Hypocondriach

I have a problem that is really starting to worry me.

When I'm not working on something, and I have some downtime, I spend it by thinking of the worst possible things that could happen to me. For example, the other night, I was watching television and I came across a show where they were talking to some guy who had discovered he had AIDS just because he coughed. Well as soon as I coughed the next time, it OBVIOUSLY meant that I had AIDS. I'm a hypocondriach, so even the stupidest things like that I believe will also happen to me. I also have a constant fear of catching things you can't catch, like that guy who had those huge tumors growing on his entire face. I was sure the next time my face ached that yep, I had tumors. And they would cover my entire face. Just made sense, right?

For the most part, my girlfriend gets me out of it. She tells me, "No, you're being stupid" or "No, that's idiotic, that's a birth defect they had. You can't catch that." And she's right. But it still doesn't stop me from thinking I got it. I had a teacher in high school who got bit by a Brown Recluse Spider and lived. I now don't want any spider to ever bite me EVER. I'm terrified that every single spider will be a Brown Recluse Spider.

I can't watch horror movies for the same reason. As soon as I start to watch "Hostel" or "6th Sense" I'm just sure that the same exact thing will happen to me. I'm a picture of health, so it's really idiotic for me to believe these things, but yet I continue to. I am always just constantly convinced that the worst is going to happen to me. And it's not always things like horror movies or spiders, I mean ANYTHING. I mean if I read a news story about some guy being crushed by a tree and then a giant squid came along and started to suck his face, I instantly go, "God dammit, now that's totally going to happen to me. I just know it."

Ultimately, I guess I'm just doomed to go through life being afraid of everything. Ooooorrrr, I could just hide in a box forever. The second one sounds endlessly more safe and entertaining.

Rental Car

When I was 16, I was learning to drive.

As most of you are aware, driving is one of the many things that you really need to learn to get by in life. If you can't drive, you can't use drive thrus, go to work, or get laid on dates. So naturally, I decided I had to learn to drive. I bugged my parents forever to take me to the DMV and finally they gave in. Upon arriving at the DMV, I realized it may be the most important, amazing moment in my awesome-yet-still-too-young-to-realize-how-worse-it-gets life yet. My reaction varied incredibly from the reality, a problem I apparently have often.

i have no funny subtitle for this, so I'll just write: 

Bear meat suitcase

Once I entered, I took the test as quickly as I could, filling in the answers fast because I'd studied so much the previous weeks. I aced the written, and was now moving to the actual driving portion. When I passed, I was ecstatic. The entire world seemed to open up around me. Birds were singing, flowers were blooming, old people were....oldpeopleizing. I quickly moved onto the next part of what I realized I needed a car. I was a 16 year old boy, and I needed to take girls out, as is the norm. There was this girl at my school named Michelle. I have rendered here a very accurate drawing, in crappy paint form.

this was back before I had taste

So I realized now I could drive, I could finally ask her out, and my life would be as awesome as all my friends. I knew she would say yes, because I'd asked her before, but me not having a car was what was holding me back. So I went to her after class one day and told her that I had gotten my permit and that we should have a date. She completely agreed. That's when I realized the fatal flaw in my plan. Yes, I had a permit. I didn't have a CAR. I begged my dad to let me use his car but he just told me no. I begged my mom, she told me no. I went to my older brother, who told me I couldn't use his car, but that he would get me a rental car. I was okay with this. So we went to the rental car place, and he rented out the cheapest, most inefficient car I believe has ever been seen by the human eye.

this is not a car. it's a death trap.

Upon viewing the car, I realized that it was not a "let's go on a nice date" car, it was a "please get into it so I can rape you" car. I could NOT drive it, but being as it was the only one that his insurance could afford, it was my only option. So Friday night came. There I was, me and my rape mobile, sitting outside of a girls house, in clothing that probably would've made me look like a nazi and a communist had a baby. I have the fashion sense of a semi retarded, half blind, bipolar, schizophrenic japanese woman with down syndrome. Finally, after a few awkward moments of being watched by her father, she came racing out and seemed fine with my rental car. She got in and we drove off onto our date night. The first problem I noticed was that the car was LOUD. We were pretty much shouting at one another during the drive, and I'm not even sure we were having the same conversation.

