I am well aware that some of you at time doth not believe all the stories I tell you, or you tend to think there is a little exaggeration involved. This is completely understandable, as that time I met Tia Carrera while playing wiffle ball with the pope totally didn’t happen.

Wifflepopes aside, I need you to understand that what happened to me today sounds like it is out of a bad sitcom…..but it DID happen. In fact, I would like us to look each other in the eyes before we start to get some trust between us. So if you would please, look me in the eyes, we can get started…

.......

…..that is most definitely not my face. That IS most definitely my buttox. I do not know how you managed to get a shot of that…but I would appreciate it if you would stop looking at my butt and look me in the

"Nick? Why are your seeing glasses on your head?" "Reader. Please pipe down."

….

That’s better. See? Good. Now that we have established some trust, we can start.

Today started like any other day. I woke up at 3 am in order to put some following touches on a farewell speech and continued working on my secret project (80% done). I then popped on a suit and caught a 6:20am train to school.

I then found out the farewell speech was to be given two days from today, and instead was the day I was supposed to play basketball with the 2nd year students.

I played well enough that the students remarked I was “fast” but also remarked, “I thought all Americans could play basketball well but…..” which were code words for, “I thought all Americans could play basketball but….you suck monkey butt.”

So in short…not like any other day. It was a weird enough day already, and I could (and planned) on writing an article up about my basketball performance.

However, that event shadows in comparison t the event that took place from 12:40pm to 1:55pm. We shall cover these events in today’s mysterious article entitled:

“Sometimes Jokes Backfire…and you Have to Teach Health Class?!?”

I was eating lunch with the 2-2 class. As it was ending, the head teacher came up to me with a special request:

“Nick, can I ask you a favor?”
“Sure.” which actually came out as “Unmmpgh” because I had a mouthful of tuna sandwich in my…tunahole?

...I'll pass

Hmm…that sounds bad. Where was I? Oh that’s right. The conversation.

“Today we find out where the teachers will be going from next school year.”
I nodded while getting my tuna on.
“And the students will try to break into the class room to find out.”
I laughed a bit and tried not to spit pieces of my sandwich out…as these are definitely the type of kids to do a covert operation like this.

“And I was hoping you could watch my students until 5th period starts.”
I eyebrow raised and gave the super, secret, verbal signal that means I will totally be up for doing that, only understood by a mere fraction of the population.

“Ok!” I said.

“Thanks!” she said and immediately ran out of the class room.

12:10

There were 10 minutes left before the start of 5th period. The students had spent their recess time to keep me as busy. They asked me several questions about my new job(a kind of teacher), my personal life(swat to the head with rolled up text book), my reading skills(no, I have never read that prontastic series), my favorite character(Kamina from Gurren Lagann as of late), the head teacher’s age(any number between 20 and 80), whether or not I had gone drinking with her behind her husband’s back(No!), my favorite smells(brown sugar and vanilla), my favorite physically pleasing sensation (scratching an animal behind their ear), whether or not I had used my head to scrub pots and pans (NO!), etc…

do you know who this is? If you do, I don't wanna hear anything about me being a geek.

However, in the midst of all this, the most popular questions were for requests to use my netbook in order to check to see what teachers would be staying and which would be transferring.

..the same information happening in the meeting downstairs…that they would find out officially tomorrow and unofficially in a couple of minutes if they were patient.

Can I use your computer?
Nope.
I will massage your shoulders if you do!
No.
I will cut off your hair if you don’t!
No you won’t.
I won’t give you what’s in my right hand!
That’s an old eraser. No.
Come on!
No.
Please?
No.
You are not cool.
Ok.
You are very cool!
Thanks.
Please computer now?
Nope.

This rinse and repeated for awhile until I heard the bell ring. It was 12:20pm. The start of 5th period. There was no sign of the teacher.

12:20pm

The students started slowly getting into their seats while getting out their textbooks. Now, I had not started getting worried just yet, as teachers run notoriously late at this school. Late enough that I have sat in for up to 5 minutes getting students ready for subjects that ARE NOT ENGLISH if the teachers are running late enough. Thus I did what I usually do. I looked to see what book the good students had already opened on their desk.

Apparently, it was health. Notebook page 58. Text book page 92. It was time to start.

“Alright guys, get in your seats.”
“Nick? Where is XXXXX teacher?”
“He is not coming today. I am teaching health.”
“Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?!?!?!?”

Now before you give me that, “Nick, you are a moron look.” hear me out. I do this at least five times a week with the same groups of kids. I say that line and within 3 minutes, the actual teacher shows up, they say, “We knew you were lying! American Joke!” and I retire to the teacher’s room to grade papers while quaffing coffee. There was no reason for me to be afraid.

“No he isn’t! XXXX teacher will be coming.” said one of the girls in the back. I made the face I shrugged my shoulders and made the kids get their books out and get ready.

