At Great Velocity

Part short story, part boredom-filler, little bit of philosophy, mostly crap.

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Yes, Garth Brooks’ “Two Pina Coladas” popped into my head as the anesthesiologist popped two sticks of anesthetic into my mouth. I’d always thought those things were pineapple-flavored, but it occured to me today that they might actually have been coconut-flavored and the pineapple was just a delusion created by the odd taste of the anesthetic.

The anesthetic sticks were all right, but then she grabbed a needle. “AAAGH!” I said as she jabbed it into the roof of my mouth, left side.

Right side. “AAAGH!”

“You’ll feel a bit woozy now,” she told me. “It’s the epinephrine.”

Great. Some of it had gotten into my throat, so I ended up drooling on myself for 15 minutes, great gobs and gobs of saliva running down my front (thank God for bibs!). I started laughing at myself because I could imagine how damned ridiculous I looked.

There was a large window through which I could see three bird-feeders and a lot of sparrows. The stupid things were on the ground, pecking away and twitching, and completely ignoring the bird-feeders.

I watched them for about twenty minutes, until the dentist came and began the procedure of putting in fillings. I hadn’t needed damn fillings in at least seven years. Surprisingly, it took less than ten minutes to finish it, and they let me go, wondering if I was going to be able to get home in one piece.

Now my jaw aches, probably because half of the muscles needed aren’t working to keep it up, and I can’t speak without gagging or sounding like I’m imitating El Chambo/Mudo. I hope it wears off by two o’ clock, or DiffEq will be a barrel of monkeys.

I had lunch with one of my favorite people today. We talked about a lot of things (mostly about friends I never see) and at one point the conversation turned to a mutual friend of ours.

His is a sad situation. I used to be in Gifted Education classes with him, and he was definitely of the intelligent/intellectual sort when not obsessed with Pokemon. I used to feel sorry for the kid–he lived with a crazy mother (she tried to kill herself in front of him numerous times) in a terrible house, he was once accused of rape (I’m pretty sure he didn’t rape anyone because he is disgusted by the very thought of sex), and he ended up dropping out of school last year.

I couldn’t do much more than any other one of his friends. We told him that he needed to get his GED, get a job so he could move out of his house and get away from his mother, because his life was destroying him.

He got a job, got the GED, got a girlfriend, quit the job to spend more time with the girlfriend, and then the girlfriend cheated on him. And now he just sits around playing video games, looking at porn, and masturbating.

I think he turned in job applications last week, but it’s likely that he won’t stay in one for very long if he gets accepted. I wish there was a more effective way to help, but I don’t think there’s much that anyone but himself can do.

I have decided to document my final semester in high school in this blog, and hope that it will bring some needed insight into my life as well as help me through a strange time period.

What has been bothering me as of late is a lack of “creative” expression, in both idea and execution. I remember that the past three years were actually quite full of it in the forms of poetry, “novels,” and smudged sketchbooks.

Today I noted that times of exceptional productivity coincided with times of depression, or perceived depression. And while correlation does not imply causation, I must cite the works of great artists (Van Gogh would stand out in particular) inducing depression through drink and depravity. I am clean in both those aspects–my absinthe is a social one, and this I shall expound upon at a later date.