Eventually, we stopped to get some food, and when she was in the bathroom, I realized this entire date had become a disaster. I didn't know what to do. Should I just bail, like my dad always talked about, or should I just stick it out and hope she feels pity for me for having such a crappy car? I decided to just take her home and apologize for the evening. On the way to her house, an event occurred that changed the entire night. I hit a dog, and killed it. I went to get out and check, and that's when I realized that I could salvage this night. She liked that I cared about hitting a dog. She found that attractive, and I knew I could use this. I pulled the dog off to the side of the road, and then went about my work of finding some way that I could somehow show her I'm a caring person. Somehow, my twisted mind came up with this explanation:

You hit a dog+she likes that you care=

hit more dogs.

Over the next few weeks, I made sure to hit anything and everything that I could while driving in that rental car. When she saw the blood on the car, she'd always ask if the animal was ok, and I'd tell her "No, but I tried to make it's last few minutes peaceful." Somehow, killing animals had gained me a hot girlfriend. I'm not sure which one of us was more fucked up for this. Anyway, my favorite part of this entire story is none of the above, in fact, it was the day I took the car back to the rental place.

That guy ran away so fast.

Mile High Club

Me and my girlfriend had to go visit her parents for Thanksgiving, which means we had to fly last weekend in order to get here before Thanksgiving.

Well, it was a pretty uneventful flight. We sat and read magazines and listened to music, talked, until we both realized that this is what we've done our entire life and we wanted to do something different. We wanted some excitement.

not this exciting.

So we decided that the only other thing more exciting than plunging to our fiery doom, which was unlikely, was to try something we'd always talked about but never tried before. Having sex in the airplane bathroom. We snuck away and got into the bathroom together, and immediately is where our troubles began. First of all, those of you who have flown must know what the size of those bathrooms are. They're about the size of a porto john, right? Well, it's hard enough fitting one person in there, but two? Forget about it. But dammit, we weren't going to let a tiny space stop us from having some exciting fun! So we crammed ourselves into what must have been the tiniest space ever created.

not sexy.

So there we were, crammed in there together, not really sure how to start. At first, I thought maybe we should sit on the toilet but that's not really sexy. After a few tries, we finally got a good idea! Up against the door. The space between the door and the back of the bathroom was the largest, so it was our only option. At this point, we were so ready to have some fun that we were almost tearing at one another. After a few minutes, we finally got into it and started having lots of fun, until we realized we were being kind of loud. And that the door was being banged on. At a crucial moment, a flight attendant came over and knocked on the door, asking if I needed help. She said it sounded like I was in peril. 

in her defense, she IS blonde.

My girlfriend answered as best as she could, but she wouldn't leave. Now here's where I messed up. I forgot that my girlfriend is a screamer. So there's banging on the door, and now she's screaming. It sounded like she was being murdered. Sounding seriously worried, the flight attendant said she was going to go get the key and the first aid kit. I was about to get cock blocked by a flight attendant. We realized we had two choices. Finish really fast, or just clean up and try to explain why we were both in there. We decided to finish. No job must ever be left undone. The only problem with this choice we later discovered was that it meant we had to move faster, which only made her screams louder and more painful sounding. Now passengers were starting to take notice. Finally, we finished after about 2 minutes, and the flight attendant had returned. Here it was. We were about to get caught like we were teenagers. So I did the only thing I could think of. 

I walked out proud like a football player who had just scored the winning touchdown at the superbowl.

Of course, the pilot scolded us, the airline scolded us, then when her parents heard about it, they scolded us and now I'm sleeping on the couch for the next week. So, was it worth it? Absolutely.