I’m a very nervous person, possibly a hypochondriac. I pour over Webmd whenever I have an ailment. My toenail is turning purple? Must be a tumor! Headache? Brain cancer! My thoughts about my innards usually revolve around cancer of some sort.
Until Senior year, I would take my self diagnosis’s in stride, and forget about them after five minutes. That is, until I encountered mucus, from all the wrong places. This was strange to me, I shouldn’t be hawking a lougee from places completely foreign from my mouth. I don’t know who approved my spit a green card to my butt, but they need to be fired.
Of course, I Webmded it, and I found an appalling answer. Anal Prolapse. It’s just as bad as it sounds. When one strains bodily functions, their organs might slide out. In my bizarre sense of reasoning, I thought this would be the perfect condition to diagnose myself with, and it fit the bill for my general personality. I accepted my fate, clicked off the web browser and wallowed on my twitter account.
Approaching the school, my mind was on my stool. I weeped to my friends that at any moment, my intestines might slip out, and how that would be social suicide if that were to happen. They cackled, they possessed the sick humor that I had, and I smirked too, proud that in even my darkest (and slimiest) times that I could humor my friends. They urged me to tell a teacher, not out of fear for my life, but for insane laughs. The peer pressure got to me, and I wanted to see Mrs.Steffen’s reaction to my “little problem”. She smirked at my strained description of Anal Prolapse, closing her eyes and afraid of what I might respond to her upcoming question, she asks, “What are your symptoms?” the class was laughing in their auditorium seats, I had to tell her, but in a way that was respectable to the student teacher relationship. I love having fun and slinging out jokes, but I know when and where to stop, and if I don’t, I feel guilty for years about crossing that line. “Mucus…” I whisper, my hand cuffed over my mouth. She purses her lips with her eyes closed, and lets out a hoarse, “Okay. You need to check that out. But it might be just a hemorrhoid.” A hemorrhoid, even though with Steffen’s theater, raspy, booming voice that usually excites me to the stage, it didn’t sound as appealing as Anal Prolapse. Anal Prolapse sounds adventurous, climactic, and even exciting. It’s a great story to blog about when the organs hit the fan. But a hemorrhoid? Hemorrhoids just stay in a cavern nagging you like Golem, and if they don’t get what they want they just hurt. The bell rings, and I think about this new unofficial diagnosis.
I go home, and tell my father the news. Disgusted, he decides to tell me to call my mother, who’s a nurse. We decide on running tests in the lab, in which I get to “go” in a bag. I find this concept utterly exotic. I’m someone with very strict bathroom policies. It can’t be public, it has to be mine, it has to be cold, and it has to be spotless. But this bag enchanted me, I ponder during my classes about what this bag would look like, who touched it, what it was made out of, did it have a zip lock on the top? Or a special closing mechanism that doesn’t let the fecal matter fall out? The wonder!
I love pondering about strange things. On the Fourth of July, instead of appreciating the fireworks I stay inside and watch the Twilight Zone marathon. When everyone else is playing football, I stay at home singing to French rap while writing plays. I’m an out there person, and if you’re out there then at least you’re somewhere, and I’m happy with that.
