ONW: Teens Using Burt’s Bees To Get A Buzz…Or Not

This story is apparently “breaking nationwide”, but this report is coming out of Cincinnati, so I think it fits in the Ohio News of the Weird. Plus, this bizarre tale hits home for me in a strange and spooky way, which I’ll get to in a minute. But first, the breaking news:

For reasons known only to themselves, drunk and/or high teenagers are supposedly lathering Burt’s Bees beeswax lip balm all over their eyelids in order to intensify their drunken/stoned stupor. This bizarre ritual has become known as “Beezin”. According to the report, the peppermint oil in the lip balm causes a weird, tingling (some say, burning) sensation when applied to one’s eyelids. The report seems to go out of its way to clarify that it’s only “high school and college students” are doing this because, as we all know, no adult is drunk/high/stupid enough to try this stunt, right? Right? As it turns out, maybe no one’s stupid enough to do this. There’s a recent article from NPR that believes the reports of beezin’ are perhaps more than a little exaggerated. So it would seem that for the most part, people don’t have to worry much about beezin’. That is, of course, unless you’re like me and have a cat named Bailey. Allow me to explain.

Bailey might be my cat’s real name, but I rarely call him that. To me, his name is Beezer. It’s a long story, involving, of all things, The Little Rascals (“the monkey hit Tarzan on the beezer”). Regardless, Beezer is quite the entertaining cat. You see, aside from being a bit on the “simple” side, Beezer is a rather plump kitty. He’s not fat, mind you, merely big-boned. But because of that, Beezer often finds the need to rest, often while in the middle of doing something. In fact, he gets winded just thinking about walking downstairs to use his litter box and he often has to take a break mid-dinner for a quick nap before finishing his meal.

It’s not uncommon to find Beezer asleep in the most random of places, his body stretched out to freakishly long proportions. You want proof? Well, let’s just say he’s the only cat I know of that’s actually chosen to nap in the middle of a staircase, stretched out (and up) across three steps: For years now, I would just step over Beezer so as not to disturb his slumber. My wife, Steph, on the other hand, upon spying the unconscious cat, would stop dead in her tracks and demand an explanation. “What’s Beezer’s doing”, she’d say.

Having quickly realized that “I don’t know” is never a response a husband should give his wife, the next time Steph asked what Beezer was doing, I simply looked at his semiconscious body draped over the back of the couch and said “Beezer’s just…beezin'”.

It stuck.

Now, whenever I find Beezer sleeping, I’ll still step over him, but not before uttering something like “whatcha doing, Beezer? Beezin’?” Even my wife says it. Heck, even my daughter, Courtney, says it: “Beezer, stop beezin’ and eat your dinner.”

I never really gave the term “beezin'” much thought, until now. But the more I think about it, if Beezer really is getting high off lip therapy products, it would explain a lot. So I guess now we better hide the lip balm from Beezer before I need to start looking into kitty drug rehab. Plus, our other cat, Ernie, is always trying to lick the vaseline jar, after which he gets all sleepy and gets this weird “don’t harsh my buzz, man” look on his face: So I’m starting to believe that maybe I need to keep an eye on all my lip care products. Looks like they might be some sort of gateway drug…at least where my cats are concerned.

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You can read the full Local 12/WKRC article here, which also includes a video link for the story.