12:25pm

“Nick! Where is XXXX teacher?”

Where was he indeed. We had reached the five minute mark. The news could be taking longer than expected downstairs? Is that it? Maybe he crammed too much tuna in his tuna hole and is now experincing technical difficulties of the bowel kind.

“Can I go to the restroom?”
“No.”
“BLEEP! Of course Nick would know I was going to go to the teacher’s room! “

As all of the kids marveled at the fact that I was onto their schemes, I marveled at the fact that I had unraveled one of their schemes. I used the standard teaching rule that if a student asks to use the restroom in the first 5 minutes of class, they are clearly up to something. For any students reading this, just ask once minute 9 hits and you are good as gold.

So I poked my head outside into the hallways….to discover that it was all quiet on the western front. Something was up.

the view outside of my classroom

“I told you Nick wasn’t teaching us today! He is just waiting for XXXXX to show up!”

Now, this is where I should have said, “Yes, you are right.” but instead what I said was:

“Oh really? Ok. Let’s start class.”

The kids all remarked with shock. Things had never hit this point in our pretessons ( pretend + lessons. Let’s keep up). We were venturing into unknown territory.

“Wait..he actually is going to teach?”
“Really, can he teach health?”
“Of course he can! He’s a teacher.”
“I heard about this! Because it’s his last few days, Mrs. YYYYY said he was going to do extra classes…”

Now my heart skipped a beat upon hearing this muttering…as Mrs. YYYYY was the teacher who asked me to watch her home class….Mrs. YYYYY signed me up to play basketball with her students earlier that day as a surprise. Mrs. YYYYY likes to randomly have me translate stuff into Japanese during her English classes. In short…this is something she might do.

12:30

“This is just an English class with health!”

I had managed to take a peek at the book earlier and saw that the topic today was how to treat a sprain. There were several English acronyms I have never seen before (R.I.C.E. = Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) and the word ねんざ…which meant sprain. I had managed to burn approximately 5 minutes asking them to figure out what the word was in English and going over the acronyms…things were getting weird.

quick! pour that on my ankle!

“I told you! We should get him to call downstairs and make sure that Mr. XXXX hasn’t forgot about out class.”
“No! Nick can teach this! I told you he is supposed to teach this period….”

Am I supposed to teach health class??? Did I forget something? What is going on? What about downstairs? Was the tuna that bad? Are the teachers having an argument about who goes where? Maybe it’s a surprise party for me! Yeah! …wait…how would this be a party…did I misunderstand something? Is there an assembly..is there a…

“Ok! How many of you have had sprains happen to you before.”

The class got quiet. I had asked them a question somewhat outside of the text, in Japanese, and was sitting on the desk like a teacher from a bad inspirational movie.

A few hands went up.
“Ok! What happened to you?” I said while pointing at a girl student.

Her and her friends started laughing. The story was that she had twisted her ankle while playing tennis…her friends said it had happened when she went to retrieve a ball and managed to step on another ball in the process. Given her red face, I assumed it was the latter.

“Did you RICE?” I asked afterwards.

She thought for a minute. “No. I continued playing and wrapped it when I got home.”

It was good to see that the kids were taking this stuff to heart.

12:40

Another 5 minutes had gone by and the students were BUYING that I was teaching this class now…although I was only having then tell injury stories and asking them if they RICE-d it afterwards. All of them said no, of course. I was petrified as I had no idea what I was doing, why I was doing it, and how long I would be doing it for….class was more than half over now.

“Nick! Have you ever sprained your ankle?”

Without a beat, I started telling the story of my dislocated-fractured ankle.  Not a sprain, mind you, but I knew it would take up time and be somewhat entertaining.  I refuse to tell this story here, but I don’t mind showing you a picture of the device upon which I was injured in case you forgot.

Imagine me on that...at the age of 21...that is all need to say about that

12:50ish

The story had gone over better than expected.  I however had started to feel bad about wasting time in my class and was having the students give me the answers to their homework..in which I learned several new words that I immediately core dumped.  My health class was going off without a hitch and only 20 minutes to spare.  Even Mr. DDDDD in the back of class was enjoying it….

….

wait.  Why was there another teacher in the back of class…what?

“Mr. DDDDD?”

“Oh! Hi Nick!  Good class…good class!”

“….where is Mr. XXXXX?”

“…oh you aren’t teaching the class today?”

“what?” I exclaimed.

“I TOLD you he wasn’t teaching class today!”

The kids all broke into fits of laughter.

“Why were you so serious about it?”

“We told you to call the phone!”

“Don’t worry Nick! Nice Job! Nice Job!”

I sprinted for the teacher’s room.

12:50 laterish

I burst into the staff room to find Mr. XXXXX sitting at his desk….drinking coffee.

Not Pictured: Teaching

“Um….Mr. XXXXX?”

“Yes?”

…..whaddya mean yes?

