The MRI

After a month of unsuccessfully trying to rehab my knee on my own, I finally went to see an orthopedist yesterday. The good news was that I don’t have any broken bones or a dislocated knee cap. After jerking my knee in several different directions, the doctor was very confident that I also didn’t have any torn ligaments, but he wanted an MRI to confirm.

So today, I went to have an MRI. This was my first experience with an MRI that didn’t involve TV, and I had no idea what to expect. Since it was my knee, they didn’t make me change clothes or anything. I just had to remove everything from my pockets and take off my belt. In hindsight, I probably should have worn sweat pants or something, but I thought shorts might give easier access to my knee. The technician didn’t seem to think there was any issue with the giant magnet ripping my zipper off my pants, so I was okay with it too.

Generally speaking, I’m a relatively calm person. I don’t tend to fidget or need a constant physical outlet like some people. But when someone tells you that you can’t move, then all you want to do is move. So, I was stressing about trying to keep my knee perfectly still. And the more I tried not to move, the more my knee would spasm uncontrollably. So, I started to panic that I was going to screw up the imaging.

I was trying to determine the acceptable movement delta that surely had been calibrated into the machine, because nobody could be perfectly still for 20 minutes. Then, I was trying to determine if I’d exceeded that threshold. This was becoming so mentally exhausting that I eventually dozed off. But when I realized that I had dozed off, I jolted awake with a start. Then, I started to panic that my jolt had exceeded the threshold and started all over again.

While I was dozing, I was consciously aware of the giant magnetic field surrounding my body. I could feel it reverberating across my skin and moving the hairs on my legs. I started to imagine that I was being affected by the field and that it was changing me, imbuing me with superpowers. I dreamed that I was Spider-Man, which is when I woke up.

Then, I started to wonder if I really would get superpowers from this like a bionic leg or something. On one hand it would be cool to be able to run faster and jump higher. On the other hand, it would be inconvenient to only have it on one leg. I imagined myself running in circles because the “normal” leg couldn’t keep up with my new bionic leg. Or trying to jump, only to end up going sideways.

With that, the time just flew by. Twenty minutes seemed more like five. I entertained myself with my overactive imagination. And this is precisely why I shouldn’t be left alone with my thoughts for too long. And in case anyone was wondering, no I didn’t get a bionic leg.

Real Food Allergies

I have two strange food allergies. Both are mild, but the effects are annoying enough that I generally avoid these foods. I am allergic to jalapeño seeds and onions. Most people don’t believe it’s an allergy unless you break out in hives or are on the verge of death…neither of which happens if I consume these two foods. But they are real allergies nonetheless.

With jalapeño seeds, I get the hiccups. The only time I consume these are either in salsa at a Tex-Mex restaurant or sometimes on nachos, but without fail I will get the hiccups. And yes, just the seeds, not any other part of the pepper. I’ve experimented on myself extensively.

With onions, I get very bad indigestion. It doesn’t matter if the onions are raw or cooked. I became so sensitive to the effects of onions in my food, that I could pinpoint a single chopped onion that was purposely inserted or aimlessly forgotten.

So, now you know. If I tell you that I can’t eat jalapeños or onions, that’s why. If I say I’m allergic, it’s a real thing. Don’t be disappointed if eating them doesn’t result in my imminent death!

No Reply

I really hate it when someone at work will send me a direct message that simply says, “Hi.” I move on to something else, waiting for whatever should come next, but it never does. It’s only later that I realize that the person won’t continue until I say “Hi” back. I don’t understand why people need some sort of acknowledgment before they can convey their request. Just send it all in a single message. I don’t have time for that kind of nonsense. I guess the bright side is that it usually takes me so long to get back to them that they've reached out to someone else to answer their question.

Singing Purple Leprechaun Monkeys with Sunglasses

When Google’s search engine first came out, I used to have this game I’d play with my friends to see if we could enter in the oddest combination of words to return exactly a single result. This is incredibly difficult, and even more so with how sophisticated the search engine has become now. It’s learned to return partial search results, “similar” search results, and even the “we think you meant this, you total moron” search results. Not to mention how much more information is actually available on the Internet now.

However, with a lot of time (and I mean missing out on your kid’s entire childhood kind of time) and a creative imagination, you can still do it. But the real fun is seeing if you can string several seemingly-nonsensical words together in the process and still find a page that has them in that exact order. For example, try this search string, which as of today, returns one single hit for a website selling t-shirts.

