Self Reflection Essay: To kill a bee – first aid kit

To kill a bee – first aid kit

   As a young child, I watched a television program named “Go Diego Go!”. The main character of the animation was Diego, a young adventurer of the jungles. He used a special bag filled with supplies and food used to rescue wild animals. Quickly, Diego and his rescue kit became my hero.

  Watching the animation, my younger brother and I started having little expeditions of our own. Our favorite pastime was to go outside to the playground or the woods, searching for animals and insects that needed our help. We also bought a plastic pill container from the town grocery store and named it our first aid kit. We filled the kit with sugar, salt, water, oats, and honey nicked from the kitchen.

  With our small first aid kit, we fed birds, located stray cats, and especially, tried to save dying bees. In certain times of the year, bees were frequently spotted in our playground, laboriously fluttering for their last flight home. Nature did not wait for them­--soon, ants would come and carry the bees away. To save them, I picked up the sick bees out from the reach of ravenous ants, while my brother gathered flowers and leaves to lay them on. Later, my mother was mortified to learn that we had been picking up bees with our bare hands, but I know that bees do not sting when they know the person is trying to help: they feel gratitude.

  We laid the bees on flowers or the playground bench, and tried to feed sugar mixed with water from our first aid kit. We looked after the bees until we could hear the faint sound of our mother calling us that it was time to come back home for dinner. Sometimes the bees regained strength and flew off, and in other times the bees drew their last breath, resting on the flower petal. Then, my brother and I buried them with our prayers.

One day, while my younger brother and I were trying to save the bees as usual, two older boys came to the playground. Mercilessly, they stepped on the dying bees. I was shocked that anyone would do such a thing. I told them to stop, but they would not hear of it. They glanced at what we were doing, and told us that they were doing a favor by letting them die with minimal suffering. I cried a lot that day. Feeling helpless, I asked my parents if there were any other way to help bees. My mother tried to consolidate me by replying that it was the way nature was, and bees were born to die in the fall.

Not long after, our family moved to a larger city, where such bees and other animals were not to be seen as often. Still, I carried my first aid kit for a few more years, inside the smallest pocket of my school bag. Now I am old enough to know that I cannot save the world with my little first aid kit. However, what I do know is that no matter how small my efforts were, to the bee it would have been the biggest hope. That is all that matters.

- written in Mr. Seung-Gil Yoon's College Counseling class



Favorite movie on the date of posting: Totoro

Schoolgirl Satsuke and her younger sister, Mei, settle into an old country house with their father. As the sisters explore their new home, they encounter and befriend playful spirits in their house and the nearby forest, most notably the massive cuddly creature known as Totoro.