“You are the health teacher…right?”

“Yes.”

whaddya mean yes ya lousy…..

“You have a 2-2 class.  Now.”

His eyes got as big as pie plates.

He chugged his coffee down, grabbed what appeared to be a random assortment of books and sprinted out the door.

The other teachers asked me what was up…I told them and they all erupted in laughter.

***

So afterwards Mr. XXXXX came back and apologized so much.  Apparently, it had slipped his mind.  During cleaning, every 2-2 student made some excuse to come see me and tell me how fun my class was and that they actually thought I was the proper health teacher.  I will admit, I felt ridiculously awesome for having pulled it off….and ridiculous for having pulled it off.

So what have we learned from this article?

• Always tell the truth? Maybe.
• Never do favors for teachers after lunch?  Uh..possibly?
• That show “The Pretender” totally is a true thing you can do.  I guess.

I'm Pretending...to act.

No…what we have learned is that….um……sorry. I am way too sleepy and am going to cop out on this one.  You make up your own moral.

Now if you excuse me, I am going to put some tasty peanuts in my tuna hole mouth before going to bed.

Cost Cuts: Only $12

I ran up the stairs of the crosswalk, tears welling up in my eyes.
Come on now Hawkins. Sack up. Sack up. Sack up.

I did a speedy hobble Quasimodo-esque gait passed some slow moving high schooloogians.

Ok, relax Nick. The train is here. It won’t leave for at least another 10 seconds. You’ll be fine.

I looked at the flight of stairs leading down to the train platform.

Move Nick! Move! Go down the bloody stairs!

I felt like Don-King in that M. Night movie. The only way this was going to end was with me falling down the stairs in a bone-cracking, wince worthy finale.

Nick….you need to catch this train….Nick….NICK!

The students I had speedily hobbled by earlier, had not passed me. The train was not going to wait much longer.

NIIIIIIIIIICK!!!! SACK UP!

I took a step down and felt a sharp pain emit from my left knee-cap.

GOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I took a deep breath and started my descent down the stairs.

***

You know what the worst feeling is in the world?
….well other than having [TREASURED BODY PART] stuck in a vice?
Knowing that you are coming down with a cold. That really sucks.

You know what I am talking about.

• YOU are at lunch with some friends, you take a bite out of your Pimento Loaf on Rye (gross), and as you swallow you feel a tingling in the back of your throat. It’s not even pain yet…but from that tingle….
• OR maybe you wake up one morning and notice that for whatever reason, you have to breathe through your mouth. You aren’t a caveman, but you look like one as you stumble sleepily around your house, fighting to get oxygen into your system..
• OR, maybe you are at a rave, clubbing it up, and you feel a small pain in your ears. You are about to blame the music for this pain, but then you realize that you aren’t at a rave at all, you are in fact, just in Hot Topic..and the music isn’t nearly loud enough to cause inner ear pain…

The point is, you know at this point you are coming down with something. And usually you try to deny it, but sure enough..in 24/48 hours, you are a walking cold stereotype commercial.

But sometimes, those things happen and you are too busy/daft to notice them. Or things coincide perfectly that let you ignore it and shrug it off. Sometimes, these things happen and cause you to have the flu, but to have caught it too late in the process , and the medicine you have is just as strong as the stuff that we could prescribe for you…sorry!

So…You Had the Flu but Now It’s Too Late and You Have a Bad Cold…Sorry!

Seven Days Prior

It was Monday morning and I woke up with my eyes feeling crispy, with a capital K.

Now, Krispy is not how eyes should feel. Eyes should, ideally not feel like anything at all. They should be this moist, ballettes, that freely rotate about so that you don’t notice that they exist.

Yet, mine felt as though they were made out of rusty crabgrass. I could feel them scratch and scrape as I tried to look about my apartment.

I went over to the bathroom, turned on the lights and looked at myself in the mirror There were crackers in my eyes.*

*CULTURE TIME: Now, growing up, we called that crispy stuff that gets in thE corners of your eyes “crackers”. I am unsure as to why we did, but we did. Everyone in the Hawkins household knew what it meant if you said, “I have crackers in my eyes!” No one would look at you and expect to see Ritz crackers sitting there in place of where your eyes should be. Oh! Or even better! Those Keebler Elf crackers that you can get at buffet joints near the salad bar back in America! You know! They come in two a pack…are kinda sweet…are like if saltines decided to be awesome! Man, those are great…you know what I am talking about…right?

…I digress.

Now, this sort of thing only happens to me if:

• MY apartment is extraordinarily dry.
• I am coming down with a cold.

I selected the first option, as my apartment was extraordinarily dry. Thus, I wiped those crackers away and went about the rest of my day.

Six Days Prior

"The Most Underrated Movie Gem of Our Time" - Liars Weekly

I woke up feeling horribly dizzy.

Wait…who…what’s my name? Who am I? Am I a person?

