Attack of the Killer Ants!

Fingers the size of watermelons do not make for easy typing; neither does Benadryl make for easily maintaining consciousness. Alex and I woke up at around four thirty this morning being attacked my fireants. My old allergic reaction from childhood decided to flare up, and now I've got a couple of puffy, pink, grotesque fingers. So, I tried to work a little today, but it's funny how fingers are fairly necessary for navigating a computer. And when the Benadryl kicked in around 12:30, I was unconscious on the couch for a looooong time.

Once in fifth grade, I had to miss three days of school due to a single antbite, elevating my swollen foot. When I came back to school, either doctor or parents insisted that I use a crutch for a few days--try explaining that to your grade-school classmates.

Classmate: "Hey four-eyes, why the crutches? You sprain your ankle?"

Me: "Um, no. It's an antbite." I feel pretty silly when their looks get skeptical, and I become urgently defensive. "Look, I'm allergic to fire ants, okay?"

"Huh. So... How many ants actually bit you?"

Silence. I can tell I'm going to be the butt of jokes for weeks on the weirdness of this one. "Um, err, just one."

Like I needed any help being a dork in school. Let's check off the list, shall we?

1) Glasses (Plastic-rimmed ones with a pink and blue tint. In my defense, I can only say: It was the 80's.)
2) Braces (Not so bad on their own, but they kind of worked in tandem with the glasses)
3) Short & Skinny (Just at a time when the other girls started wearing bras for an actual reason.)
4) Teacher's Pet
5) Read Books for Fun (Works in tandem with #4, of course.)
6) Best Friend was a Six-Year Old (Granted, I'm proud of this--Amy is certainly the most awesome person I knew. But this had to look bizarre.)

Sigh. And why do I have this sick desire that my own children possess similar qualities? (Well, at least geek/nerd potential, not necessarily dorkiness: see here for the difference.) I think it's dual. First, I think it's natural to desire that you have kids that share your own interests--not some sad desire that they live the life you never had and fulfill all your dreams, understand, but so you have kids that are easy to enjoy and to understand. And second, I think it's because for myself and my husband, school from first to twelfth grade may have been less than ideal, but we had a blast in college. I have this theory that your enjoyment of college mathmatically equals the inverse of your enjoyment of high school.

Wow, this is suuuuuuper long, so in parting let me say: audiobook downloads from libraries: supremely awesome idea!