The Worst Easter Ever
Before we get to the main story, here's the latest waking-up drawings:
Since we are coming up on Easter this weekend, I suddenly feel like it would be a good idea to tell the story of the Worst Easter Ever. Many of you have already heard this story because I love to gross out the people I consider friends, but for those who don't, here it is. Complete with illustrations! Yes I know this is kind of ripping off the style of Hyperbole and a Half, but hey, if it works it works. Really, the best part about childhood misery is having internet acquaintances laugh at it!
If you really cannot stand talk about bugs, you may want to skip over the story of my Worst Easter Ever. No, seriously. Although this story is spider-free, it is definitely not bug-free. There will be many bugs.
Like most kidlets of a Christian persuasion, I was familiar with Easter as a time of chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, peeps and other candies in fake grass, getting to paint eggs and then having the grownups hide them so we could find them again, and really big dinners. Easter was pretty awesome. Not as cool as Christmas or Halloween mind you, but it was about third in the lineup of holidays where the kids get awesome stuff, especially at a time of the year where holidays for kids are sparse and summer vacation was still far off. I was fond of Easter!
Except for one year.
Now, when I was a bitty Lynx, one year a particular family at our church got waaaay into training all the kids there for a convention/event/thingie called Bible Bowl. It was about as fun as it sounds. Mostly it involved a whole lot of memorization of Bible verses, pretty much all of which I have forgotten by now, oops.
My family elected to attend the Bible Bowl conference in Phoenix, Arizona. This was that aforementioned convention/event/thingie, and it just so happened to take place over Easter weekend, which was probably either a very good idea or a very bad idea. It involved a lengthy road trip out to Phoenix, but since I was used to road trips to Texas for Christmas, this wasn't so bad.
Since I was not so skilled with the Bible verse memorization, but I was a prolific artist, my mom insisted that I enter the art contest. I did, with a poster of, um...a woman praying in a cafe, I think. She may have been in a leather jacket because OMG rebellious. It had to be about using Bible stuff in everyday life. Back then I did not know how to draw humans and no one had made me try and I did not enjoy it, so I did not like drawing this poster. My favorite part was drawing a dog in the corner, because dangit I knew how to draw dogs.
So we made it all the way out to Phoenix, where I entered my poster in the art contest and spent most of my time being surrounded by people much older than me in uncomfortable-looking clothing. To be honest, I don't remember much about the conference, since I was beginning to feel rather tired and hot. And I wasn't sure whether that heat was Phoenix or just me.
My poster won third place. I barely cared, since I had won better prizes in Say-No-To-Drugs poster contests, where I got to draw alligators, dammit. Chain-smoking alligators, even. By Saturday, I just wanted to take my white ribbon and go home. I was definitely sick now, and for some strange reason, my head kept itching.
Luckily, my parents agreed, and we elected to leave the conference early. With luck, we would be home by Easter morning so that I could actually enjoy my chocolate and jelly beans in the cute plastic grass.
We loaded ourselves up, and I sat up in the car, clutching a pillow, because I was very tired and ill and it was Phoenix. And my head would not stop itching. It was then that I pulled a small bug out of my hair.
In fact, I pulled out several bugs. Every time I reached in to scratch, I seemed to come out with another tiny bug or two on my fingers. We had no smart phones back then, so we couldn't look up what the bugs were, but ohhhhhh we suspected. And we would end up right.
But it was okay! We were going home for Easter, away from that sticky hotness of Phoenix and people in too-warm clothing, and all that stood between me and sweet, sweet home was a half-day's drive--
--Right up until thick smoke began pouring from the hood of our minivan.
Yes, just outside of the last exit from Phoenix, our radiator decided to die a miserable, fiery death. Dad pulled into the nearest auto shop, where we discovered that it would take at least 24 hours and I don't know how many dollars to fix it.
This left us somewhere just outside of Phoenix, at some rundown hotel half-full of strange, pink people, while I was very sick and full of itchy bugs in my hair. Not puking, mind you, but still hocking up snot and gunk. And it was Easter Sunday.
