| Past Grievances |
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Just when you think all is well ...
Adult Fairy Tales
Can you read this?
Merry Christmas!!!
It's CHRISTmas!!!
Male Intuition
Eureka!
Who Wants To Know?
My Next 30 Years
Healing Power of Writing
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Monday, January 17, 2005 |
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Tooth Fairy
Last night, Zach pulled one of his molars that’s been loose for a couple weeks. Even though I was proud of him for having the courage, all I could do was find enough self-control amidst my suffering to give him a hug.
The funny thing is, about a month before, he had brought up the “tooth fairy”. A friend of his lost a tooth, and he was telling me that even though his friend believed in the Tooth Fairy, he didn't.
I started telling him about the movie “Darkness Falls” and told him that it’s a true story. I guess he remembered our conversation because when Mom showed up and told him to make sure to put his tooth under his pillow, he said, “I’ll just put it on top of this (the entertainment center).”
Even though he asked Greg about it one night we were over at his house because he saw Greg had the movie, and Greg said everything I told him was true except that it’s fiction and not fact, I could still tell Zach was a little reluctant to put the tooth under his pillow.
It wasn’t until Mom told him that I was "full of it" that he decided I was lying to him.
Had I felt better, I would have, of course, tried to persuade him that I was the only one telling the truth. I would have said something like, “Think about it! If the Tooth Fairy is real, what weirdo supernatural being would sneak into a kids room and exchange their old, rotten teeth for money?”
I really don’t think it would have done any good though because I really think he’s too smart to believe in the Tooth Fairy. It’s funny, I know he knows better than to believe in something as absurd as the Tooth Fairy, but it’s like he’s more than willing to believe in the dark, scary, things that go bump in the night even if it’s more absurd.
It’s like, he said with all sincerity that he didn’t believe in the Tooth Fairy, and I believed him. I could tell that he didn’t. It was that confidence that made me want to mess with him a little and make him second-guess himself ... so I told him about “Darkness Falls.”
It wasn’t until I told him this dark story about the Tooth Fairy that he started to believe she might be real. It’s like he couldn’t fathom a gentle and benign Tooth Fairy that secretly exchanged your old teeth for money, but found it easy to believe in a bitter, weird, scary, murdering ghost that would kill you if you caught a glimpse of her.
I don’t get that about him, why he’s so willing to believe in the bad things. He gets scared so easily, but I think he likes it. I swear, he's so much like his Mom!
I didn’t help though. Like with my sisters and friends, I’ve tormented him with practical jokes and pranks his whole life. My most successful was the one about the scarabs.
He had watched “The Mummy” over at our house when it first came out on DVD and for some reason was terrified of the Scarab Beetles. That’s all he talked about and kept asking if they were real.
Well, one day I was over here and watched him while my Grandpa went somewhere. It was a nice summer day, so we were playing outside. For some reason, he brought up the scarabs and I got a clever idea.
I found one of his lil’ bouncy balls, the kind you get out of like a gumball machine, and taped a long piece of twine to it. I threaded it in through my shirt-sleeve, down across my torso, down my leg, and into my sock.
While I was standing on a lil’ patch of loose dirt on the front lawn, I shouted to him, “Come look at this, I think I just saw a scarab!”
He froze! He looked at me and said, “Nuh uh.”
I said, “That’s what it looked like.”
He states, “Gran’ma says they’re not real.” Then half pleading and half demanding, he says, “Don’t scare me.”
I was like, “Come and look for yourself.”
As he starts walking towards me, I howl in pain. I clutch my foot and stand hopping one-legged in agony.
He stops and says, “Don’t!” It’s like he knew I was faking, but wasn’t quite sure.
I hopped to the picnic table and started franticly untying my shoe. He finally asks, “What!? What is it!?”
In a panic, I say, “I think one got in my shoe and is trying to get in my foot!”
I see him watching my shoe with a look of concern now on his face. I suddenly stomp my foot on the ground and let out another agonizing howl and throw myself on the picnic table. I shouted, “Take off my shoe! TAKE OFF MY SHOE!!”
He is now very scared. I can tell he wants to help, but is afraid. When he approached to try and help, I let out another howl and writhed in agony on the table, which made him step back.
On his second approach, I just pretended to be in agony because I didn’t want to scare him away. When he got real close to my shoe, I grabbed the little piece of twine sticking out of my t-shirt sleeve and started slowly tugging on it.
All of a sudden, he sees this bulge under my pant leg moving up my leg and across my torso. He jumps back. When it gets to my armpit opposite him, out of sight, I start convulsing.
This is where I really got hurt.
My plan was to convulse until I fell onto one of the table’s benches. Well, unbeknownst to me, someone had placed a ladder across the bench I was to fall onto … rather hard I might add.
