First Aid With the Brodericks, Who May as Well Be Witch Doctors

There are three things that Brodericks will always have in their first aid kit: superglue, vaporub, and a box of adhesive bandages. Of course, the super glue is probably glued shut, the vaporub only has a tiny glob in the lid, and the box of adhesive bandages only has a wrapper of a bandage left. For my most recent need to dip into my first aid kit, it seemed that this was the case.

It all started off with me chewing my nails. My brother and I have always chewed our nails: while Cameron would chew his entire finger to nubbins, I would be more precise and focus mostly on hangnails. And as much as my mother would try to get us to stop, nothing could stop us from utter mastication of our fingers. Recently, I was biting at my right pinky nail and nearly pulled half of my nail out of the nail bed. Yeah it hurt, but I just ignored it and went on to biting my other fingers. I ignored the finger for a few days, and then the infection set in. My first thought to ease my infection was hydrogen peroxide, but recently, a roommate (guess who) decided to throw it away. So my second option for sterilization was vaporub.

Vaporub has been the cure-all in my family since the dawn of time. If I ever had a cold, my mother would slather me up like a greased pig and send me to bed. Only once I visited my Aunt Shelly in New Zealand was I let in on its ability to cure any disease. She told us how if you have a sore throat, swallow a glob, it’ll make you feel better by the morning. Chapped lips? Put it all over your lips and they’ll be kissable in an hour. Dry nose? Swab some vaporub in your nostrils… that’ll clear everything up. So obviously I thought, well maybe vaporub can sterilize my finger.

I grabbed the vaporub and of course, there was a lone glob in the lid (probably because when my apartment smells, I choose to slather up with vaporub before I go to bed so that I can’t smell the dishes from my bedroom [this occurs more than I would like to admit]). I smeared the glob all over my finger, which then became the most painful experience of my life. Certain I was going to have to amputate my hand, I rolled around the apartment floor in agony. After an hour, the pain went away, and I knew there would be no way that any bacteria could still be alive in my wound. Life was good. Then it wasn’t.

I went to go sell my plasma at the plasma center, and of course, I bit the scab off my fingernail. I went into the screening booth and to make sure I only donate at that certain plasma center, they paint my right pinky nail with fluorescent paint. The woman who administered the paint did so with great passion, pushing the dye into my nail bed, which then made me realize that vaporub was nothing compared to fluorescent dye. I looked at my finger under the black light and then theorized that the dye would seep into my bloodstream, and that I would then be able to glow under a black light. I imagined how I could utilize my new found power for good… and then for evil. The woman in the booth felt bad and gave me a bandaid to cover up the finger.

As stupid as it sounds, receiving a bandaid for my finger seemed like sweet rebellion to me. Growing up, we were not allowed to have band aids unless we were going to bleed on the carpet. I’m not sure if this was the rule because we were too poor to buy band aids (but it is definitely plausible) or if it was because if one child received a bandaid, the others would want one as well, and you cannot go giving band aids out willy-nilly. That’d be complete madness. But when I was allowed to use a bandaid, I would go wild the adhesive bandages, replacing them once an hour; hence, why our bandaid boxes were only filled with wrappers.

I let my finger rest for a while, and was hoping that it would clear up after a few days. But of course, whenever something happens to my right hand, my left hand has to get damaged as well. The wound on my left hand came from trying to close a door that had once been two paned, but after a tragic weed-whacking incident, was left with one pane and shards of glass all around the door frame. I went to close the door after going in the house and cut my thumb really deep. At first, I just tried to apply pressure to stop the gushing blood, but that did nothing and the blood kept flowing. So I decided to suck on my thumb to keep from bleeding on the floor. My sister, Kathryn, saw my panic and whipped out her trusty first aid kit from her purse to keep me from bleeding on the carpet. She knows the rules well. The bandaid worked at keeping me from dripping blood everywhere, but it soon was saturated with blood. No amount of band aids could get this thing to close, so I went for the superglue.

