Phobic

Chapter Two: The Poo Hits the Fan: Edited

My dad always says, “The sh&% is gonna hit the fan,” which means that something bad will happen, but that expression totally cracks me up. The image of actual crap hitting an actual fan and splatting all over is beast. Watch in slo mo on YouTube and you will see the pure poetry of that expression.

In my case, the poo hit the fan at the worst possible moment. I was getting ready to drop into the half pipe at an amateur snowboarding contest in Mammoth and I got a huge headache and felt super dizzy. Then I barfed. In the snow. Have you ever seen barf in the snow? It’s like a steamy Slurpee with chunks in it.

Did I mention that I have emetophobia? That’s a fear of barfing. I got that one when I was ten. I was in fifth grade science class when Mr. Satchen brought in jello for us to dissect. He said it was the cell wall and the candy in it was the organelles. Something about the smell or just the wiggliness of it set me off, so I hurled. Like, all over my group’s “cell,” which made everyone else freak out and start running like Japanese extras in a Godzilla movie.

I didn’t have too long to study the puke in the snow because I freaked/passed out, sliding down into the halfpipe on my face. I think you can access that video on YouTube as well, since we were just on that subject. One of the haters that I destroy in every contest put it up there for your enjoyment. He put a stupid comment about me smoking something too, so probably all my sponsors thought I was some a huge stoner. Thanks, bro.

Anyway, my mom and dad rushed into the pipe to grab me, taking me to the emergency medical tent. Those donkeys checked me out and said it was probably the flu or something, but my mom and dad didn’t buy that because this wasn’t the first time I ever puked and passed out.

For like two weeks before that I kept getting these huge headaches, which my mom thought were migraines. They hurt so much and made me so dizzy that I couldn’t move out of bed, and puked everywhere. Then I would feel better all of a sudden, so my parents thought maybe it was anxiety or something, because as you know by now, I’m always afraid of something.

They decided to get me home and take me to Children’s Hospital right away. So we all jumped on a tiny airplane, with my dad griping about the cost, and landed in Carlsbad. My grandma was home with Myah, so they met us at the hospital.

I won’t bore you with all the details (until the next chapter) because we were there for like a year, and I felt like a frickin’ lab rat, getting tested and poked and whatever for hours.

If this were a movie, there would be a cheesy montage, with like a really sad song playing and the camera would pan up to a window or something and my family would all be sitting inside a glassed-in hospital room with me in that stupid blue gown with my ass hanging out and the doctor would be talking.

All of a sudden my mom would put her hand over her mouth and bury her head in my dad’s shoulder. Then my sister would join the drama hug and I would look all tough and emo and you would start crying and be all, “Ohmygod, he was so happy and had so much going for him how tragic and sad.”

Then the music would stop and I would be hooked up on chemo and you would have hope because this is a movie and nobody dies except the dog or the chick who goes outside in her undies to look for the killer and deserves it for being so freakin’ stupid, so it’s all gonna be okay, right?

Wrong.