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Another tune by Billy Joel, aint no fire started,
An unwanted mission lay ahead, took another step towards it
Relief for now, as you shall see,
Trouble was brewin’, but for now I felt relieved.

 

June 13, 2018

From my initial consultation with Dr. G up to our follow-up appointment a week later I picked up no new symptoms, much to my relief. I continued to put up with my existing symptoms but other than that, life went on. I also took the time to submit a stool sample to a pathology clinic located in nearby Mt Druitt as Dr. G had requested.

Never thought I’d ever have to do one of those but I went with the flow.

I continued to work and train as normal but made sure to note down any strange feelings, if any, that I experienced. Thankfully, there were none. If anything I felt like I was getting fit and strong again and regaining whatever muscle mass and fitness I may have lost during those two and a half weeks gallivanting around Canada and Alaska with barely a workout session in. During that trip I threw myself into full holiday mode, including eating like a pig, and yet I still somehow lost weight. Must have been from all the walking.

 

My mother accompanied me to the trip to Dr. G’s clinic for our next meeting. Another fifteen minute drive from home was followed by waiting in the lounge for Dr. G to call my name. Not as many patients in the waiting lounge this time around compared to the previous week, mostly elderly patients undergoing routine check-ups and one pregnant lady, staring pensively at the TV screen in front of the room while her young son, all three or four years of him, sat beside her and played with his toys. I wondered how he would handle the idea of sharing his toys with his new younger sibling?

I felt rather confident and upbeat as I sat waiting, relieved that we were taking another step towards healing my body. Plus the much sought-after softer seats near the stairs leading down to the exit had some seating space available due to the relative lack of patients so I got to experience that rather than sitting on the harder chairs in the center of the room, closer to the front desk and the TV that, after a prolonged period, made you feel quite stiff and agitated.
After about twenty minutes Dr. G called my mother and I into her office. My mother and I walked behind her and I took a seat by her desk while my mother sat on one of the other chairs near the window. My mother complimented Dr. G on her outfit and I’m sure that after dealing with patients day in and day out it must have been music to her ears.
It was a bright, sunny day outside, albeit slightly chilly as it was already early winter. Still, I took that sunshine outside as a good omen.

 

My mother and Dr. G caught up very briefly before we got down to business. Dr. G began our discussion with a typical opening line; “So we took a look at your blood test and stool results…..”

Oh shit, here we go……drum roll, please.

A smile suddenly formed on Dr. G’s countenance, “And I’m glad to say that there is nothing drastic for now.”

YEE-HAAAWWWW!!!!!!

I was doing cartwheels in my mind, at least until the ‘for now’ part of her statement belatedly sunk into my thick skull, sending my euphoria into a screeching halt.

‘For now!?’ The fuck does that mean!?

I guess I wasn’t completely out of the woods just yet. Dr. G continued, “You will still need to undergo a colonoscopy to find out what is truly causing your symptoms.”
And there it was again, that dreaded ‘C’ word. In my mind it would be a cold day in hell before I would agree to such a procedure but it was becoming clear that I had no other option left. I was an outlaw on the run, finally cornered at a dead-end by the police and forced to surrender against my will.

Still, my mother breathed a sigh of relief and probably nearly cried, much to Dr. G’s amusement. Looks like her big baby boy would live to fight another day. I was by no means given a clean bill of health but for now, a decent result was a positive distraction and a small victory of sorts. According to Dr. G my hemoglobin levels were still at healthy levels despite me shitting blood for a while now and my stool and urine samples did not reveal anything shocking. My white blood cell count, however, was affected, a sure sign that my body was at war with something within. I guess a colonoscopy would unmask the culprit.

Dr. G’s tone then became serious once more. “While we still don’t know what is causing all that blood in your stools it is most likely colitis,” she said.
My heart sunk in an instant. Ulcerative Colitis was one of the two nasty motherfuckers under the inflammatory bowel disease umbrella, of which the cause is unknown and for which there is still no cure other than to remove the sufferer’s bowel should the disease worsen. It’s meaner, nastier comrade went by the name of Crohn’s Disease.
“Could it be anything else?” my mother inquired.
Dr. G nodded thoughtfully. “Of course,” she responded, “but we won’t know for sure unless he undergoes a colonoscopy,” turning back towards me she noticed that I suddenly had a rather glum look on my face and so she quickly added, “other than that, you’re still in good health so no need to worry too much.”