My grandmother taught me the great use of superglue in medicine. She swore that it was the same as getting stitches, and she would always threaten to glue any cuts I had. “Want some superglue on that?” No thanks, Grandma. No thanks. Grandma was actually rather inventive with superglue, and at one point managed to glue some assemblance of false teeth into her mouth. This was of course to avoid the dentist, whom, to my grandmother, was the same as Satan himself.

I found my superglue and went to work, applying a dab of glue to a hanging flap of skin and adhering it to the other side. I felt great, and also a bit disappointed that I didn’t decide to be a doctor, because what a repair I did! Then, I decided to grab a water bottle from my room, which the pressure of having something in my hand pushed a smidge of superglue into my flesh. I may have been delirious, but I could have sworn I saw steam leaking from my flesh. And then I knew I was going to die, if not from the burning hot intensity resonating from my hand, then from chemical exposure giving me cancer.

I used all three, first aid tricks that the Brodericks possess in the period of a week, and each time I nearly died.  Why we swear by vaporub, superglue, and no band aids, I couldn’t tell you, but it is my opinion as a hypochondriac that we need to update our method of first aid. To what will we change, I have no clue, but until we get new treatment, I will continue to carry vaporub and superglue in my first aid kit.

Moving Back Home and the Activities That Will Follow

I’m moving back to California in two weeks. While I am really excited to be back with my family and be rid of my present roommates, my brother has me scared to death with all the activities he has planned for when I come home. Cameron has always been an active child; he played football and ran track in high school, and I have somewhat always been the sedentary one. If Cameron thinks I will be able to keep up with his activity level, he is to be sore disappointed.

While I did play sports in high school, I don’t ever claim to be an athlete. To be honest, I really hated playing sports, but my siblings were convinced I would be the best football player. So for Christmas one year, I received cleats and a football; I was disappointed at the time because I would have much rather received a magic set or maybe a skewer to gouge my eyes out with. I played football, gawky and awkward, and never really meshed with the team, but after one season, I was no longer required by my family to play a next. This could be because I wasn’t the best player on the field, or maybe they sensed my deep hatred for all things confrontational and let me slide.

Come to think of it, I’ve never really been that big into sporty displays of masculinity: weightlifting, sports, wrestling. It is actually possible that I have only arm wrestled once in the last ten years. This of course was after a family reunion, wherein an uncle had a few beers and decided to challenge every strapping lad he could trap into a corner. I won. But I am twice his size and was sober at the time, so I don’t find winning against him to be any great sign of my strength.

My parents have also gone on an active streak, buying bikes and enrolling in yoga. I can’t even remember the last time I owned a bike, let alone rode one. My dad keeps telling me, “If you can Zumba, you can ride a bike.” I don’t see how me shaking my hips for an hour correlates to biking ability, but we will see when I get home if he is actually right.

 My mother enrolled in yoga, which is exercise I can actually do—stretching was where I excelled in football. But I fear I may embarrass my mother if I attend with her. It’s not that I have horrible form, or pass gas when in downward dog, but the slightest amount of exercise initiates a flood of sweat from my body. This usually goes unnoticed in manly sports, because you must either sweat or die, but there isn’t much excuse in yoga to be drenched in sweat from the first breath. I blame my hyperhydrosis on my recent obesity, but because people can’t imagine me as fat, they usually just think I am a freak of nature. I, myself, think it is a bit freaky that peeling an orange will make me sweat like cheese in a hot room.

Every couple of months, I convince myself that I will start working out and finally obtain the beach bod I have always aspired for. This usually lasts about a day, and ends with me eating an entire pizza on the couch while watching The Match Game. Last time I decided to attempt beach bod status, I started running at the BYU gym. With the first stride on the treadmill, my saliva had become as viscous as glue, and each following stride made me feel as if I was running toward my death at six miles an hour. The other issue I had with the treadmill is that my strides are so long that my feet would go past the conveyer path and send me on a loppy stumble that almost always ended with a sprained ankle.

