I’m Not Saying Anything About the Schmidt Pain Scale
but if I did, it would be aaaaaaaah. wild: one man’s quest to document & describe the pain of every ant & bee sting. what really gets me are his descriptions—red fire ant: sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch. Indian jumping ant: Ah, that wonderful wake-up feeling, like coffee but oh so bitter. I scroll the Schmidt Pain Scale & in a flash I remember my grandfather shaking out pills into his hand one morning TH marked on the seven-box set the odd pop of them ricocheting into his mouth with the hand-clap the salted peppered sludge of homemade tomato juice he chugged them down with I used to think I wouldn’t use a pillbox like that till I was his age
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on the Schmidt Pain Scale a glorious velvet ant bite is described as instantaneous, like the surprise of being stabbed. Is this what shrapnel feels like? the red paper wasp: distinctly bitter aftertaste—after I’d lost any chance to hear grandfather’s gruffness, his sister mentioned the mental illness that tunneled its way through the family tree, the honeycomb clusters of sisters & fathers & mothers & daughters the Western honey bee is described as burning, corrosive, but you can handle it I think someone lit herself on fire
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bite of the (non-glorious) velvet ant: explosive and long-lasting, you sound insane as you scream tarantula hawk’s sting, ranked at an even higher level, was called blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. Lie down and scream a fact casually dropped in conversation was: the woman who went through what we now call electroconvulsive therapy when Schmidt was stung by the warrior wasp, he asked, Why did I start this list? called it torture the knowledge I will be medicated for the rest of my life does not hurt like a digger or sweat bee, does not scream like a warrior wasp instead, it’s the dull sting of an ant bite—bright and high, sharp as gasoline but fading almost instantly, as Schmidt might say—first one then another
then another