"singing" "purple leprechaun monkey with sunglasses" "dragons" "horror"

You can also adjacently learn a lot while doing this. For instance, there apparently used to be a pub in Nova Scotia called the Purple Leprechaun Roadhouse where the owner was inexplicably tased by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Now, I have to go get ready for my son’s college graduation. He was three when I started this game.

BONUS:  "Leek Soup and the Flatulating Tree" will also return a single result...and it just so happens to be to this very blog!

Erasing the Music Teacher

I have one memory from the second grade. That’s it; a single memory. And that was of getting into trouble for hitting a teacher with a chalk eraser. Now, before you go siding with the teacher against a mischievous youth, you have to hear the whole story.

Mr. Barckholtz was our music teacher. He was also a bully and physically abusive. But this was in the ‘80s, and back then teachers had supreme power to do whatever they wanted. He would never have gotten away with his antics nowadays. Anyway, he used to torture his students for his own amusement. He picked up my friend and threw him in a trash can for getting an answer wrong, or made up cruel nicknames for kids based on their name…things like that.

One day, when I walked up to the front of the room to turn in my quiz, he grabbed my arm and twisted it painfully behind my back. He asked me something, which I got wrong, so he held me like that, while he asked the wide-eyed, stunned class the same question. When nobody volunteered an answer, he refused to let me go. As I stood there humiliated and in pain, I searched for a solution.

There resting on a tray in front of me was a chalk eraser, full of chalk. Without thinking, I grabbed the eraser, twisted out of his grip, and whacked him in the head with it. He had a rectangular mark in his hair, and a cloud of white particles floated around him. At first he was just stunned, but all too quickly he became furious. He sent me to sit in the ledge outside the classroom and wait for my punishment.

While I sat there half in terror for the unfair punishment to come and half in mirth at the absurdity of the situation, my home room teacher Mrs. Commodo came walking up and asked me why I was sitting there. I relayed the entire story to her, and she told me that I shouldn’t have disrespected a teacher no matter what he did to me.

So, I ultimately got sent to the principal’s office, and nothing happened to him. When my mom found out, she was furious and demanded a meeting with the principal. She tore him a new one for letting that teacher do that to children. It must have had some effect, because Mr. Barckholtz never touched another student. But he also never missed an opportunity to take out his anger on me. And unfortunately, a few years later, he became my eighth grade homeroom teacher. So, he had a lot more opportunities to harass me after that.

The most ironic thing is that I only had a run-in with one other teacher at that school. The woman who made me pee in my pants in kindergarten, who later became my third grade teacher. And that woman was Mrs. Barckholtz, his wife. Nastiness must have run in the family.

Layers of Anticipation

When I was in high school, I used to wear a pair of shorts under my jeans or jean shorts. This pair of shorts was like athletic wear, and at any time, I could Magic Mike my outer pants off and be able to engage in an impromptu game of basketball or a romp in the park. I had to buy bigger outer pants to accommodate the extra clothing, and it wasn’t always the coolest option, temperature-wise. But I was faithful to this style well into college as well.

I’m not exactly sure why I started doing this, I think this originated from when I was on the soccer team, and I didn’t want to have to worry about changing in front of people. But it proved useful in a multitude of situations where one might need a change of clothing at a moment’s notice. It was like my own version of a secret superhero costume under my “normal” clothes. When I needed my superpowers, I’d run into a phone booth…or whatever was on hand…and assume a new identity. Instead of skinny, nerdy kid in street clothes, I was skinny, nerdy kid in athletic wear!

Unexplained Dreams

I had a strange dream last night where I was showing my spousal unit a photograph.

Me: “Look at this picture. On the wall in the back, you can see a painting of a tree. I painted it before we left our old house.”

Spousal Unit: “That’s so cool. It looks like stained glass. And the tree is so big that you can only see the bottom part. And are those branches curving down from the top?”

Me: “Yep. On one side is the sun, so the tree and branches are orange, yellow, and red. On the other side is the moon, so the tree and branches are blue, purple, and white.”

Spousal Unit: “Beautiful. Who are those people in the photograph?”

Me: “That’s my father, my ex girlfriend, and me.”

Spousal Unit: “What are you doing?”

Me: “We’re playing tennis.”

Spousal Unit: “Well, why is your father hanging upside down from a harness from the ceiling?”

Me: “I have no idea.”