To avoid more painful sprains, I would find myself on the ellipticals. My problem then stemmed from the fact that I was the only boy in the BYU gym who ever touched the ellipticals, let alone used them. Not only was I the only boy on the ellipticals, but the ellipticals were positioned to face the very manly free-weight floor. Due to the laws of feng shui, the judgemental glares from the manly, weightlifting men were focused, magnified even, directly on me, the pansy on the elliptical.  I promptly left the gym, trying to assert my manliness by hawkin’ a loogie on my way out; this backfired and left a ball of spit dangling from my lower lip.

I could spend the next two weeks becoming more manly and making sure that I am in peak physical condition before I go home so that I can keep up with Cam’s frolicking, but it is much more likely that I will spend my remaining days on the couch, eating deep fried foods and watching TV. It’s a good thing that my brother appreciates deep frying more than any physical activity on earth. So as long as I am armed with vegetable oil, and Cam’s deep fryer doesn’t explode, I may be off the hook.

Napoleon, Meet Facebook

The Finn has left the apartment, moving downstairs where they never have plumbing issues, and while he really did nothing but sit on the couch in his garments and Snuggie, watch Glee, and eat raw pasta, the absence of his sane presence has made the rest of the apartment go insane. While Dustin (the Southern Californian) has stayed nearly the same, Andrew (the smoking roommate) has now quit smoking for his girlfriend and is now starting to attend church, and Shon (the Napoleon) has decided to jump on my last nerve like it’s a trampoline. Actually, Shon has always done that, but now I don’t have the Finn to complain to and joke with, so now I have no pressure release valve.

 Shon had been my neighbor for the last couple of semesters, and all I knew was that he spelled his name weird and had a pair of stilts. I had always been cordial to him, although whenever he would cross my path, I would think, “That is the stupidest way to spell Shon. What were his parents thinking?” Growing up, my grandma warned us about giving your child weird names. Apparently, she had a cousin or a relative who was named Beaky. Beaky, tormented by her name, ran away and nobody ever saw her again. I always imagined that she ran away to the circus to join a freak show, but I really doubt that happened. Shon has a weird name… maybe he will run away to the circus. He already has stilts.

I didn’t know that Shon had moved into my apartment until after he had been there for a week. I was vacationing in Texas with a friend, and when I came back to Provo, I walked into the apartment to find him standing in the hallway in his garments. Most definitely jet lagged, I checked the apartment number to see if I came in the right apartment, and I was home… with a strange, little man living in my apartment.

I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth when I saw that the tub looked like it was filled with smoke. I walked over to the brim, looked into the opaque broth, and realized, “The tub is filled to the brim with old shower water.” Apparently, the tub had been this way for four days. Nobody bothered to report the issue, because why would they when I will do it? The next morning, I had to bail water from the tub and then shower in six inches of my roommates shower water.

Shon is an animal of instinct, and his instincts tell him that he must throw away as many things as he possibly can or he will die. So Shon will go about the apartment, on the prowl for things that may be garbage, and when he finds something he deems trash, he picks it up, brings it to me and asks, “Is this yours?” If I say yes, his response is, “Can I throw it away?” If I say no, his response is, “Can I throw it away?”

His compulsive trashing started out small (a plate here, a cup there), but has now moved on to anything in the apartment that isn’t his. At one point, he picks up my blender from the kitchen countertop and asks, “Is this yours?” Actually it is my friend’s who is in India, but I responded yes. “Can I throw it away?” At that point I snapped. “Why would you throw out a perfectly good blender? It isn’t dirty and it takes up four inches on the counter. Why do you think it should be thrown away?” He looked at the blender for a moment, turned it around in his hands, “Is it broken?” No Shon, it isn’t broken. Why he thinks I would keep a broken blender is past me.

