Day: October 20, 2014

The student in the corner was decked out in orange. Dark blue flared out from beneath his armpits and his hat was black with the Broncos insignia stamped across the front. Last week he was wearing A Yankee hat and a Yankee shirt with Jeter’s number emblazoned on the back. This week’s number was 18 and this week’s name was Manning. It made me wonder about the costumes that people wear. There is no chance he will be mistaken for Peyton Manning, just as I will never be mistaken for Amani Toomer when I don the Blue. Still, we do it all the time. We put on these costumes and pretend to be our heroes, these people from what sociologists call Reference Groups that help us decide how to behave at what to be. It made more sense to do that when I was a kid, but why, as a 20-something, would you do it still?

Spoiler Alert: I don’t have a good answer. I think it makes us feel connected to these people and through that connection we identify ourselves to the public as avatars of that person or followers of that individual or what they represent.

 

My relationship with medication is… disadvantageous.

I’ve tried, on occasion, to self-medicate when sick. Nothing drastic. Just the basic herbal remedies. The problems start when I step beyond the herbal concoctions and dive into the truly wicked stuff. By wicked I mean Benadryl. One pill dropped me into a condition eerily similar to depression. I had a hard time picking myself up off the floor after I swallowed a single pill. There is no chance of me ingesting another, even if it means this temporary near-blindness must continue.

On friday my right eye began to itch. I rubbed at it and picked at it, hoping to finger whatever was in there and pluck it free. There was not a thing to be plucked. Still the eye throbbed incessantly, promising that any plans I had would forever be cancelled. This was the moment I was called, “Melodramatic.” True, but what is a person to be if not himself?

The eye worsened. Eye drops did little to ease the pain and redness, leading me to purchase an eye patch. Ladies, I am no Nick Fury. I try to be, of course, but it takes a certain amount of practice to rock the patch on any day other than 10.31. More laughter ensued, but the circle of darkness protecting my eye was very effective in, at least, giving the eye time to rest and heal.

Today the eye flared up again, and I took that pill. I should not have taken that pill. The eye does feel much better but at the cost of nearly everything the eye is attached to. Even my brain feels like it is moving in slow motion. There has to be other ways to deal with allergies. The more I experience in life, the more it turns out I am allergic to, so I would like to have a useable remedy that doesn’t leave me feeling like a guy who just lost to Mike Tyson.