Good ol’ Dr. G. Always an optimist.

She then printed out a paper copy of my medical results and wrote a referral for a gastroenterologist that she was personal friends with and requested that I book a session with him.
“He’s one of the best in his field and his clinic is not too far from here,” she said, “Try to book the earliest appointment with him possible.”
“Yes, Doc.”
“And come and visit me in two months’ time so we can take another blood test and see if there are any changes,” Dr. G added, “but if anything happens before then, if you feel that you are getting worse, let me know immediately.”
“Yes, of course.”
It was then that I heard a voice in my mind call me the world’s biggest liar. You’ll find out why soon enough.

 

And that was that. My mother and I thanked Dr. G for her time before we drove home. I then went straight to the internet and looked up the gastroenterologist that Dr. G had recommended in order to learn more about him. I needed to make sure that this guy was legit and not some phoney masquerading as a professional.
The website for his clinic included the obligatory location and contact details and a photo of his best head shot, but it also included a brief bio on the man and his team and he even had some reviews and testimonials from previous patients on google! These testimonials described a man who was very committed and knowledgeable of his field and had a way of making patients staring down the barrel of some pretty invasive and nerve-wracking procedures feel calm and at ease. He also avoided medical mumbo-jumbo when discussing matters of the health with patients, using language and imagery that they can understand without coming off as condescending.

 

I was impressed. Damn, this dude is the real deal!

 

For those who have been following my blog for a while now, I think it’s been somewhat established that I have a phobia of anything related to clinics and medical procedures, which is one of the reasons why, like a damn fool, I didn’t take action until shit hit the fan. Since I was a child the prospect of going to ‘see the doctor’ made me squirm. The thought of people tinkering around with my anatomy in any way shape or form made me uncomfortable and I cringed at the idea of being confined to a hospital, and at the time of these events that hadn’t happened yet and I wished to keep it that way although it was all but becoming an inevitability. These good reviews convinced me that this guy, whom we will meet at a later entry, was for real.

And so the following morning at around 10am I gave his clinic a call and after a brief discussion with his secretary about how much my health insurance would cover I made a booking for an initial consultation. I was told that he was overseas at the moment but that I would get a spot on the earliest possible time, which turned out to be in early August, about a month and a half away. Fine by me, Dr. G wanted me to submit another blood test within two months anyway so at least by that time I could see them both roughly around the same time frame. Besides, the earlier the better. And so I accepted the date immediately.

 

Mission accomplished.

 

In the meantime, all I had to do was monitor my symptoms. The bleeding persisted, but I drew comfort from Dr. G’s report that there was nothing seriously wrong with me – for now. I carried on with the hope that it wouldn’t get any worse than this. These symptoms had disappeared before and I didn’t close my mind to the possibility that they’d disappear again, this time for good, even though at this point that was wishful thinking. The symptoms now were worse than they were in April.

Unfortunately, I would soon learn that this was merely the calm before the storm – a storm that was brewing and waiting to unleash all manner of hell upon me.

A bumpin’ track from Jeremih and 50 Cent,
Back in twenty-thirteen this was ringing in my head,
Here it comes, a rather short entry,
Of a lunchtime gone wrong, it’s quite a funny story.

 

One Saturday five years ago, I went to the city to attend a work-related conference. It was a glorious sunny day, the heat from high summer had evaporated and the Ice Age-like temperatures of winter hadn’t yet arrived and so it was neither too hot nor too cold. The skies were also a nice shade of blue and the air was nice and crisp. People took full advantage, out and about dressed in their best autumn clothes, laughing and chattering as they strolled about with friends and family without a care in the world. It was one of those days that served as a positive distraction to the grind of daily life and nothing could possibly go wrong.

 

Well, almost never.

 

The conference was held at the old Sydney Convention Center at Darling Harbor and at around mid-day my stomach decided that it was time for lunch. I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast and I was famished.

