Tweet, Tweet, Tweet, Hoot

 My husband and I are early birds. My daughter is an early bird. However, my son is a night owl.

He is the older of our two children and has Asperger's; to define the Gen X lingo, he has high-functioning autism. That means when he was growing up, family life was very interesting.

Especially when a certain little boy had to get up for school. 

We bought a ton of different alarm clocks — one was the old-fashioned kind with the two metal bells and clanger on top. It was loud. It was obnoxious. It was perfect. 

It worked for a week. 

He eventually managed to sleep through it, though the rest of us did not. When he entered teenagerism, the task was nearly impossible. We resorted to shaking, yanking him out of bed, yelling songs at the top of our lungs, but Sleeping Beauty was down for the count.

Sometimes our efforts were successful; however, after I went downstairs to make breakfast, he'd go right back to sleep.

Until Momma decided she had enough and gave a little tough love by trickling water on his head down to his butt when he refused to get up. That worked beautifully. He was mad, but he was up; that's all that mattered when Mom had to walk their butts to school before the bell rang for classes.

In 2021, we planned to move from Northeast Philadelphia to the boonies in Central PA. My son, now 23, was not only a night owl, but loved the city. My husband, my daughter, and I loved the country and were looking forward to being in the middle of the mountains. That prompted him to move about a week before us, into a small town about 2.5 hours away from our new home.

He doesn't drive, so when he had vacation, it was a 5-hour round trip for him to come for a visit, because when you live in the county, transportation is by horse or by vehicle, period. We'd planned a lovely cookout, because he loved having them in the backyard when we lived in Philly.

He arrived with a huge bag of laundry and an appetite. 

We handed him a tray filled to the brim with an assortment of meats to cook over the fire pit my husband built in the backyard. My daughter was behind him with the camping forks, and they made their way outside. It was going to be a beautiful day; the air was cool and slightly scented with flowers.

And flowers bring bees. 

Now, before I go further, country bees are different from city bees in the attitude department. City bees tend to be aggressive, going after anything remotely close to their hives. I was terrified of them. But after living in the country for a few months, I could sit outside relatively calm, and on occasion, a heavily pollen-covered bee would use my shoulder to rest before making its way back to its hive.

I won't lie — that took a lot of self-control on my part, but eventually bees would hover near me to check me out, and instead of going into a swatting frenzy, I'd gently wave them away if they got too close.

Even the yellow-jackets weren't out for blood up here, so long as I was giving them honey water on the other side of the property so they'd stay away from the sweet baked goods on the picnic table.

But my son didn't know any of that.

A scream rent the air as the tray of meat went flying in all directions after a bumblebee flew near his 6' 1" 260-pound self to check out this new mountain of a human. My 23-year-old son ran back into the house, yelling, "I hate nature!" leaving my daughter to deal with the "killer bees the size of cats" and a storm of descending meats. 

He spent the rest of the weekend in the darkest room of the house, earphones firmly secured to his head as he watched videos on his phone. He wouldn't budge, and when I asked if he wanted to try going outside to do a cookout again, I got this look:

Since then, his visits have been few and far between. The distance doesn't help matters, but we all know he's more likely to visit in winter when nature is sleeping, and snow keeps the "killer bees the size of cats" from getting curious.