This is why I'm jealous of my brother's genes

I’m a halfie. One of my parents is fully Hispanic, the other one is fully White, as if that wasn’t obvious. My best friend, Maggie, said it best when she stated, “Both of my parents are white, brown-hair, brown-eyed people. There wasn’t much variety in our genes.” Her and her two brothers look pretty similar. With a vast open-field worth of different traits and genes from my mom and dad, there were many choices my DNA could have selected. In terms of shopping, Maggie’s genes had one aisle of the grocery store, whereas my genes had the entire produce and dairy section. There were a lot of possible combinations for my brother, Aaron, and I. I have two other older brothers as well, but they don’t count because one of them has a different mom, and one of them has a different dad. It’s a complicated Brady Bunch-esque story that I’m not in the mood to get into. 

So since my brother was born first he decided to take all of the good genes and leave me with the scraps. I mean, not consciously. He’s a very nice person and would give his shirt off his back to a hobo. Of course, that would mean that he could befriend a hobo, and just at the prospect of that, he would jump at the chance. He’s a nice person and all, but I think he must have known his personality in life, and decided to be greedy while he still had the chance. I picture him frolicking through the open-field worth of genes that I mentioned earlier and snatching up all of the good genes as such:

Aaron’s great, and one of my best friends, and whatever, but he got beautiful thick wavy hair and already wonderfully shaped eye-brows. He also has naturally tan-ish skin and a clear complexion. What did I get? A steaming pile of crap! Now, that’s not entirely true, but I need to exaggerate for the sake of good reading. But I got limp boring thin hair and the thick-Mexican eyebrows. If I had Aaron’s eyebrows it would take me, probably, 5 minutes (Max!) to pluck my eyebrows. But no, my stubborn eyebrows take for-EVER and a day to pluck. I also look like a nasty vampire from Twilight because I’m so pale and I tend to break out more than anyone. 

I shouldn’t complain, I’m still comfortable with my looks. I just think my brother knew what he was doing when he was born first. He’s 17 months older than I am. We’re pretty much twins, except for you know, he took up all the good genes. Anyways, his 21^st birthday is today and so he’s probably not going to read this on account that he’ll be shwasted all day. This is half of his birffday present, the other half is in the form of the Mighty Morphin Power-Rangers DVD. Yeah, I know, I win best sister ever award.

This is why the E.R. need some fixin'

It was a cloudy day. Third day of the year. The year was fresh. The house still lingered of Christmas. Things were slowly getting back to the regular pace of the day. The hour was 6. When the horror struck!! DUN DUN DUN! 

We had a bee infestation in my house. I had been stung a few times when I was younger, and had to see the doctor. I was living my fun life in the midst of the stinging little monsters that chose to dwell in the same residence I was living in. Me, with a bee allergy unbeknownst to most people, and bees, the cause of the allergy. This was not going to be a good combination. I remember I had friends over in 6^th grade to come spend the night and swim. We were enjoying the warm August day when bees started flying around us and we began to kill them. We killed probably around one hundred bees that day. I’m not even over-exaggerating. That cluster of bees probably knew that day as the Massacre at the Pool-Side. Slowly they were rebuilding their army and plotting their revenge. If only I had known. 

Back in November I was walking in my house, barefoot, when one little bugger stung me on the foot. I’ll leave out the gory details but I experienced an allergic reaction and just took a few Benadrylls and went to bed, but I couldn’t walk for a week. Shortly after, my mom asked my doctor for a prescription for an Epipen;  a dose of a certain type of medicine to curb the allergic reaction and potentially save the life of the person in need. Just two weeks ago, I was going to the bathroom and saw a little bee dying and hovering around. I ignored it, thinking it would die on its own. Long story short, a couple of hours later, the stupid bee found its way to me and stung me on my other foot. I screamed, I cried, my mom stabbed my thigh with the Epipen. 

Emergency room was a necessity after that. Alright here’s where my story gets fun. And when I say fun, I’m being sarcastic. In no way was it fun. Except for people watching. It makes you realize how screwed up our health care system is. And before you agree or disagree with me, I don’t know how to fix it and am not going to pretend to. All I know is that it’s messed up and needs to be fixed. Anyways, so there were some characters in this place. Some normal people just looking for relief, and some not normal people who were really creepy. 

My favorite person was the lovely ER nurse who took to being a total jerk to me. This is the point I want to make. If you are going to be a rude inconsiderate jerk, maybe this isn’t the profession for you. Taking your frustration out on the patient is not going to make your job easier. This tool for a nurse looked like a Jersey-Shore wannabe, with his gross five o’clock shadow, distinct walk, and his demeanor. He cussed while walking away from talking to me about how I shouldn’t even be there. We exchanged a few “pleasantries.”  Then the doctor came in and he was nice. I appreciate him. 