The internet is my favorite way to torture Shon because he honestly believes that if he has a facebook, he will be stalked and anything he has ever done will be shared with the world, but he decided to make a profile to publicize his Birthday party. His profile consisted of one picture, his name, and nothing else (no wall, no friends, and no tagged pictures). I, being a lover of facebook, decided to Google his name and then casually throw information I found at him in conversation to prove that he already had no privacy, so why not do more on facebook? I started out small: pole vaulting records, marathon times, middle names, past apartments. Then, one day, I hit the mother lode. “So, Shon, remember March 24, 2008? I do. You were at the University of Utah and you signed a petition to end pornography… I think you were signer 59. Tell me, did the pornography ever stop?” Through peer-pressure, I was able to get him to get a facebook wall. Uncertain how to use it, he asked me to post information about his party in his status. I agreed and wrote, “Hi, I’m Shon and I am paranoid of being facebook stalked!” He immediately deleted the post and wrote something about his party. Finally, I had found his weakness, and I would utilize it to the fullest.

The Napoleon is my nickname for Shon. After one of his many trashing binges, I wrote on my facebook that I was living with a new-age version of Napoleon Bonaparte because he is short and is attempting to conquer my apartment. He laughed hysterically when he read it, but that is because he thought I was talking about Napoleon Dynamite. “No. Napoleon Bonaparte. You know, the tiny, French Emperor? He tried to invade Russia . . . any bells?” He was absolutely clueless. How a Graduate student could go his entire life without hearing about Napoleon baffles me, so I had to give him a history lesson with the help of Wikipedia.

After Shon asked to borrow an athletic jersey from my sister, I promptly went to his facebook wall and wrote, “Shon wears women’s clothing.” Within ten minutes, the post was deleted. I responded by putting another wall post of, “Shon is a party pooper,” which my friend, Ash, fueled the fire by commenting, “I hear he also wears women’s clothing!” That post was deleted as well. “Shon refers to his underwear as panties. This is the manliest way to refer to your underwear.” Deleted. And then he blocked me from facebook.

Shon did at one point refer to his underwear as panties. Apparently, he has five million siblings and most of them are girls. When laundry day would come around, clean socks would go into a box and clean underwear would go into a box. Due to the overwhelming amount of women in his family, the underwear box was referred to as the “Panty Box.” So growing up, he thought his underwear were panties because, “Panties go into the panty box.”

Put into text, I sound ruthless, and I am. I feel no remorse mostly because Brodericks do two things really well: we win and we tease. So Shon can continue to be an annoying, little snot, and I will continue to cyberbully him (and while I am blocked from his facebook, I do know his login information for his LDS dating service. HUZZAH!). It’s all in fun right?

 

Nyquil and Ibuprofen

Recently, I have been sick as a dog.  I blame my sister, who went with me on a corndog trip and bit into my corndog before handing it to me… after she was horribly infirm the previous weekend.  But that is what I love about my sister: she has no concern for my health, and she blows burps into my face.  

I started to feel really achy while in my seven hour class on Wednesday. I had no clue what was wrong with me, so I pulled a stool up to my lab bench and just tried to look pitiful. If I looked pitiful enough, maybe one of my labmates would do my lab for me and just let me die in the corner. Unfortunately enough, nobody even batted an eye and so I had to finish my lab by myself and shuffle home. I obviously needed drugs to help me out in my situation. So I when I got into my room, I pulled out my stash of drugs.

I learned to squirrel away drugs from my grandmother. She had at least one pill of every type of drug you could ever dream of in a beige, carryon bag next to her bed. To be completely honest, I wouldn’t be surprised to if she had a kilo of cocaine in the medicine bag, just in case.. . .When I was about eleven, I told my grandma that I was sick, so she gave me a breathe-right strip and five assorted pills. I questioned nothing and downed them with a liter of Cherry Coke; the next thing I know, it was 22 hours later and I had no clue where I was. Was I roofied from my grandmother? Yes.

