If you thought this COVID-19 thing was bad, wait until you get a look at these new hornets.

Known as the “murder hornet,” these things are going to be buzzing through my nightmares.

I’ve always had a thing with things that sting. No one likes them. I like them less.

I blame a lot of it on a neighborhood game of football when I was in fourth grade.

I got sent into a busy pine tree for a catch. I invaded a nest of wasps, unfortunately. I did run for the touchdown, however, and it’s the fastest I’ve ever run. I evaded tacklers, but not the wasps. About four of them attacked my head.

We spent a lot of time as kids shooting the breeze, and one of the kids shortly after introduced the act that “killer bees” were coming to America from South America and they were already in Texas.

When you’re a kid, every problem or crisis looks bigger. We lived in fear in those days of communists and nuclear war. And I had my own thing going with bees, wasps, hornets and anything else with a stinger. And caves, but that’s another story. I hate caves, but I don’t think that phobia arrived until later years, like when we took trips and there always seemed to be a multi-hour trip into the center of the earth. If you’ve seen one stalagmite, you’ve seen them all. Am I wrong? And there’s bats in there.

Over my formative years, I did my best to elude things that sting. It was only when I met my beautiful bride that the entire world or anyone she could tell found out my secret. And I’m pretty sure she was laughing at me. We would go for daily walks at the time, and there were always bees buzzing around a certain bush. Being the gentleman that I am, I offered to walk closer to the sidewalk to save her life should a runaway car jump the curb. “I think you’re just afraid of those bees,” she pointed out.

She had me. I don’t like them.

I have somewhat gotten over this fear. One summer, I painted our home a couple decades ago. There was a huge nest of some sort of awful evil things. I called an exterminator and got rid of that. That was day one of the project. Day two was to make sure everything in there was actually dead.

Day three through about 10 involved me wildly flailing my arms on a ladder while wasps planned attacks on me. I decided at that time I needed to face my demons. Although it was the middle of summer, I painted my house with a couple layers of sweatshirts as armor and a can of Raid strapped to my belt. That summer, we came to some kind of a truce. I’ll admit they got me a few times, I drenched nest after next hiding behind shutters, and the house actually eventually got painted.

For the last couple decades, I feel like these flying beasts and I have lived in relative peace. These new “murder hornets” are another story though. They’re already in America. How long until they get to the Midwest? These things can stab through beekeeper suits and decimate honey beehives, beheading anything in front of them.

As much as I hate to say it, my quarantine just might have become permanent.

E-mail John at [email protected]