...a walk across the room to get stung and confess....

It started off innocently enough with the two of us going for an exercise walk.  We only do two kinds of walks.  There is the stroll for which he must hold my hand.  We don't need to use our words, inside or outside voices to decide what type of walk we will do.  When he takes my hand as we leave the house I instinctively know we are not exercising on this walk - we are strolling.  This day he was not holding my hand, we were using our inside voices outside - we actually never use outside voices inside or outside.  Whoever came up with this idea anyway?!
This walk was planned carefully and we hit the sidewalk at a good pace all the way down our street to the set of stairs at the bottom of our street.  There was no slowing down as we began the 150 stair trek up to the street above us.  No slowing down until we reached the first landing that is!
I gasped at the pain I suddenly felt in my ankle and within seconds I did what would come naturally to most ...I began slapping at my ankle trying to get rid of whatever was causing the excrutiating pain in it.  So far I hadn't even had the courage to take a look in case I might find something protruding from it that would horrify me even more than the pain already did.  As I glanced down at my ankle I saw a little wasp seemingly squeezing the last drop of poison left in his stinger into my ankle.  The intense anger I felt at that miserable sucker is beyond reason!  That's when the wild out of control slapping began.  Nothing premeditated ... just a reactioanary impulse to turn that poison loaded beast into a quick unrecognizable mess of road kill....a mere smudge on the concrete!  That's when the whimpering started.  And the jumping around on one foot.  Round and round, on one foot, whimpering and gasping, staggering and sucking in of breath.  I have no idea what that all looked and sounded like I was so angry and in pain.  I guess it looked and sounded bad enough that my guy offered to walk back the five minutes to the house to get the car and drive me home!  For just a few seconds I considered continuing this adolescent behavior and letting him baby me in this way.  Especially when I looked down at my already swollen red and blue puffy bruised foot.  Thankfully I quickly grew a back bone and assured him that I could make it home on my own while he continued our exercise walk on his own.
For once I couldn't quite read his eyes as we parted ways.....Disbelief?  Empathy?  Pity?  Maybe a little of each!