I rubbed away the Ritz from my eyes and went over to the Starbucks (kitchen) in my apartment and asked the barrister (microwave) to whip me up a Double Frappa Mochachino (instant coffee) sharpish. As I stood in front of the microwave, waiting for my order to be processed, I noticed that the dizzy feeling wasn’t really going away. Why was I so dizzy? No..not dizzy..but foggy. I waded through my head-space and came up with one of the following reasons:

• FALLING asleep halfway through doing something usually causes me to wake up disoriented.
• FALLING asleep after having quaffing two large Guinness causes me to wake up disoriented
• COMING down with a cold causes me to wake up disoriented.

Option two was out, as the closest thing to booze I had quaffed the night before was vegetable juice aged two days. Not quite enough for wine critics to come barreling through my apartment door.

I decided it had to be the falling asleep studying to cause me to be disoriented, as I had, indeed falling asleep while trying to parse through 嘘喰い Vol 4. My DS had remained open all night with the dictionary software in it and now refused to turn on.

The barrister dinged to let me know my Frappatendo was ready. I decided it had to be option A, quaffed my caffeine enhance beeve, and went about my day.

Five Days Prior

Jessica- 93820 Nick - Ow!

“Why the dickens did you pick this table?”
“Because, I thought THAT just was a large window and it is roomy here.”

The THAT Jessica was referring to was, in fact, a large glass automatic door. It kept on opening for no good reason every few seconds causing her to make typewriter noises. I had to admit, the door did in fact look like a large window. One could imagine confused pigeons crashing into it…were the sensor for this door not so…sensitive.   I could have easily made the same mistake Jessica had. And I proceeded to admit she was correct:

“….that looks NOTHING like a large window! That is clearly a door! Look at the walkway in front of it! What doors have walkways?”
“…drink your drink.”
[Jessica 1 Nick 0]

I took a sip of my Sakura Frozen Coffee Cream thing…. Jessica took a sip of her’s.

Wait…why are we drinking cold drinks in winter…

“Why are we drinking frozen drinks while sitting in front of the automatic door?!? It’s winter!”
“Because Starbucks frozen drinks tastes better than their hot drinks.”

[Jessica 2 Nick 0]

The door opened again and I found myself starting to make sounds like a nervous chipmunk. I was looking forward to Jessica finishing her drink so we co……

It was gone. Somehow in the space of a few seconds, she had demolished her drink.

[Jessica 3 Nick 0]

“Where did your drink go?!?”
“Hurry up and drink your drink.”
“Nah, I’ll just carry mine with me so we can get out of here.”
“Just kabiff it now. You’ll end up ditching it at my place and leaving me with more garbage.”

[Jessica 4 Nick 0]
Once again, I couldn’t argue with that. Throwing caution to the wind, I decided to chug the remaining 33% of my frozen treat.

Several things happened to my personage:

1. MY head felt like someone had hit it with a sledgehammer then
2. THE roof of my mouth felt like and ice pick had been jammed through it….ice picks are actually made of ice right…..no? Well this one was…but not nearly as eerie as
3. ALL of the mucus in my entire body was sucked up straight to the area between my eyes.

“Ahhhh. Auggggggg.” I said while grabbing my head.

Jessica made some comment here that was Jessica-like that I currently, cannot remember as I was in severe pain at the time.
[Jessica 7 Nick 0]

As the pain started to wain, I noticed that the “on the ceiling” feeling was still there.

That was weird. The only times I tend to feel as though I am floating are:

• You. Have. A. Bloody. Cold. Idiot.
• I have ingested way too much caffeine…Idiot

Despite the fact that I had chosen a beverage that had LITTLE TO NO CAFFEINE IN IT, I decided option B was what was happening to me. I rubbed my itchy eyes and left the Starbucks with Jessica.

Four Days Prior

“Nick…what are you drinking?”
“Hot water.”
“Only hot water?”
“Yep.”
“..why?”

Why was I sipping hot water from a paper cup in my adult English class? Because that entire day I had been plagued with a sore throat. A number of the vending machines have started to remove their hot, tasty, beeves from the vending machines because “IT’S SPRING TIME!”

Mother nature, however, seemed to disagree as it was raining, cold and wet outside.

Nevertheless, this left me with hot coffee to drink or….hot coffee. And coffee is about as soothing to the throat as a Brillo pad is soothing…uh….to the throat.

Thus I ventured over to the water cooler and got myself a cup of hot water using the red spigot.   It was too doggone hot. I dropped the cup a little then caught it again….like that ruler reflex trick.  I quickly grabbed another cup and dub-cupped that beeve.  Feeling pleased with myself, I had sipped on this flavorless warm liquid causing the current conversation to occur.

“My throat is sore.”
“うん。うん。うんうんうん。” my student said letting me know she had no idea what sore meant.
“My throat hurts…I have a pain here.” I said will pointing to my throat.

