I was eight years old the first time I fainted. I was at friend’s house, and a bee stung me on the back of the neck. I had felt nothing but a slight pinch and the bug was soon wiped away and flushed down the toilet, but since I looked pale I was urged to call my mother. As I told her what had happened, I felt myself blacking out, sinking to the floor, vaguely aware that I was still gripping the receiver. Perhaps I was allergic to the bee sting—the only one I’ve ever gotten, although to this day I have a phobia about bees, wasps, and other insects. But the image of an eight-year-old in Keds crumpling to the ground while he describes his injury to his Mommy seems to return us to Freudian territory. Note the umbilical image of the phone cord. Call me fanciful. Still, I’m afraid these undertones are hardly dissipated by the second fainting incident I can recall, which practically reeks of the family romance. This took place one weekend morning while we were gathered in the kitchen to eat breakfast. My mother stood at the stove making French toast, which she had already served to the kids; my father, seated at the table, was cutting a bagel with a sharp bread knife. Contrary to every principle of kitchen safety, he was holding the bagel in his hand and cutting inward, and eventually he made a neat, shallow incision in his palm. The blood was profuse. Being a hematologist, my father didn’t panic: this was just business as usual. But my mother stopped flipping French toast and collapsed to the floor. I, inspired by the blood and my mother’s collapse and the powerful odors of syrup and sugar rising from my plate, slumped forward. My forehead went into the syrup. I heard a roar—it seemed to me that I was being clutched beneath the armpits and whirled around—and then my father shook me back into consciousness. He had already attended to my mother. Still think I’m fanciful? Then listen to this. Out of curiosity I asked my mother when her first fainting episode had occurred. She paused, thought it over, and came up with the following. At the age of thirteen, she went to visit her father in the hospital, who only the day before had had his appendix removed. Aside from her father, still conked out from the anesthesia, the other person in the room was a nurse, who was busy changing the dressing on the patient’s incision, which hadn’t quite closed. For some reason, the nurse had to leave the room. At this point, she asked my mother to hold the soiled dressing in place until she returned. My mother complied. Standing over her dazed father, gingerly holding a used bandage over a hole in his lower abdomen, the thirteen-year-old grew lightheaded. I assumed the nurse returned before she hit the floor. It can be gathered from this article that the tendency to faint most probably is _____.