Should have brought some snacks.

I ducked into the nearest Subway, which was located near the old IMAX theatre, and ordered a six-inch meatball sub and a six-inch chicken classic. I decided to eat my lunch outdoors, by the water where I could have a great view of the boats on the harbor and different buildings and skyscrapers that towered in the background while the sun shone down on me. It was a decision that I would come to regret.

Hungry as hell, I devoured that meatball sub with gusto before moving onto the chicken classic. I stared at the view before me as I ate and allowed the sun to warm me up. I blocked out the sounds of people walking and talking and allowed my mind to wander but my moment of serenity would be rather short-lived. You see, it was also around this time that I noticed the ever-growing presence of seagulls hovering around waiting to deny some hapless person of their food. They can get quite aggressive, sometimes brazenly taking fries from people’s plates whilst they were still eating. I guess to those damn seagulls picking up dropped crumbs or waiting for people to leave their tables can become boring after a while.
I shooed them away when they got too close and continued eating. These birds were not going to deny me of my peace and my food.

 

One of them, however, had other ideas.

 

When I was down to the final two bites of that chicken classic sandwich a seagull suddenly swooped from above as if out of thin air and grabbed the damn chicken from my sandwich in its beak just as I was about to bite into it again.

What the hell!?

Having caught its next meal that blasted bird flew off to parts unknown, probably laughing all the way.

 

I stared at the empty piece of bread between my hands, totally shell shocked. Not only had that feathered thief taken the essence from my lunch, but it had also left some black spots on the bread, which I can only assume was dirt or worse, maybe digested bits from last night’s dinner. Sitting outdoors for a meal wasn’t such a crash-hot idea after all.
When I finally snapped out of my trance I crumpled the bread in my hands, put it inside the subway bag and then slam-dunked it into the nearest garbage bin. Then I headed back towards the Convention Center, still shaking my head at this unexpected turn of events.

My favorite track by the great 2Pac,
A gem from the Above The Rim soundtrack,
Now we meet one of the key players,
Helped this man reclaim his swagger,
So a round of applause to the one and only,
A good woman that we’ll call Dr. G.

 

June 6, 2018

On the very next day after my post-dinner confession my father and I visited the medical center where my mother’s doctor worked. It was a good ten to fifteen minute drive away from our home and we arrived half an hour early, giving me enough time to take a seat at the waiting lounge and fill in some paperwork. Seated around my father and I were patients whose problems were obvious; people whose legs or arms were held in a cast, some wheelchair bound or reliant on crutches; an elderly patient with a vacant expression on her face, signs of a mind that has deteriorated, seated on a wheelchair beside her carer; pregnant women with their partners, people undergoing rehab etc. They were certainly a far more varied bunch than the folks that I had encountered at the other clinic the previous day.

After passing the time by watching the morning news on the TV screen at the front of the room and playing with my phone, the doctor called me in.

 

Let’s call her ‘Dr. G’.

 

Dr. G was a fast-talking bespectacled Filipina woman, probably in her late 50s to early 60s. She was quite tall and had short hair that was dyed a caramel-brown color. She also counted my aunt and uncle as patients and I had crossed paths with her during a family gathering at their place a couple of years ago but she didn’t seem to remember me.
With all due respect to the doctor that I had spoken to the previous day Dr. G was much easier to open up to. She had an upbeat and vibrant personality and she looked at the problem from all angles before coming to conclusions and wasn’t afraid to ask questions, even the tough ones.
Her office was also much more welcoming, it was spacious and had a window with a nice view outside. Her desk was far more organized despite being piled with the usual charts, paperwork and stationery and she also had a fax machine-slash-printer on her desk next to a desktop computer. Her stethoscope and other doctor’s paraphernalia were also kept in different drawers rather than just sitting scattered on her desk, although yesterday’s doc did not have the office and desk space of Dr. G’s.

