It's My Life

            by Megan Hourula

 

The following passages are designed to give insight in to the mystery that is Megan.

 

 

            I feel that it is important to look back on your life sometimes, just so you can see how much you have changed. Like how back in the third grade I would sit on the very edge of my seat. It wasn’t because I found the study of Native American basket weaving exciting. Rather I was waiting for the chair to fall from under me. What better way to get attention?

 

 

            Do you ever feel like your dying? When the lights flicker I always have to check if I’m going blind.  Sometimes when you feel your left arm tingle a little your natural inclination is “I’m having a heart attack.”  Now lucky for me I’ve also seen enough ER to know that if the tingle is on the right side, I’m probably mid-stroke.

 

 

            I don’t know how many people watched the last winter Olympics. I did.  I watched all of it, and I mean all of it. Thanks to my DVR I got to watch Bode choke over and over again. I just loved the inspirational moments brought to me by Jimmy Roberts and the daytime coverage by Jim Lampley was magic. I have to give special thanks to Brain Williams for the reminders that the world is a terrible place and I feel that Bob Costas and I really connected. Though it’s not like I’m weird,  I did fast forward during the curling.

 

 

            A tumor would make a great excuse. All you have to say is the tumor kinda hurts and your home free.  I lived with a tumor for a while, so I can make those kind of jokes. It wasn’t that bad at first but my parents didn’t like it. It never cleaned up after itself and could be a really pain, for my mom. Plus it just kept getting bigger and bigger and there just wasn’t enough room in the uterus for me and it. So push come to shove, it had to go. I stood up to that tumor and by stood up I mean I was fetus and had no idea it existed.

 

 

            Every Christmas I have to see the Nutcracker twice. I don’t have to, it’s a choice I make when I buy the tickets. But That’s just the kind of friend I am, I always support my friends and then try and make them feel guilty about how expensive it is. Each year the ballet somehow gets longer and longer, so to pass the time I have taken to picturing the little ballerinas getting flatten by 300 pound linemen. Of course my friends never get tackled, they have great spin moves.

 

 

 

             My family is Finnish and  Finns aren’t the most sociable group. They are the people who stand in the corner at gatherings and don’t really care to talk to  others (but not like in an angry way). When I was younger I lived in a duplex with my cousins. When the youngest wanted to play with my sister and I instead of knocking on the door he would run along the side of the house hitting it with a stick.  A second cousin once came to visit from Finland, I spent the whole time asking her questions and not once did she answer.

 

 

 

            I went through a phase where I legally could have a been considered a little old lady. The summer after 5th grade I would wake every morning to watch my programs. I would start my

day with Regis and Kathy Lee. I would then hangout with Bob Barker and at the age of 11 my price was never right. Now the program that really could have made me an extra for the producers was my stories, The Young and the Restless. The day Billy and Mac ( who were cheating on Billy’s and girlfriend and later would find out that they were cousins) figured out that Raoul had diabetes was almost too intense, they saved his just in time. Plus for the next couple of weeks I was absolutely convinced I had all the same symptoms. But I wasn’t worried, with all the informercials I had seen that summer I knew all about diabetic testing equipment. Not to mention Metamucil and denture glue.

 

 

 

            I wouldn’t call myself a hypochondriac, I mean the time I  thought I had ebola was very short lived. Rather I see myself has concerned or fearful of the worst possible outcome when it comes to my health. Just the other day I had a near death experience (they happen quite often). Earlier in the day a pin pricked my ankle, and that night I woke up with a throbbing pain in the exact same place. I tried to stay calm, but I couldn’t remember the last time I got a tetanus shot. The pin didn’t look rusty but maybe against all odds I had gotten an infection. Then I felt it, a pulse in my chest. Great, the infection had spread to my heart, I was going to die. It was all very logical, so I figured I would go to bed to see if I would survive. I did.

 

 

 

            I don’t know why I’m so afraid of getting hurt, I mean it’s not like it the end of the world, it just might be the end of my world. My grandmother has had to deal with a lot of physical pain in her life, but she doesn’t let that  keep her from living her life. In fact she could be considered a great role model in that respect. She lost her arm  to cancer and several toes to diabetes; because of her missing limbs she has no balance and often falls breaking either an ankle, a knee or a hip and  thus because of the bed rest that follows she on occasion contracts pneumonia. She also has a pacemaker. But all in all she still remains upbeat, in her home, a good 35 miles from the nearest hospital.

 

 

 

            I almost chocked once. Actually, I have almost chocked multiple times, but I remember one night very clearly.  It was way too late to eat at the dinner table, So I instead sat in front of the television. I was watching a priceless episode of of Zoey 101 where someone had forgotten their homework. As I laughed at the hilarious bit I remembered I was eating and that there was a problem because I couldn’t remember chewing. That’s one of my favorite near death experiences.

 

 

 

            I always feel bad for the doctors that have to deal with me. I flinch with every move they make. The closer they come  with their little instruments the farther I lean away. It’s not like I want to be a difficult patient, it’s totally sub conscience. But there is something about the prodding of little instruments that at any moment can find something  deadly wrong with me. I have already decided I don’t want to know if I have cancer in my ear, so take you light elsewhere. The worst is when they stab a needle into your finger with all their might trying to extract a  sample, so they can see how much iron is in your blood. Well apparently there is a lot of iron in my blood because it took 3 damn needle stabbing in three different finger to get any blood out. For the record, I don’t like needles being forced into my skin. It’s just not ok.

 

 

 

            My mother calls me a pathological procrastinator. I thinks it’s because I have this small  tendency to put things off till the last possible second. Which I know is pretty typical for a teenager. I just worry that sometimes I procrastinate to the extreme point where I never actually do anything. Maybe it’s normal to not start doing your homework till eleven o’clock at night even though technically you started at four in the afternoon. I’m sure a lot of people don’t pack for a seven day trip an till an half an hour before they leave.  It’s not all that uncommon for a person who has a math test the next day and hasn’t study yet nor done their homework for the past week, to be watching Hannah Montana on the the Disney channel. But to be honest, I thought up this paragraph at 2:30 in the morning on a tuesday when I was suppose to be falling asleep, so you could say I even put off going to sleep.