I Got the Chills

With winter coming to an end, one has to truly appreciate the sensitivity of the human body, the earth and the sun.  The spectrum of temperature ranges feasibly obtainable in the universe is so sweepingly broad that the odds of a world coming to exist where the temperature range is so minisculely tiny with respect to the possible temperatures are just staggering.

Alas, we are the fortunate souls to have played the game of improbability and won.  One would think that evolution would create temperature resistant living beings, where the range of temperature they are capable of enduring is so large that what we know as climate would have no bearing on their senses. 

Unfortunately, we are not those beings.  Which brings me to a story about a large trash can.

The year: 2000.  Or 2001?  I don't know.  I was in high school.  I, of course, lived at home with my parents.  The days were cold, but bearable.  Sometimes I wondered if Billy Joel's song Goodnight Saigon was actually written, in part, about my bed room.  "And the nights...seemed to last as long as six weeks."  Yes, the song is more than likely written about the Vietnam War, but you can't help but consider the option that it was indeed about a cold bedroom (note the blue).

But I digress.  In order to understand, I have to tell you of the heat ventilation of my parents' house.  The furnace was in the basement, at approximately the opposite corner of the house from my room which was two stories above.  The ventilation was more than likely not optimized for heat transfer to all corners of the house.  And don't get me wrong; the vast majority of the home is sufficiently warm at night.

Night after night, year after year, my inferior evolutionary state forced me to huddle in layers of blankets, struggling to either stay warm with head exposed, or to breathe with head covered.  (The woes are notably documented by Billy Joel.  See above.)

Turn up the heat, you say?  That was not in the cards.  Without condemning myself to being removed from the will of those who created me, I will simply say I had no intention to mess with their dial.  Dad gets the big piece of chicken, and mom gets the temperature control.  Laws of nature passed down since the dawn of time. 

Now, I am an engineer.  Some may say, I have always been an engineer.  We don't just sit around and struggle futilely with the situations at hand, we think about them and look for solutions.

Needless to say, LIGHT BULB!  EUREKA!  VARIOUS OTHER WAYS TO EXPRESS THE EXALTATION UPON REALIZATION OF A SOLUTION!

As I lie in my bed, (or is it lay?  I'm too lazy to look it up...this is one of those english things I never cared to remember.  It's ok, I know the differences between "you're" and "your", so I am covered),...As I lay in my bed, tremoring uncontrollably after a hot shower, a thought occurs to me.  Hot shower.  Hot shower.  WATER.  HOT WATER.

But...how??  As I look around my room, I notice my trash can.  I was a presumably filthy child, or else never disposed of my trash, because I needed an enormous plastic trash can.  This thing would easily fit sufficient steaming water to heat my room!  Never again would I suffer through a cold night!

That night, with my body purposefully at the edge of the bed intaking the radiating heat from the steaming hot water, I went back to bed feeling like I could take on the world. 

...Minutes passed.  I was cold again.  I glanced at the water.  It no longer radiated heat.  In fact, it was lukewarm to the touch.  The agony of my defeat was profound, and I soon fell asleep feeling totally defeated.

I prefix the remainder of this story with the following:  At this point in my life, I was the ultimate horror novel reader.  I would constantly push the limits of what scared me (it took very little) and struggle through nights of expecting attack by each new horrific creature I had read about. 

One specific book called "Nightworld" by F. Paul Wilson ended a certain series of books I was reading.  In essence, it details the end of the world where holes into what-we-would-call hell open up all around the globe, from which ravenous bugs and various other creatures that will eat you or feed you to their young are expelled.  The entirety of the book involves these creatures eating and killing. 

I'm not sure why, but one creature in particular always latched onto my memory.  It was described as some flying thing with razor sharp glass teeth that would just ruin your day (eat you).  For some reason, I always pictured it as being a horseshoe crab with razor sharp teeth on the bottom.  You knew they were coming because of their very loud buzzing sound.

The cold room story then jumps forward a few days.  The bucket of water still sat next to my bed, now cold, exchanging no heat with the air around it.

I slumbered, braving the cold, the body heat trapped in the blankets having slowly allowed me to be comfortable enough to sleep.  That, however, did not last.

