When my son was in kindergarten, he came home from school one afternoon looking quite peeved. I asked him what had happened in class or on the bus to make him so upset. He told me that during recess earlier that day, he was at the playground with a bunch of his friends when an inattentive bee flew into his forehead and stung him. He had a fairly large bump where the bee made impact, and he was still feeling the sharp pain from the sting.

Finding his assignment of blame quite hilarious, I burst into laughter. That annoyed him even more. His facial expression clearly said that he didn’t think it was a laughing matter. When I tried to explain to him that insects couldn’t be held responsible in such cases, he insisted that the bee shouldn’t have been flying backwards, as he thought it was doing, and that it should have been watching where it was going. Realizing that I would make matters worse if I kept absolving the bee, I concurred with him that perhaps the “guilty” beetle could have exercised a bit more care with its movements. I applied some ointment on his forehead and assured him that he would feel better soon.

The swelling took a few days to subside. Even though the sharp pain was largely gone by the next day, it didn’t quite quell his grievance. He had to wear that bump on his forehead for all that time, which meant, in his mind, that he was walking around with a disfigured face. And the whole thing was the fault of one careless bee.

My son is 22 years old now. He graduated from college last summer and lives in another city currently. He was home briefly for the holidays last week. At Christmas dinner, I asked him whether he remembered that bee incident in kindergarten. He didn’t quite recall, understandably. I recounted the story and we all got a good laugh out of it. He recognized how ridiculous his reaction had been.

Clearly, my then five-year-old son was unnecessarily spending too much emotional energy trying to tell a bee what its correct flight path should have been. He could obviously be excused because of his immature age. But even as adults, many of us spend inordinate amounts of time brooding over rather silly things. I have been guilty of that many times. I should know better. Going forward, I will try to rid myself of trifling irritations more quickly. That is one of my resolutions for this New Year.