I am, apparently, quite clueless.

And this comes as less of a surprise to me than it probably should.

I’ve been allergic to insects of all sorts my entire life.

Mosquitoes bite me – and they bite me by the dozens to hundreds while everyone else around me is left completely alone – and the white part swells up to between a half inch to an inch in diameter with the red bit sometimes 4-6 inches in diameter.

I react to spiders walking on my skin. By swelling up to the point of very much needing to go to emergency.

I’ve been bitten by more mystery bugs than I can count and ended up with more mystery bug bites than I can… Well, you get the idea. 🙂

I don’t know for a fact that I’m allergic to bees and wasps and other of the more, ah, dangerous insects, but given my allergic reactions in general and with insects, it’s a pretty safe bet that getting stung by them probably wouldn’t be a good idea, you know what I mean? 🙂

So why, oh why, do I do some of the things I do?

I was outside and saw a bunch of flying insects swarming in the area around our no-longer-in-use Dialog satellite dish, so naturally, I had to take a step closer to find out what was going on. What did I see but hundreds of insects flying around, hovering.

So naturally, I got a bit closer and took a photo. There, you can see them, reflecting sunlight. They were mostly on the other side of our wall, so, naturally, I took another step closer and took another photo. By this time I must have been, oh, four feet away. And I happily snap away. 🙂

I thought that maybe they were flies. Cuz, you know, what do I know and all that. Plus I didn’t have my glasses on, not that I’m that blind without them – I’m not – but I can’t make out detail. So I happily shot away, thinking, oh, no big deal.

A few days later, I finally show the pics to Fahim. He looks. He looks at me. He looks at me like I’m crazy. He asks me, quite pointedly, how close I got to them. Then he says, “They’re bees.”

Oh.