|
SubscriptionsSites I Read
|
|
|
|
| Hey Xanga:
Noah Biorkman is a 5 y.o. boy who is dying of cancer. His family is celebrating Christmas next week as he may not live to see it this year.
All he wants is Christmas cards. Lets try and see how many we can get to him. His address is:
1141 Fountain View Circle South Lyon, Mi 48178
| | |
| There was a specific moment where I knew it was the worst point imaginable.
I guess “A Series of Unfortunate Events” or “Things Fall Apart” might be a good explanation of what occurred to me. I’ll back up as far as I think needs to be done for proper plot. My parents had a highly envious marriage, and were quite literally a fairytale couple. It was a perfect, and I mean literally a perfect childhood. Nobody believed just how happy they were with their families and such, then my mom began menopause and her hormones went completely astray. She began speaking gibberish, and accusing all of us of conspiring against her, and would attack me for not “taking her side”. My dad was alienated, and the heated arguments drove it worse, wedging apart me from my sisters. Then my mom started mixing sleeping pills and alcohol and went class 9 Baker Act psycho.
This all occurred in middle and high school, and through that time, I did everything to mentally escape. I played every sport I could. I was on all the clubs I could muster. I was in all the highly advanced classes. All of this was to occupy time so I could avoid life, and not because I thought it would get me into a good college, and not to show off to people. I played my heart out on the sports I participated in, and was the classic “star jock” type of person, but was also doing AP and IB. Everything came so easily to me that I had to go completely bonkers overboard to create enough of a challenge to distract me. I worked well beyond my physical limit many times, and had 4 major surgeries by the time I left.
My senior year comes along, and I suffer a severe concussion playing football. I immediately couldn’t remember the week prior, and thus couldn’t remember what my homework assignments. I couldn’t remember the fighting. I couldn’t remember much of anything, and that weekend was pure bliss for the only time during those years. The memory issues crept along, destroying everything I held dear. I forgot who I was dating, and thought we were just friends. I alienated people because I forgot about friendships. By the time graduation came, I only wanted to dart away to college.
My first year of college was hell. I was roomed in my dorm with the one type of person I didn’t want, a recluse who didn’t leave the room, rarely went to class, had no friends, never had a girlfriend, never did anything except sit at his computer watching a slideshow of nude pics... all day... every day.
After my first semester, I’m failing classes because I’m depressed about the family turmoil back home, and my current mental state deteriorating. I didn’t just lose touch with my friends from school, I completely forgot who they were, what I did, and lost almost all recollection of the previous five years, good and bad.
I’m also starting to get very hungry because I’m having trouble eating. Not an eating disorder, but a jaw growth misalignment that prevented me from actually being able to properly chew. I got checked out and was told I needed a Laforte I surgery where they’d break my upper jaw and move it forward to align with the lower for me to properly eat again. If I were to bite a sandwich at that time, I might’ve been able to bite off the bread, but any meat, cheese, lettuce, etc on the sandwich would remain put. Sometimes it’s the simple things in life that drive you down the most.
So after my first year of college, I’m failing with a GPA below 1.0, I’m literally starving and can’t eat, I’ve been completely ostracized from the entire university community because I didn’t come from their hometowns, and was constantly in fights started by others because I wasn’t one of them. I still wasn’t on any speaking terms with my sisters and my mom, and I was going to testify at the divorce hearing regarding what had happened twixt me and my mom.
Then I had jaw surgery, and it got even worse.
After jaw surgery, my face was in complete agony, but my bite was now aligned. I couldn’t do anything for weeks and felt like I was wasting away. I was effectively bed-ridden the entire time because even the slightest vibration from a heel to the ground or a swing of the head with the fluid pressure adjusting caused me to buckle over in pain. For months, my diet was primarily based on mashed potatoes and pouring water directly into my mouth while lying down and getting it all over my face in the process.
My family was shattered, I had no friends, I had no memories, I was failing in school and in life, and physically the once prime athlete was little more than skin and bones compared to the past. I had had enough and started looking at all the pills around me. I just wanted to disappear, but didn’t want to leave a mess for the others to clean up so I kept walking around for options. I grabbed knives and ran them on my skin to see if they’d be difficult to use or would require a sizeable effort, I checked for places to hang or drown myself, I just looked for the best option I could find to kill myself and not leave a mess. Then one of my sisters came in and saw me fiddling around and completely broke down. I decided to check myself in for observations just to calm her down, and it did.
I drove to the hospital, checked myself in, and couldn’t eat for the days I was there. I asked for something soft that I could chew, and I couldn’t even eat a grilled-cheese sandwich it was that bad. I sat there with a grilled-cheese on the paper plate in front of me, literally starving to death, wanting to devour the sandwich, but couldn’t. Having food in your complete control, wanting nothing more than to consume it, but physically can’t is the true definition of torture in hell. Unless you’ve been to such a circle, don’t throw the word starve around lightly.