I opened up to Dr. G about my symptoms and as I spoke she took down notes and typed them into her computer before printing out some information sheets for me to read on possible ailments based on my symptoms; hemorrhoids, anal fissures, Irritable Bowel Syndrome and the two nasty thugs of Inflammatory Bowel Disease known as Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s Disease. She decided, for now, to rule out bowel cancer, as she didn’t want to think of the very worse and because I showed no other distressing signs other than blood in my shit. If anything she noted that I looked relatively normal, just a little thin perhaps, though I’ve been of a rather slim build throughout my adult life. A colonoscopy would provide a much clearer picture.
I quickly scanned through the sheets and hoped to God that I did not have either one of those Inflammatory Bowel Diseases. Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s can increase the chances of developing bowel cancer in later life, can affect daily living and there are no known cures for either of them – other than to remove the bowels.

Um, no, HELL NO!!!!

Much to my dismay Dr. G suspected that it might be ulcerative colitis as it was rather common for young people these days. God, I hoped she was wrong!

 

Dr. G then escorted me to a separate room to get a blood test done. Two nurses were waiting there and one of them requested that I take a seat and roll the sleeve of my right arm up (I was wearing a sweater that day). She then jabbed me in my arm, taking three vials of my blood. Since it was the first time in a while that I had had an injection it did sting a little.
I also submitted a urine sample before I returned to Dr. G’s office where she gave me a small cup that I was to leave a stool sample in and deliver to a pathology clinic before my next visit, which she scheduled for the following week in order to give sufficient time for my results to come through.

Before we left, Dr. G asked me if I was willing to check for hemorrhoids and fissures first. Feeling like I had nothing to lose, I reluctantly agreed. I pulled my pants down, climbed onto a bed near the back of her office and laid down on my left side, while she put on a pair of disposable gloves and lubricated the index finger. She drew up a thin blue curtain so that my father, who was seated on one of the chairs near the door, wouldn’t see what was about to unfold.

‘You might feel some discomfort,’ she said.

Yeah, no shit. I was trying hard not to freak out. What follows is the reason why the particular song chosen for this blog brought this memory SCREAMING back into my mind.
Seconds later she stuck her index finger ‘up there’ and probed around. I gritted my teeth and tried hard not to cry out. Thank goodness I had my back to her so she wouldn’t have to see my face contorting into weird shapes of agony. I swore out loud in my mind.

 

HOLY SHIT!!!! FUCK!!!! JESUS CHRIST!!!! GOD DAMMIT!!!! FUCKING HELL!!!! GAAAAHHHH!!!!! FUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!

 

Yeah, you get the picture. I’m not sure if my nervousness had dulled my pain threshold or if I was shocked since this was the first time that I had one of those done, but man, IT HURT LIKE HELL!!!! I probably should have gone to confession on the following Sunday, that was too many expletives and using the Lord’s name in vain during a few seconds of pain.
Hey! That rhymes!
Anyway, having put up with that little bit of ‘discomfort’ I slowly sat up, pulled up my trousers and collected the paperwork that Dr. G printed out for me. We shook hands before my father and I left.
“I’ll see you next week,” said Dr. G, “Don’t forget that stool sample.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” I replied.

Man, it felt uncomfortable to walk for a few minutes. ‘Discomfort’ my ass.

No pun intended.

 

An underrated tune by the rapper Ja Rule,
Had hits in the day though he was a damn fool,
Looking back on the day that I finally bit the bullet,
Symptoms returned so I finally said ‘fuck it’,
What follows is the beginning of the war,
No turning back, Soldier, the battle is on. 

 

May & June 2018

Soaring high in the sky, I was Superman with his cape on,
The baddest dude from the planet of Krypton,
‘Twas mid-Autumn and I was still savoring the victory,
Over my own body, plus the stress and anxiety,
But what goes up must come down, the cliché rang true,
Stared me in the face and cackled, ‘it’ll happen to you!’
Suddenly I was Icarus, I’d flown too close to the sun,
Those wax wings melted, here comes the fatal plunge.