“Oh! Maybe…you have a cold?”
I thought about what my student had just said. Maybe I do have a cold. Wait, what are my options?

• YOUR THROAT IS SORE…YOU HAVE A COLD
• Maybe this is referred pain! Or something! Your tooth kinda hurt earlier this week…right? That happened in Fraser! Yeah!  Maybe what is happening is my tooth nerves have said, “alright boys. This here bloke isn’t listening to a blimey word we are sayin’. So ‘wat we are goin’ do is, move ourselves to the throat area!” That makes sense…right…right?

Like a 3rd grader who hasn’t learned how Choose Your Own Adventure books work, I went with option B.

“No. Just a sore throat! I’m ok.”

I went through that entire class period with my throat getting scratchier and scratchier.

Three Days Prior

Hawk-0281

“mumble words mumble so I can you make it by the 25th of March. Nick…Nick先生！”

I was sitting in front of my netbook at school. It was 9:00am. I hadn’t touched the cup of coffee on my desk. I couldn’t look at the screen of my netbook without feeling like I wanted to upchuck.

That morning, I had woken up with a cold pack on my forehead. Given that I live alone, this means that either:

• a ghost (attractive and helpful) had entered my apartment and saw me rolling back and forth, pouring sweat. She had gone to my Medasket (medical supply basket) and taken a cold pack out, placed it on my forehead, blowing me loving kisses all the way.
• I had stumbled to the Medasket while saying “water….water water water”, slapped one on my forehead, and fallen back onto my futon…somehow losing a sock in the process. Did I drink water? Who knows.

I picked Option B this time…and unluckily I was right.

Feeling like a drunk and overly warm Gundam pilot, I made the Hawk-0281 machine put it’s clothes on. I then made it take out it’s temperature gauge and have the read-out show up in my HUD display.

37.5 C blinked several times.

I’m Ok. I’m Ok. You know what is silly? Biscuit flavored water. That is silly. Why would MacGuyver invent that? But I would drink it, with Double Mint Gum. That would be good as a sandwich I bet! Teenage Mutant Ninja Girdles! Teenage Mutant Ninja Girdles! Teenage…

Hawk-0281 continued to act oddly and say things out loud despite the italics. I piloted it out of the door, straight into a wall a couple of times down the stairs, and slowly to the train station. What would normally take this unit 3 minutes to get to at max speed had taken 10 minutes due to overheating. When the unit reached the train station, I shut it down.

It automatically turned back on about 90 minutes later at Zentsuji Train Station. I piloted it out of the gate, onto it’s two-wheeled mobile add-on, and arrived at school about 15 minutes later. It should have taken 5.

I had put the unit through several routines, quite slowly, and now as dealing with the current situation.   I noticed that the internal language translators also seemed to be working poorly.

“Nick先生！ You look 悪ad. Are yo大丈夫 Ok.”
Tell her you are fine. Were the commands I input into Hawk-0281.
“I think I am sick. Do you have a thermometer I can use?”
Things were getting bad now. The unit was upright rebelling against me.
A new readout displayed onto my HUD.

37.8C

“That’s too high! Why are you here?!?”
“It’s the last 3rd year class…I have to stay.”
More nonsense was pouring out of this unit every minute.

“You are overworking yourself! At least take some medicine! There is a shop near here! Go there.”

I piloted Hawk-0281 to the nearest drug store, and like a bad movie, I took 2000 yen out of my wallet, slapped it on the counter and said:

“I need the strongest cold medicine you have.”

Now, the druggist here has seen me before. Thus he didn’t phone up the police and ask them to take away the weirdo foreigner trying to get a “legal” high. Instead he said:

“Here. This is stronger than what you will get prescribed for a cold. It is 1780 yen. Are you SURE you don’t have the flu?”

“I don’t think so..” the unit beeped without any input from me.
“Do you have a headache? Fever? Feel queasy? Have a sore back? Sore throat?”
“Yes” Hawk-0281 squawked.

“Well, if you haven’t broken 38 C you may be ok..just a very bad cold. Here, take this and this with your medicine. These usually cost money… but are free for you. You need to take it easy.” In the bag he slammed what appeared to be blue, chalky, Lifesavers (turned out to be throat drops) and a large bottle of brownish-liquid that Japanese people like to chug to give them energy.

I accepted the items and thanked the druggist.
I piloted Hawk-0281 to the nearest convenience store, bought some bread, forced the unit to ingest it, swallowed two capsules, and spent the rest of the day feeling like Hawk-0281 was wired and asleep at the same time. I checked the temperature readout before going to bed.

35.8blinked on the HUD.

….this was clearly some good stuff. I had nothing to worry about.

