopped watching the fights then. He said the fun had gone out of the fights. A lot of the fun had gone out of all of our lives when she died. That's the sting of the whole thing.