The Same Old Story

The really lousy thing about leaving a relationship is that you lose your stories. You know the ones: The things that pop into your head and leave you snickering in the middle of the staff meeting, that make you go kind of misty in the aisles at the grocery store for no good reason--the ones that you try to share with other people but that no one but those who were there will ever really get.
I was thinking today about the time the bee flew up the Then's shorts.
We had friends over for some beers, so everyone was already a little giddy, and the Then said that that afternoon, while he'd been running errands, he'd stopped at a red light at the major intersection close to our house. A new restaurant had just opened at that corner, and had hired some poor sap to stand out in the mid-summer heat in a full-on armadillo costume, dancing around like an idiot, waving a sign (and probably fighting off heat stroke). The Then had the window down, sunglasses on, fully focused on his destination, looking cool, thinking about what a dork the Armadillo looked like and how glad he was he didn't have that job. Suddenly, something flashed before his face. Without thinking, he swatted at it--and realized that it was a bee and he'd just slapped it down into his lap, where it was even now crawling up his shorts.
He leapt out of the car and began jumping up and down in the middle of the intersection, trying to shake the thing out of his pants. Then he realized the car was beginning to roll forward into oncoming traffic. After leaping back into the car to stop a major traffic accident, he found the bee---squished flat under his fanny. The light had turned green, cars behind him began honking, he started forward and turned the corner. He looked up; the Armadillo was just standing there, staring at him.
Now, this was a story that had me laughing so hard I was crying. Of course, I got to see the full reenactment. And it was one of those things that just made me so happy to be who I was and where I was and with the person I was with...it was a little treasure. And the thing that sucks is, I get to keep the story, but not the stuff I'd bundled up with it. Oh, it's still funny, but for some reason, it sort of makes me want to cry, too.