Two Days Prior

“Shhh Nick! Shhh!” Mike was saying to be across the table. I looked to my left to see Angela was agreeing with Mike furiously. I looked to my right to see Jessica was ignoring me. Now, I am quite bad keeping myself from making statement I shouldn’t…but somehow, thanks to some MTV HippityHop music videos playing at our current eatery…I make have found myself in a situation that can best be described via THIS VIDEO. As if this article isn’t long enough without video links being incledded (include + embed)

[if you're a man...you've been here]

Now, what was shocking wasn’t that I had fallen into the trap, but that I was feeling as a clam who avoided a clam bake about it. Usually, I have a better sense about this things. Also, why was I not at home, where I had vowed to be for the entire weekend? Why had I quaffed a Corona? Why was my throat sore? Why had I decided to take three capsules of the miracle medicine this afternoon instead of two? Why was I not concerned with the 35.6C readout on the display? Why why why?

Well, the correct answer for this, of course, is that I was horribly stupid. I had accepted a spur of the moment invite to enjoy some curry out in Takamatsu that evening. I had decided to take three in order to ward off feeling bad. I was not concerned about the low read out, because this was indeed strong medicine. I had quaffed a Corona, because Coronas are delicious and nutritious(!fact!). This combination had me acting less than normal.

“Shh! Nick! Shhhh!!!” Mike was saying.
But Nick was too busy not listening to Mike.
He then got busy feeling like 504830 elephants were sitting on his brain when he returned home at 1:00am. “Wow! Looks like I have defeated this cold! Probably wasn’t even a cold!” I foolishly thought.

One Day Prior

I stayed home, like a good Hawkins. I took only 1 capsule this time, only felt tired and a bit weak the whole day. Slept quite a bit. Watched several movies. Did some studying. Had some BBQ Chicken pizza. A pretty A-OK day.

Monday Morning – 6:46 AM

Nick….you need to catch this train….Nick….NICK!

The students I had speedily hobbled by earlier, had not passed me. The train was not going to wait much longer.

NIIIIIIIIIICK!!!! SACK UP!

I took a step down and felt a sharp pain emit from my left knee-cap.

GOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I took a deep breath and started my descent down the stairs.

Every step caused an amount of pain I hadn’t felt in my knee-cap since the last time I had the flu. Every movement felt like painful/soggy sand. Tears poured out of my left eye involuntarily. I was certain the train was going to leave as the students had already boarded the train and the conductor had blown his whistle.

However, right before signaling to close the door, the conductor took a look at me hobbling down the stairs and with all the compassion in the world yelled:

“QUICKLY! QUICKLY!” in English.

Inspired by his words, I managed to descend the stairs, and get onto the train.

***

So, I used my lunch break to see a doctor nearby. I told him him what was going on, had been going on, and that my knee had started killing me this morning. His response was basically:

So…I Think You Had the Flu but Now It’s Too Late and You Have a Bad Cold…Sorry! You can some medicine I can give you, but what you are taking now is stronger than what I would normally give you. If you end up with a fever higher than 38, please come back.

I blinked at him a lot, thanked him, and hobbled back to school in time to finish up my lunch.

***

So this was a ridiculously long story. And what have we learned from this?…what the…do you need options?  Fine.

• Nick needs to learn how to be concise? Always.
• NO seriously, you spent 3000 plus words saying “I pretended like I wasn’t sick….it didn’t work.”  Ok, you have a point.
• I am not joking. Stop ra I revoke your option making privileges.

No …the lesson learned here is LISTEN TO YOUR BODY! IF YOU FEEL THE ONCOMING OF SOMETHING, JUST TRUST IT, GO TO THE DOCTOR AND GET SOME MEDICINE THEN YOU CAN…

…wait. The medicine I got over the counter is stronger than normally prescribed in my case. um…

…the lesson is…..um…..

……

I dunno. Sorry. No lesson today folks. You can….uh..make your own one up.

Now if you excuse me, I am going to check my temperature readout.

PS: 36.3C ….Nice……

*quaff quaff quaff*

Alright. As you hopefully could see, a man there appears to be pulling a Gideon(dude from the Bible) with some liquids. What exactly is going on?

• Like the story of Gideon, our protagonist is taking a drink of water from a reservoir to quench his parched throat. “My my….what fine dark colored water this is!” he is saying to himself.

...I know the story of Gideon...and this is an awful cartoon depicting it.

• The Koolaid man burst through a wall and said his trademark phrase, “Ba ba ba ba baaaaaaa! I’m lovin’ it!” however, he managed to trip over some of the debris he created, thus causing him to crash onto the kitchen floor in shards. The bloke here, is drinking up his remains, because hey, why let good drink go to waste?

that's his catch phrase....right?

• This is a mock-up for a scene for the movie/comic “The Fountain”. This, believe it or not, was the page that made the movie make sense. Yep. This one page.

"But Nick! I loved the Fountain!"...... No you didn't.

