Tales Of Younger Me Suffering Absurd Amounts Of Pain - A Miniseries: Part 1

Age: I can't really remember, but it was when my friends and I considered nose-picking and marker-eating to be competitive sports.

The injury: Just a stupid amount of blood loss.

The story: When I was really little, my parents used to dump me off at a daycare everyday - the reason being that my parents had absurd work schedules and couldn't really let their pudgy little toddler waddle around the house on his own. One particular day, my mom had come surprisingly early to pick me up, and I, ever the rambunctious little boy, was more than eager to get going. I bade a hurried farewell to my friends (which consisted of some weird Russian army brat and another kid with, like, 6 different speech impediments) and rushed out to my mom's car. As I was getting in, she said "I need to go inside the daycare and talk to one of the grown-ups for a little bit. You just stay here, ok?" I mumbled an agreement, not really paying attention to what she was saying, and it wasn't until after she was already inside that I realized I was stuck in her car alone.

Now, I've never claimed to be all that bright (considering the fact that every linked word in this sentence leads to another story about my functional-retardation). But even for someone as deprived of common sense as me, I was an exceptionally stupid child, and as such, I was possessed of an attention span that could be measured in microseconds and an unshakable fascination with the inner workings of my nose. After processing the possibility of having to sit still for an extended period of time, I promptly buried my finger into one of my nostrils and staged a small reenactment of the Gold Rush.

Ladies.

I was having the time of my life, when all of a suddenly, I felt a sharp pain somewhere deep within my nasal passage. I was about to write it off as some strange finger-induced phantom pain, except when I extricated my finger from my nose, blood started gushing out of my face. It was like a mix between a fire hose and that scene from The Shining, and the closest I've ever come to bleeding that much since then was...well, this.

Being the little dumbass that I was, it never occurred to me that I should unbuckle my seat belt and take my bleeding outside. Instead, upon seeing the sheer quantity of blood that I was spilling, I had a bit of a panic attack and started crying. I was rocking back and forth, trapped by my seat belt like a rabbit caught in a snare, and the front of my shirt had turned a surprisingly vibrant shade of red. I sat in my mom's car bleeding all over myself for a good 5 minutes before she finally came back. At first she started panicking, as any competent mother would when their only begotten son is drenched in blood. However, once she saw that my nose was the source of it all, she looked at me with what I can only describe as a weird mix of disappointment and complete befuddlement at my total incompetence as a human being. 

I've gotten that look a lot since then. 

Probably My Grossest Post Yet

At the time of this writing, my 18th birthday is tomorrow, which happens to be a Saturday. Fate, being the fickle mistress that she is, has apparently decided that the best way to celebrate my coming-of-age is to beat the ever-loving hell out of me via a bout of the stomach flu. Rather than make a post elaborating on my total incompetence at being an adult, as I originally intended, I'm going to talk about poop. Which, in a way, does more to elaborate on my incompetence than an actual dedicated post could ever hope to achieve.

In my defense, stomach flu-poop is really quite fascinating.

So for the last few days, my stomach has felt like it's been hosting a UFC cage match; one in which everybody is equipped with chainsaws that they're constantly jamming into the walls of my stomach because they hate me (my more devout readers will notice this is the second time in a row that I've used UFC cage matches to illustrate something. I have no excuse other than the fact that it's an effective comparison). I've been violently nauseous and I haven't been able to eat anything for fear of pissing off my metaphorical stomach fighters. But yesterday morning, something felt different.

Something jolted me out of my sleep. It was still dark inside, and all was silent in my house. I wasn't sure what exactly had woken me up; what I was aware of was the fact that my stomach didn't feel like it was on fire. After several seconds of continued non-pain, I sank into a deep cushion of happiness and tranquility. At last, I thought. The war has ended. I smiled, snuggling deep into my pillow. I let my guard down.

That was my fatal mistake.

"YOU GOIN' DOWN, MUHFUCKA."

I felt a subtle shifting somewhere within my lower intestines. Huh. That felt weird. It was unexpected, sure, but I quickly dismissed it as hunger-rumblings due to the fact that I hadn't eaten in a few days. Oh well, back to sleep, I thought lazily. Unfortunately for me, about 3 seconds later, that subtle shifting had evolved into an intestinal earthquake, and I was quickly aware that something was very, very wrong.

Oh God oh God oh God bathroom bathroom I need the bathroom WHY IS MY MOM IN THE BATHROOM OH NO. I was running out of time. I simply couldn't wait for my mom to finish whatever she was doing and, in a panic, I rushed to the downstairs bathroom, my stomach violently protesting the entire time.

Here's the thing. I think that, for almost everyone, there's a room in their house that they just don't like being in. Maybe it's creepy, or it smells funny, or it's where their grandma keeps her doll collection and they all seem to stare at you with their empty doll-eyes the moment you enter the room because you have a soul and they just want to RAPE IT SILLY. 

Ahem.