When I fell and landed across this ladder, I was in REAL pain! My back hurt really bad and so did the back of my head!
What’s funny is that the real pain just convinced him more, so I guess it worked out better than I would have thought.
Anyway, I’m lying there, seriously in pain but suppose to be pretending. Worried and almost in tears, he says, “I’m going to get you help!”
He starts running toward the neighbors, which is quite a distance away out here in the country. I let him get about 15 feet and called him back. I started to feel really bad because I could see him wipe tears from his eyes. When he got back, I asked him to help me up. When I got to my feet, I started tickling his sides and taunted, “I got ya … I got ya!”
Still worried, he asks, “So you’re okay? There’s nothing really wrong? There’s no scarabs? You were just lying?”
I said, “Yeah, there are scarabs, but I don’t think they get under your flesh and as far as I know, exist in Egypt and around that area. So yeah, I was faking, but now I’m really hurt since I fell on that ladder!”
He looked at me as if to say, “Well, you deserve it!”
When my Grandpa got back, he said, “I’m not staying with Shane any more!”
My oldest uncle found out about the prank and laughed so hard he could barely speak. He said, “I wish I could have seen that because I know how scared he is of those scarabs.” I guess my uncle tried to get Zach to watch “The Mummy” at his house after he seen it at mine and he freaked out and wouldn’t even let my uncle put it in.
What’s so funny about Zach is that he’s scared of his own shadow, like his Mom, but doesn’t think twice about other things most people would be too squeamish to do.
Like this one time, I bought a new shirt and it had pins in it. I took the pins out and didn’t notice what he was doing. He was sticking the pins through his skin!
I freaked. I was like, “What the hell are you doing?”
In a tone that would have you believe his actions were totally normal, he says, “What?”
I’m like, “First of all, you should sterilize something before you go poking it through your skin, and secondly, why are you doing that?”
He asks in disbelief, “You’ve never done it?”
I said, “Why would I?”
He just gave me this look and I immediately took the pins. He pleads, “Can’t I at least have one?”
I took a match and sterilized three of them. I handed them to him and said, “Knock yourself out!”
He then wants me to try it and is begging and pleading me to let him stick them through my skin. He assures, “It doesn’t hurt!”
I told him, "That’s not why I don’t want to do it. Once you learn to stick a 2” needle in yourself every two weeks … you don’t think much about it. It just seems like such an odd thing to do for no reason."
Then I thought, “What the hell.” I held out my hand and said, “Here ya go.”
In less than two minutes I had three needles burrowed beneath the skin in my hand, and I have to admit, I didn’t feel a thing. I mean, with the injections, I at least felt the pressure build in my skin before the needle broke through and plunged into my leg muscle.
Anyway, I don’t get how a kid can stick needles under his skin and pull his teeth without flinching, but is afraid of his own imagination.
Hmm …
Anyway, Zach was happy to find a dollar under his pillow. I wanted it to be a Sacagawea Dollar, but no one had one. I just thought it would be cooler for a kid to receive a gold coin dollar than a regular dollar because it’s not something they see very often. I guess I thought it would make it more magical.
-wink-
Other links concerning the Sacagawea Dollar:
Frequently Asked Questions
Sacagawea: The Early Years
Posted by: Shane
Posted at: 8:30 PM
0 comment(s)
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*Influenza
Pronunciation: "in-(")flü-'en-z&
Function: noun
Etymology: Italian, literally, influence, from Medieval Latin influentia; from the belief that epidemics were due to the influence of the stars
1 : an acute highly contagious disease caused by any of several single-stranded RNA viruses (family Orthomyxoviridae) and characterized by sudden onset, fever, prostration, severe aches and pains, and progressive inflammation of the respiratory mucous membrane; broadly : a human respiratory infection of undetermined cause
*Courtesy of Merriam-Webster Online
I haven't had the flu in years, but I've got it twice in less than a month. There goes my lucky streak!
Anyway, I just puked my guts up again! That’s how I spent Christmas morning too.
Zach got sick about 4-5 days before Christmas and it hit me on Christmas morning. Some present! I did manage to eat a little that day … even though I was scared of an encore performance.
Once again, a few days ago (Thursday night), Zach came home from a friend’s (Kevin's) and was throwing up. He slept all night and woke up Friday feeling fine and even though he didn’t go to school, he had a friend (Josh) spend the night. He had two friends (both Josh and Kevin) spend Saturday night!
Well, I got home late this morning (Sunday morning) and went to sleep, but kept waking up because I felt sick and had to go to the bathroom extremely often … if you know what I mean. I lay around and slept on and off all day hoping to eventually wake up feeling better … but NO!
Even though I’ve barely eaten a thing in the last two days, I think I’ve thrown up more than I ever have before. I felt like I was in the “Exorcist”. It just kept coming!
