Man Cannon
This was me on the 4th of the July. The wadded up bits of toilet paper worked really well at plugging up the leaks from my nose. In fact, it worked so well, I was able to actually get some sleep even though it looked and sounded like Candyland was invading outside my window.
That might have been more due to a irresponsible cocktail of different cold medications that can only be obtained by ignoring recommended dosage and mashing everything up in a gumball-sized wad that I’m pretty sure is going to end up being the quaalude for the 21st century. Either way, I was completely out for some unknown period of time.
Then I woke up violently. A firework had gone off apparently right outside my window, I was being violently choked and a woman screamed. Looking back, that woman was actually me -- I woke up screaming, which is pretty metal. In retrospect, I wasn’t actually being choked, I had somehow managed to loop the battery cable of my phone around my neck, and although I was sure I was being throttled by a large Russian, I was actually just getting a text message. This wasn’t immediately apparent to me, so desperately I ripped that fucker off my neck. At this point I was fully expecting to to be able to breathe. This was not the case, I was drowning; I had managed to piss off the wrong person on the internet, and I was now paying for it.
This water was surprisingly cozy, and somehow I could feel tears of fear actually pouring down my face. After a few seconds of what you might call “panic thrashing” I managed to kick myself free of the 300 thread count death ocean that was constricting my legs, and assuming I was finally free, I tried to force all of the water out of my lungs. I of course completely forgot that I had fallen asleep with two sinus tampons jammed into my nose, which launched themselves with such force that they actually made considerable noise when the slammed into the wall across my apartment.
I am human artillery.
All in all a completely humiliating experience. If you had asked me on July 3rd what my worst fear was, I would have answered “Spiders with guns, obviously”. Now I know better. My worst fear is waking up drowning.
None of this was as bad as finally getting recognized by a reader, while drunk, in line at an ice cream shop, on a Thursday. I was fiddling with my phone when I hear “So is today cheat day?”
Oh, the shame. The longest 10 minutes of my life. It’s not like I could just bolt, or pretend I had mistakenly gotten into line thinking it was for a water fountain. My protracted walk of shame finally came to end when I reached the cash register, where the girl at the counter asked where she knew me from. FUCK, fuckfuckfuck. “I really hope you don’t” I said, before tipping her too much and waddling out the door before things could get any worse. And that’s how I stopped eating ice cream, "forever."
