Essays

• Honey: by Stephanie

At CTY, my dad sent me a package. Among other things, he sent me a carton of honey, you know, one of those little bears. I didn't know what to do with it. So, the last day of classes, three days before the end of the session, I brough Mr. Honey Bear to class with me. Honey is remarkably good plain. And it's quite fun to eat it straight from the bottle. So I passed it around my class while watching The Andromeda Strain (crappy movie, by the way...amusing in spite of that or, more likely, because of it).

By the time social hour (more like 45 minutes, but beggars can't be choosers) rolled around, I still had a s*** load of honey left. Have you ever seen one person eat half of a honey bear's head's worth of honey at one time? I have. And I've seen it twice. It's pretty funny. And you get some pretty bewildered faces and some pretty sudden reactions (especially by those who don't actually like honey). Somehow or another, someone got honey on their hands. Then we all had honey on our hands. We were going to play quack a didly oso/down by the banks (uber spiffy hand game). And we started. But let me tell you, it's impossible for 8 teenagers to have honey on their hands for long before giving into the insatiable urge to smother someone with honey.

So we did. First it was limited to arms (no faces, no hair). But it's no fun sneaking up behind someone if you can't cover their eyes and make 'em guess who it is. In short, we gave up on any sort of limitations. Hands, arms, legs, shirts, pants, hair, eyes, eyebrows. Covered. Sticky and smooth. We chased each other, jumped each other, and just plain old covered each other in honey where ever and whenever we could. It was pretty damned amazing.

And then, of course, when social hour was over, one can't avoid offering the bittersweet hug, high five, pound to whoever is unobservant enough to realize that they'll be honeyed if they do. We sat through our hall meeting, covered in honey. At that point we were dry enough to realize that if you put your hand on your arm and then remove it, it hurts like hell. Because, well, you have arm hair. And then hall meeting was over. And shower time had begun.

And so ends my honey narrative. One of my most memorable CTY experiences involved no text books, no electrophoresis gels. Only honey, and some absolutely spectacular, spontaneous, and just down right amazing friends.

Written by Stephanie July 2006 (JHU-1-2006)