The Origin of the Term A**hat

I am lucky enough to have met two of my closest friends, Alexis and Anthony, fourteen years ago, almost right after I moved back to the United States.

We were really cool

 

But it's okay, we turned out alright:

 

 

 

But, before we got all growed up and pretty, we were a mess. Okay fine. We are still a mess, we just got better at dressing up.

 

One story in particular sums up our relationship.

 

It was an afternoon during winter break and we were bored. Alexis needed to have her cell phone looked at, so the three of us went to the Verizon store. We were wandering around looking at fancy phones we couldn't afford when it happened. Anthony and I were messing around with a display case and we knocked the whole darn thing over. We're talking crashing, breaking, shrieking, knocked over. We looked at each other, and without a word ran out of the Verizon store, leaving Alexis to deal with the fall-out (hah, see what I did there?) of our mess.

 

Once we were outside, this is the conversation that should have happened:

 

"Oh man, that was really dumb, we should go back inside and deal with the mess we made instead of leaving it with her to clean up."

 

This is the conversation that happened:

 

"Well, that was a mess. Oh! Look! Party City! We should go in."

 

So, Anthony and I ran into Party City without a second thought. And then instead of feeling bad or worrying about our friend we had just heartlessly abandoned, we did this:

 

 

 

 

 

The signs of true friendship: a friend who is always willing to clean up after you and forgives you for running away from responsibility and/or a friend who takes pictures with you in hats at inappropriate times.  

 

 



27 Going on 90 #someonesavemefrommyself

During a conversation with a  friend at work, I had the epiphany that I am way behind the social media times – I don’t tweet or Instagram or Vine or any of that business, because I am apparently a 90 year-old, cranky woman on the inside. Snap Chat is a new (?) thing I know nothing about. Seriously. It might actually be Snapchat. I have no idea. Huh. Spellcheck recognizes Snapchat as a word. Even my word processor is more hip than me. Dang it.

Anyway. Snapchat, from my extraordinarily limited knowledge, is a program where you take a picture of something, send it to a friend, and it pops up on their phone for a few seconds before deleting itself. You can draw on said picture, for example adding hashtags (which I’m also behind on). Apparently it is often used for taking duck-faced selfies and other exciting updates on life. A real life example:

Picture: a young whippersnapper  from our office posing by a pool with a drink (sent to another person at our office). #biztrip.

When I saw it I couldn’t help but think, man, I must be getting old because that is the most ridiculous use of technology I’ve ever heard of. Biztrip. Who says that.

After a conversation regarding that Snapchat and the silliness of young people today with my friends at work (remember, 90 year-old woman here) I could not help but think about what I would Snapchat if I decided that it was a necessary means of communication.

That afternoon I was sitting in the lady doctor’s office, all hiked up, and thought it’d be funny if I could send them the following:

Picture: my knees and hospital gown. #gyntime.

Which then lead me to think that, that is exactly why adults like me shouldn’t Snapchat.

Picture: me in pajama pants on the couch. #realtiredofthingslikepantsandresponsibility.

Picture: summertime electric bill. #cantbeattheheat.

Picture: clock showing 10:30pm. #ughonlygoingtoget7andahalfhoursofsleep.

Picture: the horrible moment when you first look in the mirror in the morning. #thethingsofnightmares.

Needless to say, I will leave the snapchatting (can it even be used as a verb?) to the young and hip while I look for a rocking chair that will fit on my stoop so I can shake my fist and yell at small children. #getoffmylawnyoulittlepunks.  

Anesthesia Brings Out the Best in Me

I have no filter, and that is especially true when I am sick. Turns out I'm a loon when medicine, doctors, or hospitals are involved. And kind of a jerk.

When I was four years old I had pneumonia and the nurse was struggling to get an IV in my arm. I was screaming in Japanese and my parents could not understand what I was saying (one of the many joys of third culture parenting). They asked the nurse what I was saying and all she would say was, "All I feel comfortable repeating is that she is very, very angry."

When I was eight I was in the hospital for an unidentified seizure disorder and I ran around the room screaming, "I love this place! I get to play all day and people always bring me presents! BEST DAY EVER!!"

At thirteen I was told that I would need headgear and I threw a full on, on the floor screaming temper tantrum that I'm pretty sure insulted my dentist's competency and possibly his mother (as a side note I did not ever wear headgear).

At fifteen I had my first colonoscopy and as I was coming out of anesthesia I flung myself off the bed, grabbed the nurse, and screamed, "DO YOU LOVE JESUS?!?" Luckily, she did, because I'm pretty sure my technique needed some refining.

I had my appendix out at sixteen, and fun fact, when you have appendicitis they test for it with a CT scan with contrast. The contrast is not put in your veins, but up your bum. Ick. As I was laying on the table clenching with all my might, I turned to the tech and said, "is this really what you do for a living? I bet you get real tired of butts."

Eighteen years-old, after having a surgery on my leg, I groggily convinced the poor nurse they had operated on the wrong leg. They hadn't.

After I had my tonsils out when I was twenty (I enjoy getting rid of superfluous organs) I was asked what my pain was on a scale from 1 to 10. I hacked and cackled about it not being a 10 because I hadn't broken my femur (five thousand bonus points if you know why I said that) and then got incredibly cranky when no one got my joke.

Last year, I was in the emergency room for an ovarian cyst and a resident walked in (you can tell from the manic, bright-eyed smile and the crappy shoes) and I put my hand up and said "nope. No. Go get a real doctor. Nope. No."

Maybe one day I won't act like a crazy person when I'm at the hospital. But where's the fun in that??