Shackle your hocks

Okay. I’m pale. I get it. But with my last name and nationality, what do you expect, really? All my life I’ve been the butt of pale jokes and it’s likely never to stop. So I might as well embrace it and inform you of the consequences of living with this complexion.

When I was a kid, we had a swing set. I loved this swing set. I would play for hours around it; going down the slide, swinging on the swings, prancing around the supports.

Eventually even the most hyper active children wind down. After a few hours of play, my once exuberant attitude would diminish radically. But I would soldier on trying to convince myself I was still having fun.

One day exhaustion and denial got the better of me.

That’s right, I fell asleep on the swing. It was in the middle of a summer day with the sun beating down on me, and I was only wearing a thin sun dress. I woke up disoriented and staggered back into the house. At first, I thought the worst part was that I fell asleep while I was playing. Kind of embarrassing. But that wasn’t the worst part; the worst part was the sunburn. The sun literally burned me through my dress.

My memory of that day is hazy, due to the severe case of heat stroke I had. But I do remember that eventually bedtime rolled around and Granny wanted to get me out of my dress and into my pj’s. She told me to take off my dress.

But I could not lift my arms above my head. She tried helping me get the dress off; she gave it a few valiant efforts and then decided there had to be a better course of action.

I freaked out. To me, in my delusional state, the problem was that my arms weren’t working, so when Granny said she was going to get the scissors, there was only one possible outcome.

She was going to cut my arms off in order to get the dress over my head. Totally logical, I know. In the time it took her to go get the scissors and come back I was in full blown panic mode. When she came back in the room, I didn’t see my nice grandmother; I saw a woman that was going to butcher me.

I started screaming “No Granny!! Please don’t, please don’t!!!” She didn’t understand (and why would she?) so she kept coming at me with the scissors. I continued screaming, but managed to elaborate (somewhat) “No Granny!! Please don’t cut my arms off!!!!”.

Granny was slightly confused (for some reason), but eventually, she realized that I wasn’t going to stop screaming bloody murder so she tried to use reason. She explained to me that she was going to use the scissors to cut off the dress, so I could get into my pj’s. But that didn’t matter, I was still panicking “I’ll just sleep in my dress!!!”. And so I did.

The next morning I was able to lift my arms and take off the dress. But the psychological scars lasted much longer than the sunburn. I never wanted to be sunburned again. I took drastic measures to ensure my safety.

Like wearing my winter coat every time I played on the swingset. After all, I’d rather be delirious with heat exhaustion than be sunburnt and delirious with heat exhaustion. At least I was happy.

 

 

Big thanks to JArt for being the guest artist and providing illustrations.

Wow – good thing you didn’t have an outburst, huh?!

I think I can confidently say this has happened to every single one of us. And if not, then it will. At some point or another you will find yourself in a situation where you have to talk to the most socially retarded person on the planet. And it won’t be easy.

From my experience, these conversations always progress through at least four stages. There is a fifth, optional, stage that you must pull out if you are absolutely required to speak to this person on a regular basis. Like, if you married them, for example.

If you can, drink your way through the stages, it’ll make it that much more entertaining and much less awkward. Though be warned, sometimes drinking to this extreme is seen as ‘inappropriate’ or ‘raging alcoholism’.

For sanity, it’s best if the stages are brief, but more often than not, they’re not. If you’re at a party or a bus-stop, the stages will progress very quickly. If you go to school with or are related to the socially inept dweeb, the stages will drag on until you would prefer to stick shards of glass in your eyes than continue talking with them.

The first stage is introduction. Often times, you don’t realize how socially retarded someone is until you make your first attempt at conversation.

You say hello and they look at you; you introduce yourself and they look at you; you ask them what their name is and their friend answers you. If you make the mistake of trying to shake their hand, they’ll look at your right hand extended and then back to your face. Their facial expression will not change. If at all possible, leave the situation now. If it’s important that you talk with this person, try to progress through the remaining stages quickly just so you can say “I tried”.

The second stage is asking questions to try and get them to talk.

Most socially awkward people will answer your questions with one or two words and will not ask you anything in return. This makes the question-answer stage painfully boring (or maybe just painfully painful); you’re going to have to get creative if you want to get anything out of them. But it likely won’t work. Don’t worry, you’ll move onto the third stage soon enough.

The third stage is volunteering information; since they won’t ask you anything, you begin providing them with the information that they should be asking for, or random facts and trivia.

