An illusory reputation

Today was a special day for Ittybit. Not only was I attending a presentation by her enrichment class in the library on the experiment she and several other students had be working on for several months, but I was wearing a dress.

Ittybit had begged and pleaded with me to wear my "wedding dress."

I know what you are thinking. I thought the same thing. And those thoughts must have been so powerful that they immediately jumped from my extremely confused mind to her very clever one.

"Not your wedding dress. The dress you wore to that wedding. The one with the big flowers. Our experiment is all about flowers. You should wear flowers like I am."

Kids are evil, evil little beings who make you do things that go against your nature. Like wearing color and smiling on occasion.

But that's beside the point.

The point I'm dancing around is that in addition to the rare and unnatural sight of me in a dress, I was also tasked with schlepping the "beehive" we found last spring, and that her father had talked up with the librarian.

Only ... as I pointed out more than once to anyone who would listen ... It wasn't a beehive, it was a wasp nest.

No one seemed to care which manner of beast had inhabited the thing once upon a time, all that mattered was the buzz it would create.

And who am I to be a buzz kill.

I had to laugh, though, when we appeared in her class bearing the papery, basketball-sized nest still attached to branches of the bush it had been spun around.

The gasp from students was audible.

"Wow! Your mother really is creative. I can't believe she made that."