My Own Personal Hell

Until tonight, I hadn’t walked out on a lecture since the Botany Ordeal of 2001. Of course, tonight’s little episode didn’t have all the glamor as that particular highlight in my educational career. I mostly just skulked this time—no impromptu door-slamming or anything.

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I had a tooth abscess while residing in a small, former East-German town. I didn’t have enough money for Novocaine, just folded my arms about my stomach and held on for dear life. The searing heat of the drill, the unexpected taste of blood—I felt my face flush; sweat began to bead on my forehead, but I managed not to pass out.

A year earlier, while still stateside, I had a hole in my abdominal wall patched outpatient. Following surgery, I took my pain medication on an empty stomach. All in knots, I hobbled to the loo, but once there realized that it was simply far too painful to throw-up. It also happened to be far too painful not to. I sat between the toilet and the wall for hours and alternated dry-heaving and reeling in pain. I never could bring myself to do the deed.

In each of the prior instances, I truly believed that I had discovered hell on earth. Little did I know that my own personal hell would turn out to be a night course in Human Resource Management. The handshakes of glib jr. capitalists, the pop-psychology buzz-word spouting professor, the feigned emotion—it all brought me to fondly dream of the dentist’s chair.

-mixtape

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Tags: Random, Personal, Hell, Post

~ by mixtape on August 28, 2007.