I wanted anything to eat, but couldn’t actually eat it. They ran psychiatric tests on me, and I passed them all as normal. I just wanted to be done with life. They gave me drugs, and they didn’t work. They did short-term memory tests on me because of my past injury, and I passed. I just sat in the psych ward people watching as someone would walk away for shock treatment and be wheeled back later. I’d ask for special late-night television privileges to watch the World Cup live early in the morning. I’d sleep for 20 hours at a stretch or 4, but never at a normal slot. On my last night, I was curled up on my bed, smelling like the worst stench imaginable because of some “water privileges” or something hadn’t been acquired yet since I was on suicide watch. I just laid there, buckling in pain from my face, stomach, and entire body and emotions thinking, “there’s no way it can get worse than this”. That was my low point, my darkest hours.
From there, in short, jaw eventually healed and I could eat again, and did so a little too well. The divorce took years to get over for the family, and my mom got on hormone treatment and is back to normal. My parents somehow act like they’re married still when they’re together for family stuff. My best friends are my sisters, and I got through college with a lot of unrelated baggage. I then traveled the world, took a job here and there, went to the Beijing Olympics and hopped around Asia for a few months. When I came back, I started my own company, am in excellent physical health again, and am living to have no regrets.
I still don’t care about my life after all these years, and wouldn’t mind dying tomorrow. We all eventually die, but I’m just going to try and cram as much as I can into this one life because it’s the only one I’ll have and I’m curious about a lot of things. Nothing you do matters in the grand scope, so just try and enjoy yourself for what little time you do have.
 | | |
| In my math class my senior year of high school, for the final we were allowed to bring in an 8.5x11" sheet of paper (standard printer-paper size) with notes on it. Only, my teacher accidentally wrote 8.5x11' on the white-board.
Being the asshole I am, I had to expose her mistake. Instead of studying for the final, I spent the weekend before the exam making a huge 8.5x11 foot long foldable poster-board, and I filled it with random math facts and puns.
The day of the final, I walked in with the huge board, unfolded it to make it even huger, and stood it up in front of my desk (it was so tall it nearly scraped the ceiling). My teacher had a WTF expression on her face, and I pointed out her mistake on the board. She didn't find it as funny as I did, and told me that I didn't get to use a sheet on the final. I regret nothing.
-----------------
Professor was a mild mannered, soft spoken, short Indian man part-timer who left his job a few minutes early on Tuesdays and Thursdays to teach class. He was often quite late due to traffic.
One student came in very drunk, hardly able to stand up. After about 5 minutes of no teacher, he decided he would use the teacher's desk and the empty chairs to build a tower to the ceiling. After 10 minutes of people egging him on and suggesting how to build it, he finished. He then proceeded to give a sex ed lecture for the next 15 minutes, drawing pictures on the white board to help.
At that point the teacher walks in to a falling over drunk guy yelling about vaginas in front of a chair tower and a whiteboard filled with stick figure sex. Everyone gets real silent, and the drunk guy tells him "Don't worry, I-I kept 'em busy for ya!" as he stumbles to his desk. The teacher just kinda stares about and doesn't say a word, before silently erasing the white board and starting his lesson.
-------------------
In high school, a classmate stripped off his clothing to reveal a spiderman suit. He then put on a mask and climbed out the 2nd story window and proceeded to walk along the ledge to another classrom, and entered that classroom through the window.
-------------------
There was a kid at my school called Sean who once got into a screaming match with a teacher in History class. It continued to the point where the teacher knocked a chair over and stormed out. Now, at this time our history classroom was at the top of a 3 story building and right after she left this kid went over to the window, opened it and then picked up a chair and headed out the door. He went all the way down to the ground outside, put the chair on it's side underneath the window and then laid face down with his arms and legs sprawled out at crazy angles. At the time we thought he was in so much trouble that we weren't even laughing. So the teacher came back yelling, only to find the whole class crowded around the window in complete silence, with this kid lying face down on the ground 3 stories below. If you've ever seen someone go from normal to complete nervous breakdown in 10 seconds you will not forget it. That kid is now part of legend.
--------------------
During finals one semester, my roommate asked me if he could come along for my test to see if they would let him take it - even though he was not in the class. He was going to the same course next semester and wanted to preview the final.
Now this was a lecture class with about 100 students, so I didn't think there would be a problem. My roommate comes in, sits down, and naturally receives a test for which we are told we have two hours. We begin, and there are 10 minutes of silence with everyone working away, my roommate patiently sitting in the back row with his test.
All of a sudden, he stands, hold his hands and test up in the air and starts running full speed down the stairs to the stage in front of the lecture hall. He SLAMS the test down on the table, screams "I won!!" and darts out the rear entrance. I struggled to hold back tears of laughter, and the look of 'WTF' on everyone's faces as they looked around at each other was priceless.
YOUR TURN :)
 | | |
|
True
