This summer, insects chose to bite me, but spared the rest of my family, guests and friends on the house balcony. Although we did apply some insecticides, they were not effective because it is an outdoor area. Then I was given the advice to wear wide bracelets on my wrist, partly made of repellent-soaked cloth. However, when I wore the bracelet on my right arm, I got stung in my left, or when I wore it on one leg, I got stung in the other. We also received a bug zapper machine, but it kept producing loud noises with every dying insect, and I kept jumping in my seat because I am easily frightened. Meanwhile, my relatives were mocking the red spots in my arms and legs, and I kept repeating that insects like to bite me because I am “light-blooded” [light hearted], and because my blood cholesterol levels are low. While I was thinking about the reasons why blood sucking insects are attracted to me instead of supermodels, I found an article in the New York Times entitled “Oh sting, where is thy death?” written by Richard Conniff. In fact, I was taken by the title because it is a play on the famous expression “Oh death, where is thy sting?” I thought this expression was used by Shakespeare, but when I searched for it on google and other engines, I found out that it is wrongly attributed to the famous poet, with many other expressions, while it is fact from the Bible's New Testament, and was uttered by St. Paul. The closest expression to this that I found was “Oh shame, where is thy blush?” from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Conniff is a well known American writer, and has recently published a book entitled: “Swimming with Piranhas (a kind of very small and gluttonous fish) at feeding time: My life doing dumb stuff with animals”. His article however, was not about him personally as much as it was about Justin Schmidt, the writer of the book “Insect Defenses: Adaptive mechanisms and strategies of prey and predators”. As such, and starting from an expression that I believed was Shakespearian in origin, I then found myself reading an article about “positive psychology”, and about how pain can lead to happiness. In fact, Schmidt's book describes the categories of pain and divides them into four degrees, starting with the pain that lasts for a few minutes and ending with the pain that lasts for twelve hours, with the bitten person writhing in agony on the ground. From this I say may God save us, especially when I read the names of insects such as “yellow jacket”, “harvester ant”, “tarantula hawk” and “bullet ant”. This latter is found in Brazil, and its bite causes the most pain, all while the writer talks about a “flow” that transforms this pain into happiness. I want to say to this “get out of my head!” as all the psychology present in the world will not convince me to transform a painful sting into joy. I visited the dentist, and I started screaming after sitting in a dentist's chair. He asked me: Why are you screaming? I did not even touch your teeth yet. I said: but you are standing on my feet. Happiness, for me, consists of a high income, a platter of food that I like, instead of food recommended doctor, or the end of a German opera, which my daughter dragged me to, where I can leave the theatre as a free man. I have known pain since I was a little boy, when my mother used to put me in her lap to comb and brush my hair. This hurt so badly that I wished I were bald. Then when I grew up, none of my childhood dreams became true, except for my wish to become bald, being already underway to baldness with my hair falling out every day in the shower. This time it hurts because I fear I might soon join the army of the bald friends that I have. When we were young in Lebanon, we used hunt the wheat bird (the Ruff) in the Bekaa Valley. Usually, three or four of us would cover the angles of the field waiting for the birds to come from any direction. One day, I inadvertently sat on an ants' nest; minutes later, I started feeling insect bites inside my pants and up in the sensitive area. When I removed my pants, I saw a line of large black ants climbing on my leg, and rushed to my old and steadfast friend Tony Tadros on the other side of the field in my underwear and holding the rifle in my hands. When he saw me he thought I had gone crazy; he raised his rifle and asked me what I was doing. When I showed him the ants, he was relieved and then helped me kill the insects. I had white patches on my skin for days after that. This was the kind of pain that never led to any happiness, as far as I remember. Today, pain is caused when I want to pretend that I am cultured, and so decide to visit an exhibition of abstract art, which I do not like nor understand. It is also painful for me to get into a discussion about abstract artists, comparing one talentless hack with another so as not to expose my ignorance. But while looking at the paintings, I would secretly wish for the painter to be hanging on the wall instead of his creation. Speaking of expositions of all kinds, I find true happiness, against all the summer insects that choose me above all people, in seeing a beautiful woman on the beach; this is a sensual form of happiness that does not need any positive psychology or existential philosophy.