 

Life returned to normal rather quickly after we returned home to Australia from up north. I resumed my duties at the International Wing Chun Academy, where I both trained and instructed, and I also started applying for work again (I’m a contractor so work is kinda up and down for me). I also caught up with friends and family and one Saturday shortly after our return my father and I helped my sister assemble a cabinet for her apartment, which was frustrating and quite awkward at times but we got the job done. We definitely had moments that were worthy of a sitcom.
Heck, I even set myself a new fitness goal for the next few months. I had watched that film Black Panther on the cruise ship during the Alaska leg of the trip and upon seeing the character Erik Killmonger (portrayed brilliantly by Michael B. Jordan) on screen I set myself a personal challenge to try and attain his physique. Given that I am genetically inclined to be on the lean and thin side it was probably a fool’s errand but hey, a man can try, right? Time to pump some serious iron and eat like a horse!

You could say that life was pretty good. But that being said, while I had put the health scare from the previous month behind me I still checked every time I ‘went’ to make sure that things back there were still normal. Everything was hunky-dory for a while but one day in late May, I was in for a big shock.

 

NOT AGAIN!!!!!

 

I couldn’t believe my damn eyes. There were bloody streaks in my stools again! I guess those two weeks of zero symptoms during the trip was only a temporary reprieve, it was too good to be true.

Maybe I shouldn’t have returned home.

I then began to wonder if my diet contributed to these symptoms. I thought about the foods that had I consumed during the trip and decided that maybe there were things I was eating and drinking back home that were negatively affecting my body.
Dairy? Reduced.
Water straight from the tap? Reduced.
Any form of junk food? Gone.
Yet the bloody stools continued. On-and-off initially but then gradually became a regular occurrence before intensifying quicker than I could believe and also brought new symptoms with it. In addition to the blood I noticed that I was beginning to lose weight even though I was pumping that iron hard trying to get Erik Killmonger’s build. I also found myself having to go to the toilet more times than usual on some days, at one point I went more than five times in one day. It’s as though I had pissed off whatever disease was within and after a few weeks of devising a new game plan it had returned to take its revenge on me, talk about vindictive!

However, an incident that occurred a few days after the symptoms became aggressive finally convinced me to see a doctor after weeks of ducking and dodging. I won’t go into too much detail about it, it’s both disgusting and embarrassing, but all you need to know is that something happened following a workout one morning and quickly became more frequent.

That’s it, can’t run and hide no more.

And so one morning during early June I got dressed and, rebelling against my brain’s orders to turn back and go home, trekked off to the nearest medical center.

 

I went to a medical center that was walking distance from my home, registered at the front desk and then sat down on one of the chairs in the waiting room, surrounded by other would-be patients. It was a long time since I’ve had to do this so I was feeling rather nervous. I looked around at the people around me, most of them looked rather healthy but I guess everyone has a secret battle that no one knows about.
I didn’t have to wait too long. After about ten minutes one of the doctors summoned me into his office. His space didn’t look too welcoming, it was small and rather cramped, had no windows and the air was quite stuffy. The walls were also a dull cream-color, his desk was piled high with paperwork and stationery and of course, he had the obligatory health and anatomy charts, medical paraphernalia and a model of the human body sitting on his table next to the pile of paperwork.
I felt as though I had walked into a mad scientist’s lair and that this dude was going to conduct some weird experiments on me. As for the doctor himself, he was a rather short, middle-aged Asian man with glasses and a head full of dark hair with grey streaks. He spoke in a quiet and relaxed tone, almost a whisper, that matched his unflappable demeanor.

I took a seat next to his desk and he asked me what my problems were. I reluctantly opened up to him about the shame and horror of shitting out blood almost every day, how the symptoms vanished during my trip only to suddenly return with a vengeance a few weeks later. It was the first time I had opened up to anyone about this and I’ll admit that I felt some relief but also a hint of embarrassment at the nature of my symptoms though I’m sure he’d heard of similar cases throughout his career.
Having heard my little story, the doctor immediately gave me a referral to book a colonoscopy. He gave me the details of a gastroenterologist in Blacktown who can look inside my bowels to determine what was wrong with me. I immediately became sus.

That’s it? Straight to a colonoscopy? No other health tests? Man, fuck that!

Nevertheless, I thanked him before leaving.

