THE BUMBLING BEE BAILOUT

Right about here, you might ask what having a live, angry bee in your ear has to do with anything that might help us out of this mess we´re in, and you might be right. Probably, you could´ve made it through your day, and in fact the rest of your life without knowing the following, but I personally like to always be armed with unusual trivia. Here´s yours:

There I was with Judy my riding partner, cruising alongside the Connecticut River on the Harley.

Ah … the sun glistening on the lazy water, the soft leans into the winding landscape, the warm breeze of the open ride, the rumbling cadence beneath us … and WHAP! A bumblebee flew into my ear.

Now, there are three thoughts that go through one´s mind at the instant a bumblebee unexpectedly begins burrowing into one´s head at 50 mph on a motorcycle:

1. Whatever you do, DON´T do what every instinct in your body tells you to do, i.e. leap off and/or drive your bike into the river, freeing the bee but killing you and your passenger. As usual, the next day´s headlines would blame the victims and exonerate the culprit:

INNOCENT PASSERBY BUMBLEBEE SURVIVES BIKER ASSAULT IN WILD RIVER PLUNGE.

2. In the next millisecond, DON´T wonder why God so-chose to punish you right then for all your unnamed but certain transgressions by inserting you and your sweetie in such an inextricable dilemma.

Yes, such a thought does only take a millisecond, with even a few microseconds to spare, but resist it if you can.

Pondering it at that exact moment won´t help either of you. You need to save such contemplation for the next rest stop when your head (and your ear canal) is clear. But, somewhere in those ensuing microseconds, you do make this deal with God, if only He´ll let you survive this, as you also promise to make amends for the aforementioned transgressions.

3. Lastly, DO pull over and resist the raging urge to jam a probing, killing finger into your own head. Reassure your passenger, (who has assumed in now mere nanoseconds that you´re either having a heart attack or finally going loco) by calmly screaming in her direction: "THERE´S A (expletive deleted) BUG IN MY EAR!"

As she learns the now reasonable reason for your abrupt change in navigation and temperament, she will naturally do the normal thing to try and assist you, by attempting to extract the intruder from your head with her sunglasses.

This will, of course -- combined with your own efforts to knock the invader out of your left ear by repeatedly slapping your right ear -- have no effect whatsoever, other than to drive what now must be the world´s most disoriented bumblebee deeper into your aural hive.

Meanwhile, inside your head, it sounds like someone is taxiing a Cessna deep down on your brain´s runway, while outside, passing motorists are no-doubt wondering why a frantic woman is jabbing at a man on a motorcycle who is beating himself up.

Right about here, I want this whole image to be a giant metaphor for how and why we´ve all come to find ourselves in such hard economic times:

I want the result of wearing a half-helmet instead of a full one to symbolize spending more than we could afford.

I want a bumblebee buzzing along in its own lane on its way to work, flying responsibly and doing what bumblebees do, to signify what happens when you´re not prepared for the impact of an obstacle you didn´t see coming but should´ve known could happen along.

I want the fruitless practice of applying the wrong fixes in the wrong directions with the wrong pressures to represent government´s under- and overcompensation and corporate ineptitude.

I want a lot from my metaphors.

And, right about here, trivia or not, you´ll need to know the real outcome of what I´ll now call The Bumbling Bee Bailout. Did our hero and heroine survive the attack unstung? How? What intervention was applied that removed the offender, increased production, restored stability, and reaffirmed the fine tradition of the best American ride?

Before I answer that, and here´s the best part of your new trivia: it IS possible for a bumblebee (yes, the big fat stripe-y kind) to completely disappear into an ear canal (Judy looked in there and saw nothing) then later simply emerge on its own, stunned but intact, and fly away.

Yes, it was a painful, thunderous bombilation to a shaky recovery, but here´s the answer:

Hold your head at the right angle, give it time, and it will turn around on its own and find its way out.

Long live the metaphor, the art of the horrible pun, and if we all just bee all we can bee, in the end we´ll bee alright.

Meanwhile, I have a few transgressions to buzz over.

Syndicated humor columnist B. Elwin Sherman writes from upstate NH. Copyright 2009 B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved. Used here with permission. This column is protected by intellectual property laws, including U.S. copyright laws. Electronic or print reproduction, adaptation, or distribution without permission is prohibited. Ordinary internet links to this column at his Humorist-On-Loan blog may be distributed without written permission.