Wednesday, August 5, 2009

"I Love You, Fridge!"

You may remember me mentioning in the past that I'm "a bit of a prude." Well, my older brother is the same way. For instance, neither of us condones recreational drug use. We've never done illegal drugs or abused prescription drugs... on purpose.

A few years ago, my brother had surgery on his arm. It was just a broken bone, but they had to set it with a pin and needed to put him under anesthesia for it. So when he left the hospital, they prescribed him some super-powerful pain killers. My brother was pretty large back then as he is now, and I'm sure the doctor assumed a few things when filling out the prescription:
A) "This guy probably has a high tolerance for medication because of his size."
B) "This guy probably drinks alcohol like most people his age, so his tolerance is probably even higher because of it."
C) "This guy probably knows that if he only wants to take one of the two pills, he can do so."

I wouldn't be telling this story if he was right about those three things. So the doctor prescribed a dose of pain killer big enough to floor an NFL offensive lineman. And he didn't explain to my naïve brother that he could take one pill instead of two if he wanted. So my brother went home and obeyed the instructions on the bottle to "take two as needed for pain." He figured, since he was in pain and he was given this dosage, he could just overlook the fact that the pills were the size of shotgun shells. And this is where I blame my brother more than the doctor. Knowing his low tolerance for medication, he should have tested it out on one pill.

So long story short, my brother woke up screaming because he was being chased by the letter "R" and then cried because the edge of his pillow looked like the top corner of the letter. Then he told us that he was telling his arm all about it later and getting a response. It took a few hours for the effects to wear off, but not before we saw my brother play peek-a-boo with himself in the mirror. And luckily not before he started whispering loudly about how scary the other people in the room were:
"That man over there has an evil forehead, and it's looking at me."
"Okay, that's Mom."

But it always seems that my video camera is not around when things like that happen. I can never get the blackmail material I need. And unless you have video confirmation, it's impossible to convince someone that they were hugging the refrigerator if they don't specifically remember doing it.

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