I Am A Monster

Every once in awhile, I will engage in an activity reminding me that, despite the fact that I generally try to be appropriate and hygienic, I am actually a completely revolting individual.  One of these events occurred about a month ago.  It went like this.


The Dead Ratscapade


My husband came into the kitchen, where I was preparing dinner, and informed me that our dog Libby (referred to in a previous post as Cujo) had killed a giant rat and left it on the side of the house.  [Side note:  Go, Libby!  You rock!]  My husband is not a fan of rodents in any form, or stage of life, and asked for my assistance in disposing of the dead beast.

Be grateful that I'm sparing you from a more realistic image

I have no issue with rats, particularly when they're dead, so I went out into the yard where my husband was standing about 20 feet from the rat, holding a pooper scooper and a brown paper bag.  I walked up to the corpse, kicked it to shoo away the flies, lifted it up by its tail ("OH MY GOD," remarked my husband), dropped it in the paper bag, and went back into the house.


About a half hour later, my husband and I were eating dinner, and he informed me that he'd planned for me to use the pooper scooper to pick up the rat and drop it in the bag.  He said he couldn't believe I'd touched it and that he hoped I'd washed my hands very carefully, preferably more than once, when I came back into the house.


At that moment it occurred to me that I had NOT washed my hands AT ALL after handling the rat.  In fact, my routine that evening had consisted of:


Wash hands
Begin cooking dinner
Pick up & dispose of dead rat
Finish cooking dinner
Serve & eat dinner

Perhaps someone could buy me this book for my birthday

The good news is that my husband and I did not sicken or die from this experience.  The bad news is that he will never look at me the same way again.  However, that is only because he met me after other tell-tale experiences indicating that I am actually a filthy, disgusting monster, including:


The Ear Wax Horror Show


Okay, folks - please prepare yourselves.  This is really gross.  If you are a friend or family member of mine and would like to retain the ability to look me in the eye, you might want to stop reading now.


It was my freshman year of high school, and I was cramming for a history midterm in a study carrel.  The history class I was taking was extremely difficult and demanding, and I had a wonderful teacher who I desperately wanted to impress.  I was so anxious about the midterm that I was clearly not breathing well, thereby reducing the amount of oxygen needed for optimum brain function.  [Note rationalization to excuse behavior about to be reported]


While I was going through my history book and taking notes with my left hand, somehow the index finger of my right hand made its way into my ear.  Eventually I pulled out the finger and noticed that it had a huge glob of ear wax on it.  What the hell?  thought I absently, primarily focused on history.  How much more of that is in there?  And so, for approximately the next 45 minutes, while my left hand continued following the text and taking notes, my right hand began diligently harvesting about a pound of ear wax from my right ear and depositing it onto a piece of white paper that was in the carrel. 

Why the hell would you put your elbow in your  ear?

When the bell rang, I dashed out of the study carrel and straight to my exam.  It wasn't until after school that day that I realized I'd left the ear-wax-covered piece of paper in the study carrel.  I don't know how much our school's custodian was paid, but I'm absolutely positive it wasn't enough to be worth having to discover such a thing.  Poor dude.  If I had his contact information now, I'd send him a fruit basket or something.


The Crowd Was In Stitches


When I was 19, I was in a terrible car accident in Jupiter, Florida.  After the accident, I ended up with 17 stitches in my arm.  When I was discharged from the hospital, I was told to return to a doctor's office within 2 weeks to have the stitches removed.


The healing process for my arm was really gnarly.  For awhile, it seemed like the arm wasn't going to heal at all; it was just going to sting and fester and do other horrible things.  But after about a week, the wounds visibly began healing and new skin started growing.  However, it didn't take me long to notice that the skin seemed to be growing over the stitches, submerging them.  I began to wonder, when the time came for my stitches to be removed, if the new skin would need to be cut through in order to reach them.  Considering that I'd just gone through an accident, surgery, and a painful recovery process, that prospect did not thrill me in the least.


Because I believed there was an impending, stitch-submersion crisis to be prevented, and because I was on some serious painkillers (again, note attempts at rationalization), I decided that I needed to take matters into my own hands and get the stitches out as quickly as possible.  [Really, I could've gone back to a doctor, but after my experiences in Jupiter, I was determined never again to seek medical treatment, especially in Florida.]  After some experimentation, I realized that, if I grabbed the loose ends of a stitch and pulled it up gently, I could pull the knot high enough above the new skin to untie it.

The process would've been much easier with one of these

Unfortunately for the people in the waiting room at Sears Optical in Key West, I made this discovery while sitting in that very spot.  While my mother had her eyes examined, I sat in the last chair in a row of about six seats, pulling each individual stitch out of the new skin, untying the knot, pulling the thread out of my arm, and dropping it on the floor.  


After performing this procedure about 6 or 7 times, I looked over and noticed that no other chair in the row of seats was occupied, although there were lots of people standing around waiting.  I looked up at the people and realized that they were staring at me with looks of horror and disgust much like the look that the custodian at my high school must've had on his face when he found the abandoned paper in the study carrel.  When I then realized what I had been doing in a public place, I promptly stopped and wondered what the fuck is wrong with me.


When we got home, my mom told my dad what I'd done at Sears, and he decided to take the rest of my stitches out himself, using his fly tying tools.

Please note my dad's snazzy, magnifying headgear & glass of wine

So there ya have it, folks.  While I usually manage to mask them, I apparently have monstrous tendencies.  It makes me wonder why I bother doing basic stuff like wearing deodorant and flossing my teeth.  If only flossing regularly could make up for cooking dinner with dead-rat-tainted hands...but clearly, it doesn't.