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.

I Should Never Be a Handyman

Sometimes, I get the urge to fix things. So when my sink clogged for the second time in a period of two weeks, I thought, “Well yes! I think I CAN fix a clogged sink. It’s all just gravity, right?” Unfortunately, an hour before, I poured my (red) chicken-broth poaching liquid into the sink, along with corn kernels, expired cream, assorted vegetables, and celery hearts.  I didn’t realize that the sink was clogged when I decided to put all this down the sink, but I soon discovered something was amiss. 

First I thought that putting the garbage disposal on would drain my sink. The garbage disposal spun the water around but only made a growing cloud of suds. My next idea included putting MORE water into the sink with a prayer that the laws of pressure and gravity would push the clog out of the pipes. The water level just kept rising, and although it did dilute the color of the water, it just increased my stress. That is when I decided I was a plumber.

So I cleared out under the sink and prepared myself with kitchen towels and bowls to catch the putrid water that was floating about my sink. First, I fingered with the bottom of the T-joint and when I finally removed the U-bend, a trickle of about three drops drained from the pipes. At this point, I knew that it had to be a clog in the garbage disposal side of the pipes (which sticks out horizontally). I unscrewed the joint as slowly as manageable and to my surprise, nothing came out. When I actually disassembled the entire junction, I could see that some plastic was clogging the pipes. Of course the first thing I do when I see the foreign plug is put down my catch basins and then touch it.

The next thing I know is that I am covered in poaching liquid with my hand sealing off the pipe that at one point was clogged. I was so confused to what had just happened, but when I looked across the now wet linoleum floor, I saw a rusty spoon and a spoon handle. Some idiot managed to get a spoon-and-a-half past the garbage disposal, where they made residence in the T-joint of my sink’s plumbing. I wiped some swollen corn off my face and some broth out of my brow and stared out onto what I had just done: I flooded my apartment’s kitchen with corn and chicken broth. I sat in the broth for a good three minutes, choking back tears.

Sitting in the broth, I remembered a time when I accidently filled my grandma’s dishwasher with dish soap instead of dishwasher detergent. Her kitchen flooded with suds while I watched in horror. At first, I tried to scoop the suds into the sink with a cup and prayed that God would grant a miracle where the soap would magically transform into detergent. After the miracle didn’t happen, I had to grab my parents and my grandma to clean up my mess.

Unfortunately enough, this time I didn’t have my parents to clean up the mess, or even to wipe the swollen corn off my face, so I turned back into a plumber and went to work. First, I called out to Joel, who was asleep on the couch (at noon). He moaned, rolled over, and ignored any further pleas I made. I knew two of my other roommates were gone, but wasn’t sure if the Finn had left yet. I took my chances and shouted, “Hey Sampo! Sampo! I need some help in here!” in the most manly, plumber voice I could muster. He came into the kitchen, stared at the slowly creeping water, and I handed him two bowls to empty out into the bath. He emptied them and before I could thank him, he was out the door to the apartment downstairs where they never have issues with plumbing. I reassembled the pipes, grabbed all the beach towels that previous roommates had left, and started to sop up the chicken broth. The time for church was readily approaching, and I had yet to have showered. So I did a quick mop up of the floor with the most fragrant cleaner I could find, and hopped into the shower.

After soaping up twice in the shower, I still felt unclean. I considered for a moment the hazards of showering with bleach, but when I stopped pondering I realized that church started in ten minutes. I didn’t really bother with my hair or with shaving, especially because telling my story would get much more pity if I showed up to church looking like I was run ragged. But the entire time I was in church, I felt dirty and I could have sworn I still had swollen corn in my hair. And then I gained revelation: I was never meant to be a plumber.