A few weeks ago, I nearly killed myself with imagined illnesses.
I gave myself an ulcer, a hernia, liver cancer, schizophrenia and hemorrhoids within the span of five days.
I didn't consider the combination of recent alcohol intake, malnutrition and lack of sleep in my diagnoses. Rather, I took vague symptoms like "stomach pain" and punched them into WebMD to find out what was ailing me.
"YOU HAVE A PEPTIC ULCER. SEEK IMMEDIATE MEDICAL ATTENTION," flashed a blood red warning. My death was imminent.
"Dan, you need to drive me to the hospital. I'm dying," I said to my roommate.
"That's fine. Just make sure you give me the deposit for next year's apartment before you decide to check out on us, you hypochondriac."
I gaped.
The thought that I was a hypochondriac! What gall! I sulked back to my room and crawled into a fetal position on my bed to bleed slowly to death in peace.
And I thought back to high school.
In freshman year math class I remember rubbing my head and finding a bump.
Naturally, I was terrified since the bump was obviously brain cancer.
My sister Mallory had a different opinion.
"Eww, gross," she said when I showed her the bump after school. "Do you think it's your brain spilling out of your head?"
"No, idiot," I said. "It's definitely a tumor. Do you think I should show mom?"
"I dunno. Did you try just pushing it back in?" she asked.
My sister's advice is sagacious. She scampered off to watch TV as I set to pressing my thumb into my skull.
That night I ate my meatloaf, or chicken cutlets or whatever we were having for dinner with one hand and pressed the bump into my head with my other hand.
When I looked up, I noticed that my mother was staring at me and not eating.
"A-J, what the hell are you doing?" she asked.
I pulled my fingers away from my head and hid my hand under the table.
"Nothing," I said.
"What's on your head that you keep pushing on?"
I made my face as solemn as possible.
"Mom. I think I have brain cancer."
My parents never hit me. Ever. My father came close once. Twice, come to think of it. The first was when I just walked away from him when he asked me to do him a favor. Teenage attitude. The second time I had driven a golf cart into a fence at his club. Without saying a word, he walked over to the tool shed and came out with a massive mallet.
I was quaking.
"Can I help you fix the fence?" I had asked him. I looked out across the tennis courts at the bent iron poles.
"Fence? What fence? This is for you," he said.
Anyway, sitting at the dinner table, having announced my self-diagnosis to the dinner table, I was sure that my mother was going to hit me. No sympathy for my plight. I was dying of brain cancer and all she could do was stare at me.
Well. We'd just see if she got anything in the will.
"Come here," she said to me, picking up her knife.
"What are you going to do?"
"Maybe we should just cut that thing off right now before it eats into your cerebellum. It won't be dangerous till then," she said, wiping the knife clean with her napkin.
I squealed.
"Oh knock it off, you idiot. Just don't touch the thing and it will go away."
Of course, I couldn't stop playing with it. Having been reassured that the bump was not in fact cancer, I became intrigued by it.
Nevertheless, I remained suspicious of the bump's evil contents.
Partly because I had always been superstitious, and partly because it seemed like a neat idea, I began tapping the bump before taking exams for good luck. Much to my surprise, my grades were fantastic.
I decided to call the bump my "smart button" and would tap it before all of my tests. This was an effective tactic, not only for getting good grades, but also for spreading my bump's fame.
"Why did you just tap your head, A-J?" my friends would ask.
"Oh nothing. I'm just hitting my smart button. I do it before every exam," I said.
"What's a smart button?"
"It's this bump on my head right here," I would point. "Doctors thought it was cancer at first, but it hasn't killed me yet."
I would laugh smugly, hiding the secret fear I still harbored for the strange growth on my scalp.
"Can we see it?" they would whisper.
Of course.
The teacher would come into class and everyone would be huddled around my scalp looking at the bump on my head.
"EWWWWWWW THAT'S DISGUSTING."
"Yup. I know," I would say proudly, basking in their fascination.
My smart button made me more popular than I had ever been before.
Thank God I went to an all-boys' school.
Of course, three weeks ago was different. I was convinced that I was dying.
I picked up my cell phone with my poor, emaciated hand, to call home.
"What do you want?" my mother asked.
"Mom, I think I'm too sick to go on vacation."
She sighed into the phone, as if searching around her for a knife.
"A-J. Stop being a ninny," (she actually called me a ninny), "Go take a shower, pack your bag, and for God's sake stop whining."
My advice: Don't skimp on sleep or food.
In these last few weeks of school, we all will have too much work, too many deadlines, not enough sleep, too much alcohol and not enough healthy food.
Get sleep, do your laundry once in a while and have a good meal.
Stay calm. Don't get yourself sick, or worse yet, don't invent illnesses for yourselves.
And for God's sake, don't whine, you ninnies.
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