For me, that unwanted room has always been my downstairs bathroom. It's this dingy little yellowed room with broken tiles and bugs everywhere. I've lived in my house for nearly 9 years and I have yet to use that bathroom without watching a spider or an ant or a goddamn centipede crawl across the floor. 

YOU DON'T BELONG IN HOUSES CENTIPEDE. GO AWAY. 

Unfortunately, I was in a desperate situation, so without hesitation, I hurdled into the bathroom, slammed the door shut and sat myself down on the toilet. This is normally the part where I describe, with the use of colorful adjectives and brilliant imagery, exactly what it felt like when I finally unleashed that most stupendous of bowel movements upon that poor, unsuspecting toilet. In this case, however, I feel that less is more, so I'll try to say it as succinctly and concisely as possible:

I shotgun-shat christmas colors.

Seriously you guys, I could cut my arm off and it wouldn't be as bloody as my poop was. After 10 minutes of agonizing geyser-shitting, the inside of my toilet looked like one of Hannibal Lecter's more disturbing wet dreams. To take your mind off of that disgusting imagery, here are some unrelated pictures.

Haha! I'm just kidding. They're all related.

Why We Don't Do Thanksgiving At My House Anymore

My family has always reminded me of the family in the TV show Roseanne, in the sense that just about everyone I'm related to is fat and none of us like each other. Now my goal isn't to speak ill of my family, because obviously I love everyone I'm related to...kind of. That being said, it shouldn't surprise anyone in my family when I say that most of us are dysfunctional jackasses who have a really hard time doing anything effectively.

It's like looking in a mirror, except minus the part where my mom lost her friggin' mind and ruined the whole series.

Case in point: we used to do Thanksgiving at my house. My mom's siblings would all fly in from Chicago, my grandparents would drive down, and the holiday would usually be spent watching football and stuffing our faces with enough food to render us clinically comatose. It was a fine process that seemed to be going swimmingly, at least until a few years ago.

See, I only have two aunts and one grandma. Well, I did. Grandma's dead now.

"Alright Johann, thanks for making this awkward."

You're welcome!

So at the time, I had two aunts and a grandma, and I wish I could phrase this any other way but they all hated each other's guts. I mean, I love them and all, but good lord did they despise each other. Anytime these three were in the room, it was a given that whatever conversation ensued between them would be rife with snide insinuations and backhanded compliments. We - that is to say, the rest of my family and I - had all gotten very good at ignoring these awkward spiteful interjections, and it was an unspoken rule that, should any bickering ensue, we would simply let them have at it until they tuckered themselves out like little puppies. Hatred puppies. 

As is usually the case with most family feuds, this thinly-veiled antagonism could only gain so much pressure until it finally exploded. I was young and don't remember all the details, but I'll do my level best to give a factual account, being sure to take only as much artistic license with the story as I want because I'm the author and shut up. First, a bit of necessary back story.

My two aunts (we'll call them Red and Blue) wanted to murder each other. Red is the daughter of my grandma (we'll call her grandma) and Blue is related by marriage. Blue had taken quite the disliking to my grandma, which is one of the main reasons why Red hated her, as Red generally got along with my grandma fairly well. End back story.

By the time the Thanksgiving dinner was ready, the air was already thick with tension. Blue had been taking potshots at my grandma throughout the afternoon, and Red (who's never had much restraint to begin with) was ready to take a hatchet to her skull. Grandma, who I remember fondly as being quite the badass, was also fed up with Blue, and it was only a matter of time before the family dinner turned into a three-way UFC cage match. In addition to all this, my mom's brothers (who were perpetually annoyed by Red) were getting sick of what they perceived as Red's increasingly flighty and stupid behavior. My mom was doing her best to keep things calm, but there's only so much one woman can do to combat years of dysfunctional family issues. Everyone was ready to explode, and it was simply a matter of who would fire first.

Imagine enjoying a nice Thanksgiving dinner with five of these at the table. 

The straw that broke the proverbial camel's back came when Blue made some particularly nasty remark about grandma. Red, who had been stewing throughout the day, just lost her shit. I mean...goodness gracious. A mightier bitch has yet to be flipped as the one that she flipped that day. Grandma and Red engaged Blue in a verbal battle worthy of song, and my uncles seemed to decide that they might as well start screaming too because why not. 

After much cussing, accusing and slander, everyone sort of left. Grandma and grandpa drove home early, Red and Blue were about to slit each other's throats, my normally jovial uncles were fury incarnate, and my mom was in tears. Truly, Thanksgiving was in shambles. Everybody filed out of the house, leaving my dad and I sitting awkwardly at the table by ourselves. We watched everyone leave, we looked at each other, and then we looked at the table. What we saw looked a lot like this.

My dad, ever the fountain of wisdom and knowledge, grabbed his silverware and exclaimed "hell yeah, more of us! Dig in kid!"

Dinner was ruined, but my dad and I feasted like kings that day. It was a real bonding experience.