I have developed my stash over the last couple of years and have stored everything in an old shower bag from Boy Scouts. A few pain pills from roomies’ past surgeries, cold pills, ibuprofen, aspirin; the list goes on.  So I was sure I would find relief in my medicine bag, but when I looked in it, most of my pills had been ransacked. I was left with three ibuprofen, a Claritin, and a squirt of Chloraseptic. I wasn’t too surprised because every week, a roll of quarters will go missing from my bedroom—even if I hide them. I even resorted to hiding my quarters in a zipped pocket of my winter coat, but that did nothing to hamper the thief and I was, once again, quarter-less on laundry day.

 I took the three ibuprofen and prayed that my sickness would go away after Zumba. Obviously, Zumba only exasperated my illness and by the end my tonsils were the size of grapefruits, keeping any passage of spit down my throat. I felt nearly rabid, and my cotton mouth made it look like I was foaming at the mouth. I hurried home so I could just end the day, and then my fever started.

I tried to break my fever by cocooning myself in a series of comforters, and going to sleep. I woke up at five in the morning, not in my bedroom, but on my leather couch and in my skimpies. I must have became so hot in my bedroom that I sleepwalked out to the couch, stripped, and then tried to cool down against the frigid leather. I stayed on the couch until eight when my neighbor started to knock on my door. Due to my unwell state, I opened the door for him, even though I was wearing practically nothing.

After my neighbor had left, I knew I had to get a fever reducer before I wound up outside, naked, in the sprinklers. So I went to Smith’s, and before I paid for my drugs I had already taken 1000 mgs of ibuprofen. In my drug induced state, I managed to finish my 44 page term paper, make a presentation on celiac disease, and frolic in the park.

For my presentation, I decided to wear my really snazzy, golden shoes. The problem with these shoes is that they are two sizes too small and usually make me feel like my feet have been amputated, but with the drugs surging through my system, I felt nothing (I’m positive that if somebody decided to nail my feet to the floor, I wouldn’t feel a thing either). When I got home, I took off my shoes to find that my left foot was covered in blood. Apparently, my pinky toenail was a bit sharp on one end and sliced open the toe next to it. Did I feel it? Nope. I am invincible with ibuprofen.

When I was about ready to go to bed for the night, I broke out some Nyquil that I bought earlier in the day. Nyquil has been notorious for making me feel loopier than all-get-out, and usually only works to get me to fall asleep, which was all I really wanted. Once the effects started to set in, I looked out my window to see two girls from my ward with strange llama figurines. I waved the girls in who proceeded to talk about the llamas. The figurines were about three inches tall and were made from alpaca wool, but the bizarre thing about the figurines was that their faces looked as if they were modeled after a special-ed class.  It was a train wreck, and I could not look away. I reached my threshold of the figurines after one was revealed to have an extremely hair chest, and had to go to bed.

The second night of Nyquil, my friends Ashley and Nate came over to keep me company. We chatted and after an hour, the Nyquil began to set in. Ash, brilliant as she is, decided that this would be a great time for me to take out a hair wrap that she had that was starting to turn into a dreadlock, and so she had me try to unweave this thing from her hair, while drunk, with scissors and a pen. I, personally, would never have somebody under the influence of medication, try to cut something out of my hair without actually cutting all my hair off, but she had faith that I wouldn’t accidently scalp her. Halfway through, I could no longer differentiate what was thread and what was hair, so I sent her home with half of her hair wrap unraveled.

I woke up at six in the morning, and decided to walk out to the kitchen to grab something to drink. When I reached my cupboard, I looked back to find a woman passed out on my living room floor. Due to my morning grogginess, I just stood there and tried to remember if I let this woman in, and if so, why. It hit me that it was Andrew’s girlfriend after a good minute or so… and then I remembered that I was only in my underwear. I rushed back to bed, hoping she would be gone before I had to go to Zumba.