The complete lack of chocolate and jelly beans was offset by the fact that this cheap hotel had a pool. With water and everything. You have to understand, when I was a bitty without video games or the internet, a pool was like five internets and two video games liquefied and condensed down into a four-foot-to-six-foot deep pit of chlorine-smelling gloriousness. For awhile, I was able to forget the fact that I was chocolate-less and beset with plagues and just splash around in that liquid joy.
Of course, I was probably spreading my internal and external bugs around to all the other families present at the pool a la Stephen King's The Stand, but nobody thought about that at the time.
After we could be in the pool no longer, we had to leave the hotel because it was one of those check-out-at-11 deals. Unfortunately, our minivan was still in the shop, and would be for five or six more hours. And there was nothing in this town. Nothing at all. So my parents took me and my brothers to a nearby strip mall, which was nearly deserted because it was a) Easter Sunday, and b) in the middle of fuck-all nowhere. Half of the stores were closed, as in metal cage doors closed over darkened windows closed.
I do not remember much of this part, either. By this point, I was sort of in a plague-heavy haze, all hot and sticky and itchy and nose-runny and slow. And there were bugs. In my hair. It was Easter Sunday, and God had seen fit to punish my crappy prayer poster with third place, a lingering cold and runny nose, lice, a broken car, sticky heat, what appeared to be the slow end of a zombie apocalypse, and no chocolate.
At long last, our minivan was fixed, and we trundled all the way back to California. By then, my cold was finally starting to wear off. The bugs, however, were not.
It was confirmed that they were indeed lice. And so my mom set to work combating those vicious, persistent brutes. And of course, by that point they had spread to my two younger brothers, although they were only just beginning their foothold. My brothers utilized their secret weapon of completely shaving their heads. This worked out well enough for them.
I should also point out at this time we had an exchange student living with us: a quiet, very smart, blond-haired blue-eyed boy from Germany, named Florian. My mom offered to shave that very pretty hair of his, but he declined.
Yeah, that didn't really work out for him.
We battled the bugs for days, but couldn't seem to make headway. Even getting out all of the bugs themselves, there were still eggs left that would then hatch into new bugs. By the way, if you've ever wondered where the phrase "nitpicking" comes from, it comes from this. Lice eggs = nits. And picking nits really is the penultimate of nitpicking; searching through something with an extremely fine-tooth comb looking for teeny tiny itsy bitsy details that are nearly impossible to see.
Finally, my mom decided to bring out the big guns. She purchased this strange shampoo that was guaranteed to kill both lice and nits. It had to be used in the kitchen sink because apparently the chemicals in it shouldn't get on bathroom stuff. And indeed, it did eventually kill all of the lice and nits! But what the shampoo bottle failed to mention was that it killed everything else, too.
When my mom started applying it to my hair, I smelled something like gasoline, and I got this unusual tingling sensation, as if my hair were on fire. Invisible fire. That's because that lice-killing shampoo was basically the equivalent of someone dropping a couple planes worth of napalm on my scalp. In the war against the lice, we had been forced to nuke my entire head.
And while it worked on the bugs, there was collateral damage. For months afterwards, my scalp was peeling, as layers and layers of skin subject to this scorched-earth policy flaked off to make way for something more healthy. Of course, these little bits of skin and dandruff looked to my untrained eye almost exactly like the nits, which left me deathly paranoid of anything small and white coming off of my head for months and months on end. While I have long since recovered from that feeling, I can remember as a kid being horribly afraid that if I scratched at my head I could come away with some monstrous demon bug or its spawn.
But we had learned our lesson from that Worst Easter Ever. Yes, we knew better now. And we never ever went back to that nefarious Bible Bowl conference again.
So Happy Easter, everyone! 8Db
In related news, I just had a Cadbury egg, and daaaayum I love those things. They're sooooo good.