I awoke to the most terrifying sound I have ever heard in my life.  A very loud, scratchy, wing buzzing, noise that could not be mistaken as anything but the bringer of the end. 

Immediately, I knew the apocalyse was upon us.  F. Paul was not just a writer, but Nostradamus reincarnate.  Where the hole in the earth had opened, I did not know.  But I did know, I was about to be eaten alive.  First, I huddled in terror.  It kept going.  Finally, I gathered enough courage to approach the window.  The blinds were closed and I couldn't see outside.  The best thing I could think of was to slap the window and yell at it.  Back with you, demons! 

When that had no effect, I knew my fate was sealed.  I dove back to my bed.  Now, usually, if I dove therefrom back to my bed, I would have ended the description with that.  But, this day, an object stood in my way.  Needless to say, I crashed through a very full plastic trash can, spewing gallons of water everywhere. 

Does it matter?!  My mind screamed.  I am dead anyway.  It occurs to me the sound is taunting me, and I would be able to throw some towels down while the horseshoe crab monsters bidded their time.  Luckily, I thought, they will taunt me until the sun comes up.  Then they must go back to their hole. I knew I had another day.  I courageously cleaned the water through their screeching wing demoralization, trembled in the cold of my bed, and endured the night until the first ray of sunlight shone upon my window. 

The next day, venturing into the backyard ever so cautiously, the sound was gone.  The central air conditioner, however, had been mauled by a snapped blade on the fan. 

I had accepted death and discovered the apocalypse was yet to come.  Life thereon would be sweet.  Every day thereafter was a day to be remembered and especially valued.  Yes, I had turned down a new path. 

Then, not too long after, I discovered calculus.  Damn delayed apocalypse....

The end.

Sick days

I'm sick.  Not one of those no good, can't move, wish you could just die already illnesses like the flu, where when you finally bounce back you feel like you could take on the world.  No, no.  This is one of those boring, tedious, wish you could just get over this crap already sicknesses.  Not enough to incapacitate, but enough to annoy.

Which got me to thinking about my youth.  Sick days did not come often.  I was so innocent and...driven, back then.  Driven is the wrong word.  I just hadn't come to truly understand the opportunities I had.  I may have missed a few days here and there, but I was definitely one of those near-perfect attendance types.  Sickness or not. 

I remember being in the back of class just coughing my head off on a regular basis. 

A friend would suggest I go home, or to the nurse, SOMEWHERE away from this treacherous social studies class.

But "nay!" I would say.  Today we learned about George Washington.  Or..Martin Luther!  Or was it Black History Month? 

No, no.  On the days I should have been home, I was in my seat at class, being a good student.  Note the halo.

That is not to say that I did not have sick days.  These were the days I cherished.  Mrs. Grass chicken noodle soup (extra sodium please?), in my huge brown bowl with a piece chipped off the top.

Wrapping up in that same green afghan so purposely made with huge holes that somehow still kept you warm, and sitting down to watch some of the most amazing television to ever air.  We all watched it on our sick days.

THE PRICE IS RIGHT!

Bidding in our heads the prices of things we, as young children to never shop for 99% of the things on the show, somehow know the prices of better than the adult contestants.  And it was always appropriate to bid $1.  How can you be so foolish to not see that!?  What really grinded my gears (I am simply using that phrase because I wanted to use that phrase) was when someone would feel they were so smart that they'd go between bids of, say, 850 and 900 by saying 851.  Way to go, fail.  You were wrong!?  Here's your slap in the face.

But even better, even better than The Price is Right, was Cartoon Network.  Why?  A Pup Named Scooby Doo.  The show had sheek, good looking colors where character movements flowed unlike any older scooby doo counterparts.  The story lines were so grappling, the pot smoking so innocently unnoticed, the awesomeness unparalleled.  These were the days I cherished.

Its odd to think that, years later, I've dropped so low in my personal expectations.  Life is good, but...that innocuous sense of necessity to achieve is what drove me through so many years of success as a budding mind.  To think that it is gone and replaced by a sense to cut corners is unfortunate.

So, this next shot of alcohol-containing medicine is to Bob Barker and a Pup Named Scooby Doo.