I like to tell stories; it’s far more entertaining (for me) than telling them about what I do for work, or how I know the person we both know. Besides, that will only work for so long; plus I think that if I tell a story about the most basic life experiences, I will show them just how easy it is and they might reciprocate, even just a little bit.

Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. When it does, it’s glorious; when it doesn’t, I’m sure the dud is left wondering how I yammered on for 15 minutes about buying milk. Eventually, stage three runs it’s course. No matter how hard you try, you can’t think of anything else to say to this person. Welcome to stage four.

The fourth stage is where you simply ignore them. Stop making eye contact, stop looking in their general direction, basically stop acknowledging their presence entirely.

This is the final stage for people that you don’t need to talk to ever again. It’s the best stage when dealing with random people at the bar, or on the street, because if you do it right, even you forget that they’re there.

However, in most social circumstances you can’t stay in this stage for very long; people will start saying that you’re rude, or a bitch. These people have been in the fifth stage for so long that they’ve forgotten what it’s like going through the first four stages with this person. Don’t worry, it’ll happen to you too.

The final stage is acceptance. You come to realize that this person has made it through their entire life being a social tard and nothing you do will ever be able to change that. Sometimes it’s easier to just lay down and take it. Luckily, you won’t have to take much, because they likely are still unable to have a conversation with you. You better learn to love awkward silences. My coping mechanism is music – I play music in my head in an attempt at convincing myself I’m having a good time. Oh, denial, you’ve helped me so … … … wait… no, you haven’t; I did it all on my own.

 

 

Big thanks to EliseArt for providing illustrations.

I second-guessed every comma in this post

Well, I have 4 school deadlines over the next week and a half and really should be working on at least a couple of them. Instead I wrote this post. Gorm says I should always write posts when I’m procrastinating; I take that as my last post was my best work. Boo-yah! Anyway, here’s the latest installment of “I’d rather do anything besides schoolwork”.

I was recounting my weekend to a friend at work the other day; I was telling her about the Saturday night I’d just had. A guy I know, pretty well spent the whole night hitting on me and whispering sweet nothings in my ear. It was quite something really. Don’t worry, I’ve known him for long enough that it wasn’t creepy or anything… and I haven’t known him for so long that it was creepy or anything.

Anyway, at one point he said:

Which immediately made me think:

And then that made me think about what it would actually be like to own the moon and the stars.

Not exactly something I’d turn down given the chance. Once I got to the end of that little tale, my friend burst out laughing:

Me: I know! Who says these things, right?

Her: Um… … every guy?

Me: What?! No way!

Her: Yeah, totally. You’ve never had a guy say this shit to you before?

Me: No, I haven’t… Have you?

Her: Tonnes of times!! Not any of your boyfriends? Not even your long-term boyfriend?

Me: No and no.

Her: Wow.

Me: I know! That’s why it’s so exciting!

Her: That’s not what I was thinking.

Me: What were you thinking?

Her: You’ve dated assholes!!!

Apparently every guy that she’s ever dated (or has ever wanted to date her) has said these things. She also suggested that this is what every guy says to get in a girl’s pants. Not to say that that thought hadn’t crossed my mind in the moment. In fact, a childhood conversation with my dad flashed before my eyes.

However, I immediately dismissed it as a possibility and allowed the sweet nothings to continue being whispered in my ear. Maybe I’m easily swindled by it because no guy has ever been (or even feigned to be) romantic like that before. Or perhaps the world is different than the moon and the stars. Not likely

Big thanks to EliseArt for providing the illustrations

Quick – randomly say something random!

I am the 2%. What’s the 2%, you ask? 2% represents the fraction of the general population that have unbelievable things happen to them, things that do not happen to the other 98%. Sounds okay, right? Riiiggghhht.

The 2% has two sides, two extremes. One extreme is: unbelievably awesome things happen to me! Things like winning the lottery or never having a sunburn. The other extreme is: I can’t believe this happened… why me… wwhhhyyyy!?!

I have yet to win the lottery and I get a sunburn every summer. I’m the 2% that gets the shaft. Oh come on, I must be exaggerating… just being dramatic, right? Wrong.

One Sunday morning, I woke up on my friend’s couch with a headache. We’d polished off more than our fair share of booze the night before so I wasn’t so surprised that I was under the weather. What I did find odd was my hands. They felt…. weird.

Upon first inspection they appeared to be slightly red and felt almost numb. I was sure I slept funny and it would just take some time for the feeling to come back into my hands. I was right. But what I didn’t anticipate was that the feeling that came back ended up making my hands feel worse. That and they were swollen. And I mean, sausage fingers kind of swollen. I convinced myself that it was normal and there was nothing to worry about. Denial can be a powerful force.