Drawing: This and other boards, on to other things
Writing: Tags
Since we are coming up on Easter this weekend, I suddenly feel like it would be a good idea to tell the story of the Worst Easter Ever. Many of you have already heard this story because I love to gross out the people I consider friends, but for those who don't, here it is. Complete with illustrations! Yes I know this is kind of ripping off the style of Hyperbole and a Half, but hey, if it works it works. Really, the best part about childhood misery is having internet acquaintances laugh at it!
If you really cannot stand talk about bugs, you may want to skip over the story of my Worst Easter Ever. No, seriously. Although this story is spider-free, it is definitely not bug-free. There will be many bugs.
Like most kidlets of a Christian persuasion, I was familiar with Easter as a time of chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, peeps and other candies in fake grass, getting to paint eggs and then having the grownups hide them so we could find them again, and really big dinners. Easter was pretty awesome. Not as cool as Christmas or Halloween mind you, but it was about third in the lineup of holidays where the kids get awesome stuff, especially at a time of the year where holidays for kids are sparse and summer vacation was still far off. I was fond of Easter!
Except for one year.
Now, when I was a bitty Lynx, one year a particular family at our church got waaaay into training all the kids there for a convention/event/thingie called Bible Bowl. It was about as fun as it sounds. Mostly it involved a whole lot of memorization of Bible verses, pretty much all of which I have forgotten by now, oops.
My family elected to attend the Bible Bowl conference in Phoenix, Arizona. This was that aforementioned convention/event/thingie, and it just so happened to take place over Easter weekend, which was probably either a very good idea or a very bad idea. It involved a lengthy road trip out to Phoenix, but since I was used to road trips to Texas for Christmas, this wasn't so bad.
Since I was not so skilled with the Bible verse memorization, but I was a prolific artist, my mom insisted that I enter the art contest. I did, with a poster of, um...a woman praying in a cafe, I think. She may have been in a leather jacket because OMG rebellious. It had to be about using Bible stuff in everyday life. Back then I did not know how to draw humans and no one had made me try and I did not enjoy it, so I did not like drawing this poster. My favorite part was drawing a dog in the corner, because dangit I knew how to draw dogs.
So we made it all the way out to Phoenix, where I entered my poster in the art contest and spent most of my time being surrounded by people much older than me in uncomfortable-looking clothing. To be honest, I don't remember much about the conference, since I was beginning to feel rather tired and hot. And I wasn't sure whether that heat was Phoenix or just me.
My poster won third place. I barely cared, since I had won better prizes in Say-No-To-Drugs poster contests, where I got to draw alligators, dammit. Chain-smoking alligators, even. By Saturday, I just wanted to take my white ribbon and go home. I was definitely sick now, and for some strange reason, my head kept itching.
Luckily, my parents agreed, and we elected to leave the conference early. With luck, we would be home by Easter morning so that I could actually enjoy my chocolate and jelly beans in the cute plastic grass.
We loaded ourselves up, and I sat up in the car, clutching a pillow, because I was very tired and ill and it was Phoenix. And my head would not stop itching. It was then that I pulled a small bug out of my hair.
In fact, I pulled out several bugs. Every time I reached in to scratch, I seemed to come out with another tiny bug or two on my fingers. We had no smart phones back then, so we couldn't look up what the bugs were, but ohhhhhh we suspected. And we would end up right.
But it was okay! We were going home for Easter, away from that sticky hotness of Phoenix and people in too-warm clothing, and all that stood between me and sweet, sweet home was a half-day's drive--
--Right up until thick smoke began pouring from the hood of our minivan.
Yes, just outside of the last exit from Phoenix, our radiator decided to die a miserable, fiery death. Dad pulled into the nearest auto shop, where we discovered that it would take at least 24 hours and I don't know how many dollars to fix it.
This left us somewhere just outside of Phoenix, at some rundown hotel half-full of strange, pink people, while I was very sick and full of itchy bugs in my hair. Not puking, mind you, but still hocking up snot and gunk. And it was Easter Sunday.
