Sasha vs. the Beast

Have you ever been inside a Dutch house restroom?

It can get claustrophobic.

The toilet and shower/bath are usually in two separate rooms. So when you do your business, it is in a room where you couldn't stretch your arms out in either direction. It fits exactly the toilet and, if you are lucky, half an A4-sized sink. We are lucky.

I am a small person, so I don't mind the confined space too much.

This day, like any other, I entered the room without bothering to turn the lights on. "Nothing new to see," silly Sasha. I felt the familiar cold, sleek plastic press firmly against my bottom. Our toilet, like much of the Netherlands, is meant for bigger people, and I don't fill more than half the ring sitting down.

I was sleepy and doing everything on autopilot.

Until I wasn't.

Until it came.

From the deepest recess of my sweatiest nightmares, amplified in a way that only the hollow porcelain throne could allow, a reverberating buzz filled the air behind me.

A fraction of a second turned into minutes inside my stumbling brain, overpowered by the sudden rush of adrenaline to consider several apocalyptic scenarios... "Dreamcatcher", anyone?

Unencumbered by the undone pants or my gratuitous bottom nudity, I propelled myself outside the room, slammed the door, and pressed my ear against it.

That buzz.

I know that buzz.

I could pick it out during a heavy metal concert!

And here it found me, in the most sacred room of the house, the altar of privacy shattered forever.

I will never pee again.

"This room is lost to us," I warned my gorgeous Dutch partner when he came to check what the ruckus was about.

Ever the pragmatist, he headed inside with a Tupperware box.

"Don't kill it!" I shrieked.

He trapped the beast with the box, scooped it up with a bamboo tray, and put its new prison outside.

"I think it's dead. It isn't moving", I heard him say, through the several doors I had closed between us.

"We have to give it sugar."

"You can do that if you care."

Now, I might be a coward, but I am not going to let someone die just because they terrify me.

Sugar water on a teaspoon, I opened the main door and stretched my arm towards the wooden tray the beast was resting on. I left the spoon as an offering to its powerful form and bolted inside.

A few minutes later, the bee was gone... unlike my newly acquired fear of using the toilet.

Author's note:

When I was a little girl, my mother told me that bees might attack someone who "smells the wrong way" and that wasps and hornets will attack relentlessly for fun.

My child brain mixed it up, and my Spheksophobia began.

I know it's not true. I know it doesn't make sense. I will still panic and run as soon as I hear buzzing. Any buzzing.

Be mindful of how you talk to children.