 

Confessing to the doctor was hard but the toughest part was yet to come – I had to tell my parents. I’m the type to normally keep personal stuff like this to myself but trying to hide records of doctor visits and, eventually, surgical procedures was going to be impossible.
They had to know.
The rest of the day was mostly spent trying to rehearse exactly how I would break the news to them. I also remember that afternoon I watched an old episode of Law & Order SVU on DVD. It was the season finale of the show’s seventeenth season, where the character of Sargent Mike Dodds is shot while trying to break up a domestic dispute and eventually dies of his injuries in hospital with his father, Chief William Dodds, by his side. This is going to sound over dramatic but man, the image of Chief Dodds weeping uncontrollably when his son is pronounced dead, and then the following scene of Mike’s funeral, somehow gave me all the motivation I needed to confess. I hate to sound drastic but since there was still no official diagnosis I did think that it could have been something as minor as hemorrhoids to something as severe as cancer.

What if this shit is cancer and I end up biting the dust?

I’d be lying if I said that the thought never crossed my mind, drastic as it may seem.  My parents having to put me in the dirt over this was not part of my life plan and it certainly wasn’t part of theirs. I sat on the living room sofa for most of the afternoon, waiting for their arrival, getting myself ready for showtime.

 

I set the moment of truth for after dinner that night. Conversations like these would kill the vibe, not to mention appetites, during a family meal. Consequently, I ended up taking my time in eating my food and when the moment of truth arrived the nerves attacked me hard. I had to force myself to carry out the plan.

Speak up, Boy! Here’s your shot!

And so while my father quickly ducked into the bathroom I approached my mother in the kitchen as she was washing dishes and cleared my throat.

‘Mom……I have to tell you something.’

‘What’s up?’ her tone was relaxed and casual. That took some of the edge off.

‘I…..uh……went to the doctor today.’

She stopped washing once those words escaped my throat and looked straight at me. Oooohhh boy, here we go.

‘Why?’

‘You see……something’s been going on with me for a while now….’

And from there I proceeded to spill my guts out to her about my symptoms, before the trip and after the trip. I also made sure to disclose that these symptoms vanished during the trip.

I looked her in the eyes the whole time, reading her facial expressions as I spoke. They were a mix of concern, terror and perhaps some disbelief over the fact that I kept them a secret for so long and honestly, I was half-expecting her to go off the rails. But thankfully she remained calm and didn’t lose it – or perhaps was so overcome with what I had just revealed that she forgot to get emotional.
Dad emerged from the bathroom during the middle of my confession. He immediately sensed the tension in the air.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
I repeated to him exactly what I told Mom and soon he was wearing the same shocked and bewildered look on his face.

Having finally spilled the beans to a healthcare professional and to my parents I finally felt as though I could breathe again. My mother spoke up after a few seconds’ silence and noted that it was rather suspicious that the doctor I’d visited immediately ordered a colonoscopy without further testing and so she suggested that I get a second opinion from her doctor, something that my father agreed with. Well, the idea of having to undergo a colonoscopy made my skin crawl so you better believe that I took her advice. Anything to delay having to book that shit!

 

I went to sleep easily that night. I had finally unloaded the heavy burden that I had carried with me for the better part of the year and had also taken the first step towards eradicating this thing once and for all. Call it the first big step towards victory.
But it was far from over. My parents warned me that I could be facing a potential battle on my hands and that I shouldn’t become complacent but I already knew that. This fucking thing nearly pushed me into complete insanity so I was well aware of how serious it was. But for now, it felt good to finally get that shit off my chest and breathe again. I drifted off to sleep relieved yet still hoping and praying that it wouldn’t be anything too severe and/or life-threatening.

In the meantime, I’ll just keep doing my thing. No one else needed to know about this outside of the people I confessed to, at least for now. It would be our horrible little secret.

This tune right here takes me back to the 80s,
complete with memories of childhood antics,
what follows is one of the earliest I can recall,
one of the craziest, too, that boy had no sense at all.

 

A few years ago, I had a conversation with a friend who, at the time, I hadn’t seen for a few months. We updated each other with the usual things like work, family, places visited or events attended and all that before the conversation shifted over to music and then somehow ended up being about the earliest memories that we can recall from our respective lives. We both agreed that the earliest memories that one can recall in general are those from when they were three or four years of age and for me there’s one particular early memory that comes to mind, mainly because my father often reminds me of it whenever we have one of our little trips back to memory lane – and because it was a perfect reminder of just how silly and destructive children can be when left to their own devices and I was not immune. If I were to compile a list of the crazy things I did as a child this would be in the top three.

