A bite among friends

Here is a quick story I will tell mostly for its entertainment value.

When I was a small child of five years old I, like many other children my age, started kindergarten, and during the typical schooldays there would be a "recess" period that when weather permitted would include a stint outside in what I guess was a typical schoolyard,

Part of this was a grass "lawn."

Although in a rather urban setting, the school was at the time right next to a working farm and was also surrounded by a decent amount of woods and open field.

While interesting, this doesn't really matter too much since heavily populated urban environments have never really stopped the good old common garter snake from holding its own in the wild.

You may have a good guess as to what follows and that is that one day while class was outside a garter wandered into the grass of the schoolyard. Knowing immediately what it was, I did what was most natural to me even at that age and picked it up.

Needless to say, my classmates were a bit thrown off and quite impressed by this novelty.

The really funny part came a few seconds later, however, after two middle-aged women who were the ones in charge of the class caught wind of all the excitement. They of course in some way were probably more thrown off than the class of young children.

All would have probably gone fine as after showing off my impressive find I could have simply set it back in the grass and allowed it o go on its way.

But at this moment the snake chose to do what snakes sometimes understandably do at moments like these and promptly bit me on the hand that was holding it.

As you can imagine, although this meant nothing to me, after the snake let go and I was able to set it down there was a major hullabaloo in the school with me being ushered into the nurses office and sitting through a phone call to my mother. The caller in a panicky voice was saying “now I don’y mean to alarm you but your son was bitten by a snake.”

 I'm sure the shock they got when my mother was so casual and straightforward about it was even greater than the actual "incident" itself.

Although at the time I didn’t really know what all the fuss was about, the gist of it was that the people who saw this happen had no idea this was a regular occurrence in the life of a five year old boy fully understood by the boy’s own mother.  They were worried about the possible outcomes if the opposite was true.

I don’t really remember much more except that for a very short period of time I had a certain level of fame and respect among my class and was even told at one point to go around the circle of children and show them the bite, which as snake bites usually are was nothing more than a few pinpricks.

Perhaps this was meant to be a lesson for them though I am happy to report it’s a lesson I have never learned and never will.