Hornet encounter was maddening

Sometimes those old cliches have a solid foundation in truth.
Take, for example, the expression, “stirring up a hornets’ nest.”
Let me now go on record saying I understand where the expression is coming from.
It was a Saturday, early afternoon. I’d spent the morning doing my best to clean out the garage and had spent about half an hour “deconstructing” a plant stand that my wife had acquired somewhere along the way.
The plant stand, for the record, seemed to involve almost as many nails as it did sticks of wood. Breaking it down into firewood was a festival in avoiding tetanus. (When was the last time you had a booster shot? That’s the thought that kept running through my mind as I slammed it with a hammer and pulled out rusty nails with a pair of Visegrips.)
But after a light lunch, it was time to get out the hedge clippers and finish up the “haircuts” for the shrubbery.
I’d trimmed the “burning bush” around the front stoop a week before, but there were two more of the same type of shrubs beside the house and there were a bunch of bushes to be clipped in the front yard.
At first, all went well.
I zipped through the bushes beside the house, remembering the time my wife complained that I’d given the shrubs “flattop” haircuts and doing my best to round things out.
To my credit, this time around I didn’t cut the extension cord with the hedge clippers. I’ve done it before, twice I think, and will never forget wondering the first time why I hadn’t been electrocuted.
The price of a good, long extension cord cured me of that error; I’ve been much more careful since then.
So the first two bushes went smoothly.
So did the third and the fourth and the fifth and the sixth and the seventh. That just left one puny little bush in the ground cover that makes up a good chunk of our front yard.
Wrap this up, and my Saturday chores would be pretty much done.
And then I hit the hornets’ nest.
I’ve run into hornets and wasps before, of course. As  a college student on a summer job at Conner Prairie, I remember finding a hornets’ nest in the eaves of a two-story house I was painting. I slid down the ladder like it was a fireman’s pole.
This time around was different.
I had no clue I’d disturbed the insects. Then there was a sharp pain on the middle finger of my left hand. That surprised me, because I was wearing work gloves.
I looked down and saw a bug — a big one — busily stinging my hand, right through the glove.
And then another sting came.
And I dropped the hedge clippers and jumped several feet away.
(It’s amazing how fast one can move, even at my age, when pain enters the picture.)
I was still collecting my wits when my neighbor across the street asked me if there’d be any problem with cars parked in front of our house while his family celebrated his son’s fourth birthday.
I said, “Of course not,” shook my stinging finger, rubbed my stinging arm, and was simultaneously embarrassed that I’d failed to recognize my own neighbor.
He looked at me — appropriately enough — as if he’d just learned his neighbor was a madman, or at least moderately disturbed.
And at that point, I wouldn’t have disagreed with him at all.