The complete lack of chocolate and jelly beans was offset by the fact that this cheap hotel had a pool. With water and everything. You have to understand, when I was a bitty without video games or the internet, a pool was like five internets and two video games liquefied and condensed down into a four-foot-to-six-foot deep pit of chlorine-smelling gloriousness. For awhile, I was able to forget the fact that I was chocolate-less and beset with plagues and just splash around in that liquid joy.
Of course, I was probably spreading my internal and external bugs around to all the other families present at the pool a la Stephen King's The Stand, but nobody thought about that at the time.
After we could be in the pool no longer, we had to leave the hotel because it was one of those check-out-at-11 deals. Unfortunately, our minivan was still in the shop, and would be for five or six more hours. And there was nothing in this town. Nothing at all. So my parents took me and my brothers to a nearby strip mall, which was nearly deserted because it was a) Easter Sunday, and b) in the middle of fuck-all nowhere. Half of the stores were closed, as in metal cage doors closed over darkened windows closed.
I do not remember much of this part, either. By this point, I was sort of in a plague-heavy haze, all hot and sticky and itchy and nose-runny and slow. And there were bugs. In my hair. It was Easter Sunday, and God had seen fit to punish my crappy prayer poster with third place, a lingering cold and runny nose, lice, a broken car, sticky heat, what appeared to be the slow end of a zombie apocalypse, and no chocolate.
At long last, our minivan was fixed, and we trundled all the way back to California. By then, my cold was finally starting to wear off. The bugs, however, were not.
It was confirmed that they were indeed lice. And so my mom set to work combating those vicious, persistent brutes. And of course, by that point they had spread to my two younger brothers, although they were only just beginning their foothold. My brothers utilized their secret weapon of completely shaving their heads. This worked out well enough for them.
I should also point out at this time we had an exchange student living with us: a quiet, very smart, blond-haired blue-eyed boy from Germany, named Florian. My mom offered to shave that very pretty hair of his, but he declined.
Yeah, that didn't really work out for him.
We battled the bugs for days, but couldn't seem to make headway. Even getting out all of the bugs themselves, there were still eggs left that would then hatch into new bugs. By the way, if you've ever wondered where the phrase "nitpicking" comes from, it comes from this. Lice eggs = nits. And picking nits really is the penultimate of nitpicking; searching through something with an extremely fine-tooth comb looking for teeny tiny itsy bitsy details that are nearly impossible to see.
Finally, my mom decided to bring out the big guns. She purchased this strange shampoo that was guaranteed to kill both lice and nits. It had to be used in the kitchen sink because apparently the chemicals in it shouldn't get on bathroom stuff. And indeed, it did eventually kill all of the lice and nits! But what the shampoo bottle failed to mention was that it killed everything else, too.
When my mom started applying it to my hair, I smelled something like gasoline, and I got this unusual tingling sensation, as if my hair were on fire. Invisible fire. That's because that lice-killing shampoo was basically the equivalent of someone dropping a couple planes worth of napalm on my scalp. In the war against the lice, we had been forced to nuke my entire head.
And while it worked on the bugs, there was collateral damage. For months afterwards, my scalp was peeling, as layers and layers of skin subject to this scorched-earth policy flaked off to make way for something more healthy. Of course, these little bits of skin and dandruff looked to my untrained eye almost exactly like the nits, which left me deathly paranoid of anything small and white coming off of my head for months and months on end. While I have long since recovered from that feeling, I can remember as a kid being horribly afraid that if I scratched at my head I could come away with some monstrous demon bug or its spawn.
But we had learned our lesson from that Worst Easter Ever. Yes, we knew better now. And we never ever went back to that nefarious Bible Bowl conference again.
So Happy Easter, everyone! 8Db
In related news, I just had a Cadbury egg, and daaaayum I love those things. They're sooooo good.
Drawing: This and other boards, on to other things
Writing: Tags