• In a comic about flying roller skates, this guy (the bad guy) just got hit in the head by a particular powerful rollerskate attack. As blood went spurting forth from his head wound, he went berserk and decided that his blood was too precious to be wasted and started chugging it down his gullet, thus creeping everyone out.

*quaffity quaff qu....wait? this isn't koolaid?

If you picked the last option, then you know how Japanese comics work pretty well. And you are officially ready to start today’s article entitled:

Should He be Doing That ?

*30 Minutes Before the End Of 3rd Period. Back of 1-4 Classroom.*

“Nick, are you okay? You look very ….white~”
No, I was not wearing a tech-vest with a neck-tie. He literally meant I looked white as in pale. He was however unable to find the word “pale” in his brexicon (brain + lexicon) and ended up picking “white”. Were I okay, I would correct him. However, I was far from okay.

“X先生….should he be doing that?”
I feebly gesticulated towards First Class Hypodermic sitting in the front of class. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him fidgeting with “The Device”. I felt dizzy.

“ He always finds a new way to disturb class. The best thing to do is to ignore it.”
“But…that looks….dangerous and….messy.”

X先生 shrugged and gave me a look that said, “Kids do the darnedest things.” I gave him a look back that said, “I need to go and get some air, I’ll be right back.”

“I need to go and get some air, I’ll be right back.” I said, as X先生 was not too good at reading my facial expression beyond “white”.

I stumbled out into the hallway and made a beeline for the bathroom. I found a stall, locked it and slumped down to the floor.
“I’m baaa~aack!” a southern-tinged voice whispered in my ear.
“Oh, my stars!” I said back and lost consciousness.

*57 Minutes Before the End Of 3rd Period. 1-4 Classroom.*

Ok Nick. It’s just 1-4. You know the kids in this class. They are a good bunch. There are only 2 kids who cause problems. Just two! Don’t let those little rascals get to ya. It’s just 50 minutes teaching a simple lesson. You’ll be fine, Hawkins! You’ll be aces!

Aces! .....hold on a second...

As a teacher you will always have a class that will be a challenge for you. One that no matter how much you wanna be the teacher that changes all of their lives for the better, you’ll still just be a foreign guy whose nickname amongst the kids are “scrub brush head”, “erotic chocolate” and “meat”.

「肉！肉！ニンニク！」 “Meat! Meat! Garlic!”
garlic. That’s clever kid. Real clever.

Said kid screamed my name again (ニンニク～～～～～～～) and stabbed with something in my right hand. I looked down to see a hypodermic needle buried to the hilt in my hand. I tried to scream but I couldn’t. A greenish foam emerged from my mouth and I started to convulse. As I fell to the floor I thought “Why did I eat that Calorie Plus Bar for breakfast?” Those were my last thoughts.

Or that is what the little stabbist was hoping for, I am sure. The “hypodermic needle” he had stabbed me with was infact one of those dumb syringe pens you can buy. You know, the ones that look like a hypodermic needle, but when you depress the plunger SURPRISE!…the tip of a ball point pen comes out.

dumb

I blinked several times in his general direction. He looked angry and disappointed that I had not freaked out. He ran off to stab some other kids with his syringe pen.

I looked at a small blue dot on my hand and sighed.

*45 Minutes Before the End Of 3rd Period. 1-4 Classroom.*

Class had not session for been in session for a mere five minutes. About two weeks prior, Captain Hypodermic had been placed in a seat at the front of class in order to keep his antics down. This strategy had worked exceedingly well at making him the center of attention and given him the ability to distract anyone at anytime. Every class he managed to come up with something new. From throwing a baseball, to breaking apart razor blades, to fake sneezing on students, to drawing on the chalk board.

I had to give him credit for being innovative. After all, he probably just wasn’t getting the care he needed at home and…Wait…no I didn’t. That kid threw mikan at my head once! He was acting like a little !BLEEP BLEEPITY kitchen sink BLEEP MC BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP donkey’s BLEEP BLEEP cracklin’!

I digress.

Anyway, what he was currently doing was disassembling the his hypodermic pen…quietly.  He walked over to dumb the excess liquid out the window so…steathlike that had I not been watching him like a Hawk (kaw kaw!) I would have missed it.
Quietly? Why is he being so quiet? This isn’t your style ser…

He looked really into it and given he wasn’t causing any ruckus yet, I decided to ignore him.
And by ignore him, I mean continue to stare at his desk.

*40 Minutes Before the End Of 3rd Period. 1-4 Classroom.*

Class was going along somewhat well all things considered. General Hypodermic had only made a ruckus by throwing away the ink rod…..cylinder…thingy…refill….the thing that goes in ballpoint pens that you can replace…..sorry. Anyway, he now had the reassembled the entire pen and was looking at it with the concentration of ten-thousand Sudoku players.

You know what is sad? Some of you reading this are trying to solve this right now.