Then of course, no incident of vomiting is truly complete until you have the requisite dry heaves to bring it to its cruel and bitter (but much anticipated) end. I think I ruptured my throat!
Mom just got here right after it happened, when I was brushing my teeth. I don’t know how people can throw up and not brush their teeth.
Anyway, Mom had brought me some Canada Dry Ginger Ale and some Edy’s Whole Fruit Strawberry Bars. She asked me if I wanted anything and I had her fix me a cup of Earl Grey tea.
That’s what I’m drinking right now … err … sipping on.
Mom’s been staying here through the week because Dan has to work third shift for three months.
I miss living in Ashland. I miss my Internet connection! It started out as like 1.5 MB/sec but I could never get more than 800 KB/sec at that time when I’d do an Internet Speed Test.
Then they doubled the bandwidth to 3 MB/sec for free and I’d usually get about 4 MB/sec on the test.
What I realized though is that it didn’t matter because most servers I was accessing topped out at around 600 KB/sec.
There was this one time I downloaded an expensive program and that company must have had a lot of bandwidth and blazing speed because the program was 20 MB in size and took between 4-5 seconds to download. I was wishing everything was that fast!
It’s not just the Internet connection I miss though, I’ve spent most of the last half of my life there. A lot has happened during that time.
It just felt like home.
Plus, for the last year, I’ve practically had the place to myself and could have anyone over at any time or do whatever I wanted without having to worry about waking anyone. Not that I didn’t do those things when other’s were living there as well, it’s just then I did them without inhibition I guess.
Okay, this is where I stopped writing my entry and went to lay down for a few minutes because I started feeling really sick again. Instead, I fell asleep for several hours.
I was just lying down for "a few minutes" and Zach came in and cuddled up next to me. He had been watching one of my “Ghost Stories”* DVDs and I’m sure he was scared. I eventually fell asleep.
I woke up around 4 a.m. feeling REALLY sick again. I was burning up, but freezing at the same time. I lay there a while trying to get the strength to go to the bathroom yet again.
Every time I tried getting out of bed, even though he was a good half-foot from me and I was being very quite, Zach would sit bolt upright and ask, “What are you doing?” I’d just lie back down.
The first time he called me Josh; I guess he thought I was his friend that spent all weekend.
After the fourth try, I finally told him I had to go to the bathroom, so he got up and went into the living room and lay down on the sofa.
After going to the bathroom, I grabbed my puke bucket because I thought for sure even though the only thing that could be in my stomach was the tea I had drank … I really thought I was going to throw up again.
I lay down once more and tossed and turned and writhed in agony because I couldn’t get comfy. I was so hot, but so freakin’ cold at the same time and extremely achy! I managed to take my temperature when I was up and it was 102° F.
Once again I managed to fall back asleep, but woke up just a little bit ago (6:30 a.m.) because Mom was leaving and was checking on me before she left. I got up and walked to the door with her and grabbed me a Strawberry bar (which I’m eating right now) and a can of Ginger Ale.
I pray they stay down! I know I need something in me because I’ve lost so much fluid that I am so freakin’ weak! It takes everything in me just to walk through the house and I get so dizzy I feel like I could collapse.
I’m thinking of making a doctor’s appointment today to at least have my ribs checked out. It’s been three weeks since I thought I could have broke a few and they’re not any better. They started to feel somewhat better, but apparently I did some kind of damage to them while I was vomiting.
I’m a violent vomiter (is that even a word?)! I envy people who can throw up like it’s nothing. You can probably hear me from a mile away. I swear, every muscle in my body from my toes to my head strain so hard that I think they’re going to pop through my skin.
Actually, it kind of feels like my insides are trying to get out!
Anyway, I can hardly bare it when I accidentally lay on the side my ribs are hurting. It feels really sore and sometimes it takes my breath, like someone just stuck a knife into my lung.
I would have gone to the doctor earlier, but I’m sure there’s nothing they can do for it except put a wrap around my torso.
-sigh-
I HATE going to the doctor, but I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since they’ve been injured.
Anyway, I’m going to end here for now. I came online as a distraction earlier, but it didn’t work and now I’m starting to feel sick again.
I guess eating that Strawberry bar wasn’t a good idea after all.
-crossing my fingers-
* I bought my copy of "Ghost Stories" at Best Buy for like $15.88 or something. I was surprised to see them on Buy.com for over $42.00!
Posted by: Shane
Posted at: 7:08 AM
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| MARVEL, SPIDER-MAN, DOCTOR OCTOPUS and all MARVEL character names and distinctive likenesses thereof: TM & © 2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved. MARVEL and SPIDER-MAN: Trademarks registered in the USA and certain other countries. © 2003 Sony Pictures Digital Inc. All rights reserved. |
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