I got up a few hours later for Zumba, and when I went out to the front room, she was still passed out on the floor; unfortunately, when I saw her this time, she was a bit exposed. My friend Tal came over to go to Zumba with me and she opened the door to the stranger. Andrew, who had now moved out to the couch, woke up and introduced Tal to the woman. “Hey. I’m Andrew, and this is my girlfriend Sammy.” Tal looked puzzled at the sleeping woman, “Oh… Hi Sammy.” Sammy never said anything back, but I assume that her drooling was the best response she could muster in her comatose state.

I Attempt to Zumba

Three times a week I Zumba. I doubt that I am really good at it because my white, lanky body just whips around to Latin music, but I still go faithfully, three times a week. Not only do I just whip around for an hour, but I am also the largest person in the room. And while I love being in the front row, nobody behind me can even fathom what the instructor is doing, and they all have to follow my wild spasms that I call exercise.

The first class I attended, a little woman told me that I was not allowed to dance in the front because nobody else could see. I was shocked that she would be so upfront about it, so I laughed but stayed put. The woman then became very confrontational, trying to intimidate me into moving to the back of the classroom; I’m sure it would have worked if she wasn’t the size of an adolescent. She then moved to the far end of the classroom where she wouldn’t have to deal with the blockade that is my body.

For the three months that I have attended, I have committed assault at least once a week to the ladies who dance around me. I have stomped feet, elbowed eyes, smacked heads, slapped cheeks, kicked hands, and any other verb-noun combo one could think of. Usually these are not my fault, but the ladies around me, because they stomp right when we are supposed to stomp left, or they decide to stand as close as possible to me as humanly imaginable.

I come twenty minutes early to Zumba, every class. This is to ensure my spot in front so that I don’t get shoved to the far side by the yoga balls or in the back where the most obese women reside. This usually ensures my spot, but some Zumba-ers come in two minutes before the class starts and try to push me out of my area. The worst spot stealer is Farting Abuelita. She likes to just shuffle in and stand two inches away from me, thinking that she can evacuate me with her chorizo farts, but I, having lived with the most disgusting roommates on the planet, am immune to the stench, and continue to dance. One would think that because she is old and frail that I would try my best not to stomp on her, but I feel no remorse. If she gets in my way, I don’t mind giving her a stomp. Hopefully she will learn her lesson before I break her hip.

I have one other Zumba-er that refuses to be anywhere but the front of the class. Snarlyface Zumbapants. She is a middle aged Latina who has attended for almost a year and knows every dance by heart. Obviously she gets her name due to her outgoing personality and sense of style. And while I have danced next to her for months, she has only said one word to me. “Pescado.” I was asking the instructor for a specific dance, and because all the songs are in foreign languages, I don’t necessarily know what they are called. So I do a few dance steps so she can find the song and Snarlyface looks at me and says, “Pescado.” I ask, “Is that the name of the song?” She just stares back at me, purses her lips, and nods, “Pescado.” I’m uncertain if she knows how to say anything else, but I am afraid if I strike up a conversation to find out, she might rip off my head, screaming, “PESCADO!”

Not all of the Zumba-ers are bad, and I have actually managed to build a friendship with a tall, lanky woman who dances behind me. Although I don’t know her name, and she doesn’t know mine, we still chat like old girl-friends until we are glared at by the conservative, traditional, catholic attendees. Last week, she and I were discussing tattoos and she decided to show me all the tattoos she had. This was fine until the tramp stamp was revealed and reflected throughout the room on the tinfoil wallpaper that is supposed to be akin to mirrored walls. Immediately there was an uproar from the Latinas—in Spanish of course. While I have lost most of my Spanish, I could still understand what the Latinas were saying (and it wasn’t very nice). My friend and I just laughed, and she then told me she would show me her other tattoos outside of class. We made sure to swing our elbows, extra wide, for the rest of class.