 

It was a Saturday morning and I was three or four years of age. My father and mother decided to go for a drive in my dad’s brown Mitsubishi to go grocery shopping. My sister and I were supposed to stay home with the sitter but after I had begged and cajoled them endlessly they allowed me to tag along. My sister, still very young at the time, stayed in and most likely went back to sleep following a light breakfast.
We pulled up into a marketplace and found a vacant spot in the parking lot. It was still quite early so there weren’t too many cars in the lot. We found a spot not too far from the shops.
‘I’ll be quick,’ Mom said, ‘wait for me here.’
And so off she went, leaving the boys to chill in that brown car.

Being a very young child it wasn’t long before I got bored. I guess I should have stayed home. My father did too although at times I think he was happy to just sit down, close his eyes and relax. We talked for a little while, which wasn’t very easy since he was seated on the driver’s seat in front while I was in the back seat and so I was essentially having a conversation with the back of his head. I’ll bet he felt like a chauffeur or taxi driver trying to make small talk with his client.
But after a while Dad decided that he needed some fresh air and a chance to stretch his legs. I opted to stay inside the car so he rolled down his car window to let in the air before stepping outside to stretch and clear his head.

 

Little did he know that the little knucklehead inside the car was about to shatter his calm and something else into smithereens. Get ready to pay for what was seemingly an innocuous mistake, Pops!

 

You see, my father had accidentally left a small screwdriver on the floor in the back and yours truly had gotten his little paws on it. I began playing with the little thing, wondering what its purpose was. As a fan of superheroes and cartoons I quickly decided that it was a weapon and so began to engage in a fencing match with an imaginary opponent. If only my father could have taken a peek through the windscreen, he would have seen his crazy kid swinging at air and spitting all over the back of the passenger seat, imitating the sounds of swords cutting through the air and the blade piercing through flesh and armor in between punctuating each strike with grunts and screams that would have made Bruce Lee face palm himself.

But that got boring after a while. So I decided that it was time for an epic drum solo to shake things up. Others would have used the soft, cushy seat as drums but nope, this kid right here had other ideas.
Let’s use the window!
While Dad continued to daydream outside I pointed the screwdriver towards the window and then did my best Travis Barker imitation.

 

Rat-ta-tat-tat……SMASH!!!!!

 

My father immediately spun around and his eyes grew wide as saucers in shock at what I had just done. There were shards of glass on the cement right next to the car’s back door on the right side where I was sitting and a gaping hole on the window. What remained of that window glass was sprinkled with cracks, giving the window the appearance of being snowed on.
Luckily, I suffered no cuts since the shards of glass had fallen outside. Perhaps unsure whether to be worried or angry, my father immediately stormed towards the back door, opened it up and lifted me out to dust me off in case there were pieces of glass on me. He then snatched the screwdriver from my hands and shook his head in disbelief.

“Why did you do that!?” he asked, rather irate.

If I remember correctly I just stared back at him with a mixture of fear and anticipation, knowing that I’d broken a part of his ‘favorite toy’. I knew that some type of big punishment was sure to come my way but at the same time I was bemused at how such an inanimate object could cause such mayhem. I don’t even remember hitting the window that hard! He then proceeded to reprimand me for my little demolition job and if I recall, I think he might have given me three light taps on my right hand, the one that carried my weapon of choice. They weren’t particularly hard taps and Dad didn’t lose his temper but I got the message loud and clear and tears welled up from my eyes. Some feisty little tough guy I turned out to be, I surrendered after a stern tone and three light taps on the hand.

 

Yeah, that’s probably the earliest memory that I can recall. And my father still recalls it vividly to this day and would often remind me of it whenever we reminisced about the ‘good ol’ days’. In fact, he reminded me of it again recently when I told him about my blog.

“Are you going to include the glass story?” he inquired.

“Of course!” I replied.

Then we both laughed.