Until he started hitting on my mom. Like really dude? You’re wearing a wedding ring, get out of here. What makes you think my mom is interested. The place was super creepy. They were supposed to be monitoring me, but very little monitoring took place. When I had to go to the ER because of chest pains in April, at least people paid attention to me. Granted, it was chest pains. But still! I managed to look cute that day, and I think that was the real reason. I was paid an infinite amount of attention, and what did I get this time? Diddly-squat. 

While waiting for hours on end, I managed to snap a few pictures and my mom and I wrote a song to the tune of 12 Days of Christmas (sort of):

12 Ghetto people,
11 Babies screaming,
10 Seconds with the Epipen,
9^th day of Christmas,
8 Minutes on the phone (with the pharmacist to direct us how to use said Epipen),
7 Facebook notifications,
6 Angry nurses,
5 Icky pills (to calm the reaction),
4 Dollars worth of fast food,
3 Hours of waiting,
2 Worried parents,
And 1 E.R. Visit.

So it doesn’t fit exactly, but eh, it’s still moderately funny.

And for  your viewing pleasure, here are the pictures I took:

 

So this is the room they put me in to "monitor" me.

 

 I took a picture to demonstrate the crappy craftsmanship, has little to do with anything. 

 

The violent Epipen my mom used on me.

So all in all it was not fun but at least it prompted my parents to call an exterminator. No more bees reside in the house. So hopefully this will never happen again, but if it does, at least I have a song to occupy my mind.

This is why I tend to stray away from sappy posts

I’m not the type of person that hates change; I welcome it with slightly open arms. I’m more apathetic to it than anything, which can be seen as good or bad. Sometimes it’s not apathy that gets the best of me, it’s my ignorance. On occasion, I don’t even notice when things change. It’s probably because I don’t watch the news enough. I wish I could give you some examples, but I can’t. Mainly because I’m so apathetic toward them, that I forget they’ve changed. 

The one exception to this rule is when my friends change. It’s funny that this bothers me, since people are constantly growing and thus constantly changing. It used to break my heart; such as,
“Oh (Insert Name Here) and I don’t hang out anymore, that must mean she didn’t agree with my stance on shaving.”
or “(Other Name Here) and I just don’t talk like we used to, he must have seen my hidden collections of poems about him.”
or Some other equally ridiculous assumption about one of my weird qualities that might be viewed as a turn off to people who don’t know me. 

I would look at people changing as a sign of something I did wrong. Luckily, I’m still young, but old enough to know that it’s not my fault, and I should be happy for people changing. It shows that they are growing as a person and are developing into a mature version of their former self. But sometimes not. Sometimes they devolve and become even more stupid. Just when you think it’s not humanly possible for someone to get worse, they do. And as harsh as it is, I hope that they don’t infect our population. 

But back to my main point, in order for people to grow, sometimes they have to change their environment. This is something I have trouble with. I’ll be like a nagging shadow trying to convince people that our hometown isn’t a terrible place. And usually the musical hipsters will disagree; but they’re pretentious and I don’t care about their opinions. When it comes to my friends needing to leave, I get worked up and emotional. When my best friend, Maggie, left for college 5 hours away, I think I cried for a week straight. Luckily she’s back, and Maggie, if you’re reading this remember this: If you move to California like you say you will in the future, I will cut off your hair and drain your bank account!!! Sadly, this is an empty promise, and she knows it. And if she didn’t, well she knows now.

So this brings me to why I felt the need to post about change. I’ve had friends that I have known since kindergarten and such, but we weren’t constantly friends over the years. When I say that my best friend, Stephanie, has been my best friend since 4^th grade, I mean it. We both had boy issues for a few years and even through that mess we remained friends (to anyone out there that is threatening a great friendship for a guy, DON’T DO IT. You will regret it because you will most likely lose all your friends and be mad all the time and when you break up, because, trust me, you will break up, you won’t have the friends you need). 

So ever since I have known Stephanie, she’s always wanted to go to Seattle for college. Well, it didn’t work out. So when I found out she was going to a local community college, I was happy we were going to remain in the same city. Recently, she has decided to expand her education to Lubbock, Texas, and I couldn’t be more proud. She’s going for herself, and not for stupid reasons that some people move away. She isn’t going for a guy, or to get back at parents or anything like that. While it breaks my heart that we are going to be living in different cities for the first time in the entirety of our 11 year friendship, it also doesn’t bother me.

I welcome change, well, sort of. Maybe I can use the excuse of one less friend in the city to make more? Whatever happens, I know will work out. And Stephanie, if you ever feel the need to come back and never leave again, I’d be cool with that too.

(And just to embarrass her)

 (Circa 5th grade, look how adorable we are)

 (Us on New Year's Eve, Stephanie, that's water in your hand, right?)