A little while later, I noticed my pants were chaffing me. They really seemed to be digging into my stomach and it hurt. A lot. And they had an elastic waistband. That’s not quite right, so I inspected my stomach and it was also red. Nothing to worry about here. All is well.

A while later, after changing into some larger pants and they too became uncomfortable, I suspected something else might be happening. I, again, inspected my stomach.

Small raised bumps had appeared. The tell-tale signs of an eminent rash. I was convinced I was having an allergic reaction so I popped a couple anti-histamines and hoped for the best.

The following day I woke up, with swollen hands, a rashy belly and sore feet. But that’s what Monday’s feel like, so I went to work. After spending the day at work, I came to the conclusion that I might have more problems that I originally thought.

I still wasn’t feeling well and I certainly wasn’t hung over. I decided to go to the doctor.

I went to a walk in clinic, feeling a bit like a tool. I can’t believe I’m here just because I have a rash and I can’t make a fist because my fingers are so swollen and why do my feet hurt?… The doctor came in and asked why I was there. I think I’m having an allergic reaction. Why? Well, because I have this rash and look at my hands! He looked me over and asked some general questions: how are you feeling? have you been sick? how long ago did you have this cold? did you have a sore throat? how do your feet feel? They hurt, in fact.

He took some notes, my temperature and then looked at me and said: “I don’t think you’re having an allergic reaction. I think you have scarlet fever. Do you know what that is? I’ve heard of it… I think he realized that I had absolutely no idea what it meant because he explained it to me.

Scarlet fever is caused by the streptococcus bacteria (the one that causes strep throat). Now, certain strains of this bacteria secrete a certain toxin and certain people are sensitive to this toxin and it results in a full body rash. This occurs in roughly 2% of the population. Of people under the age of 12.

Seriously. I had a childhood disease at age 27. Fuck you, 2%.

He wrote me up a blood work order, took a swab of my throat and told me to come back in two days. Scarlet fever, left untreated, can cause kidney failure, so he was pretty concerned about it. He had also never seen anybody that picks out their own clothes get scarlet fever before. I went back in two days and he looked me over again and decided that he wanted to send me for more blood work. He wanted to test me for everything that could possibly cause a full body rash (sounds reasonable), illnesses such as mono (okay, that’s not too bad) and syphilis (what!?!?).

Oh, don’t worry, he said, I don’t think you actually have syphilis, I just want to be sure. Okay… sure… no problem… I’m clean…

I went and had the blood work done and went back to the doctor in two days time to get the results. I had to go in the middle of the day, so I had to leave work and go back after my appointment. At first, I didn’t really consider syphilis as an actual cause of my problems. But then the doctor walked out, went up to the receptionist and said “I need an infectious disease agent on the phone now.” Infectious disease agent? Syphilis is probably an ‘infectious disease’. Oh dear God, I have syphilis. How long have I had it? Can it be treated? Where did I get it from? Who gave it to me? Who have I given it to? Am I going to die?

By the time they called my name to see the doctor I was pretty much sweating bullets and had convinced myself that I was a dirty whore. I went into the examination room and waited. And waited. Oh no, he’s probably waiting to talk to the agent before he comes in here. He finally came in and said: I got your test results. Uh-huh. And it came back negative for mono. Uh-huh… And negative for everything else, but we don’t have the results for the strep tests yet. So, no syphilis? No, no syphilis, come back in three days for your strep results.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief. No syphilis, I’m not a dirty whore. No awkward telephone conversations for me – success! So I went back to work feeling pretty good about myself and I told the story to one of my work friends. I was kinda ashamed that I had to have the test done in the first place, so I was trying to keep it on the down-low. But when I got to the point where I said he tested me for syphilis, my not-so-subtle friend yelled out “YOU HAVE SYPHILLIS?!!?!?”

Everyone turned and looked. I was mortified. NO! NO SYPHILLIS!! It came back negative. But that doesn’t make it any better, does it?

So I went back to the doctor and got my results. I never had strep throat – my throat culture came back negative. My blood work, however, was positive. The doctor was slightly baffled… how can you have it in your blood if you don’t have it in your throat? Almost no one gets strep in their blood without strep throat…. Almost no one? Like 2% of the population? Sounds about right.

Big thanks to EliseArt for providing the illustrations and being so damn excited about drawing the pictures that I had to write the post.