I don’t get it. Disassembling pens?!? Putting them back together?!?!? This is too small scale for Lt. Hypodermic! He must be up to something. Is he going to do it blindfolded next? This feels wrong.

I kept wondering what he could be up to as I reviewed the new words with the class.

*35 Minutes Before the End Of 3rd Period. 1-4 Classroom.*

Hey hey hey hey hey! What the dickens are you doing?! I swear if you stab me or any other kid with that….

Private Hypodermic had gotten up in the middle of class to ask a girl for a safety pin. For reason I cannot fathom, she gave it to him. He thanked her and ran back to his seat. He was now stabbing the desk with it while making stabbing noises.

Yeah…you just keep stabbing that desk……..just make sure you don’t….

Private Hypodermic took the safety pin and started poking his index finger with it.

…what the…how bored are you kid?!! Will you cut that out?! If you don’t stop you are going to
*prick*
He had pricked his finger hard enough that I was sure I heard it as the needle penetrated each layer of flesh.
He removed the safety pin from his finger and a rather large drop of blood started to form.

I stared at that drop of blood.
“Hello there, sugar! Long time no see!” a honey-laced voiced whispered in my ear.

Shh! Quite! Get back in the box! I don’t have time for this!

*33Minutes Before the End Of 3rd Period. 1-4 Classroom.*

Second Class Hypodermic had unscrewed the bottom of his hypodermic pen again.
And he was filling it with ink.

….

This is a good spot in our tale to mention that I am a sufferer of SBFS (Southern Belle Fainting Syndrome) where the sight/manipulation of blood will often cause me to fall down like any woman in Gone with the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I have no idea why this happens, but at least once a year some form of visible blood loss from myself/another causes me to black out.

swoontastic

As a teacher, I have managed to deal with it and block it out for the most part. Students here are prone to nose bleeds, head bleeds, eye bleeds, camel bleeds, book bleeds….just, the blood never stops flowing. So, what I am saying is that if the blood involves a student, It actually has very little affect on me. It takes quite a bit for me to have SBFS during class.

“Honeypie, that is naaaaaaasty.” Queen SBFS was refusing to stay in the box I told her to go into. And I couldn’t blame her.
Because the ink that kid was filling his pen with, was ink that he was magically emitting from his finger.
The finger he had pricked earlier.
That’s not right….ink doesn’t come out of fing…HOLY…..
He was filling his pretend hypodermic needle with his own blood.

…I am going to wait a few minutes for you to let that sink in for a bit. I decided to wait in the back of class.

*30 Minutes Before the End Of 3rd Period. Back of 1-4 Classroom.*

“Nick, are you okay? You look very ….white~”
“X先生….should he be doing that?”

I feebly gesticulated towards First Class Hypodermic sitting in the front of class. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him fidgeting with “The Device”. I felt dizzy.

“ He always finds a new way to disturb class. The best thing to do is to ignore it.”
“But…that looks….dangerous and….messy.”

X先生 shrugged and gave me a look that said, “Kids do the darnedest things.” I gave him a look back that said, “I need to go and get some air, I’ll be right back.”

“I need to go and get some air, I’ll be right back.” I said, as X先生 was not too good at reading my facial expression beyond “white”.

I stumbled out into the hallway and made a beeline for the bathroom. I found a stall, locked it and slumped down to the floor.
“I’m baaa~aack!” a southern-tinged voice whispered in my ear.

“Oh, my stars!” I said back and lost consciousness.

*27 Minutes Before the End Of 3rd Period. Bathroom.*

Whoa! Where am I? It reeks in here! Geez! What…is this the floor to my bathroom..is my bathroom floor green? Since when? Wait…no…that’s not right. I’m at school! Yeah! I woke up this morning and….

I stood up feeling wobbly and looked at my watch.
I had been unconscious for three minutes.
SBFS was no where to be fou…er…heard. I weebled and wobbled back to class.

*5 Minutes Before the End Of 3rd Period. 1-3 Classroom.*

“No BLEEP it now this is too much! Cut it out! Stop stop stoooooooop! I can’t handle this much grossness! Auuggg.”

SBFS seemed to have ditched her southern accent. She was that bothered. Her bothering me was causing me to be even dizzier than before.

When I returned to class I found that Chef Hypodermic had finally started his tour de force in ruckustry. He had been shaking drops of blood out of his hypodermic pen on the boy’s desk behind him while laughing.

After he was told to cut it out by X先生, he had started dropping the drops on this English Notebook and making art with it.
Had I been in an art class, had a goatee, a beanie, and been the type of guy who looks at a blorb of toothpaste on the kitchen sink and calls it “art”, I would have been impressed.

art!

Instead I was distressed.

I recited the chants of manliness taught to me by many brave men before me that men chant to themselves when in distress. It’s a simple chant that if you ask any man, he will tell you. I cannot tell you the chant in it’s entirety but I can give you a few hints.

• The last word is the opposite of down.
• The first word is an object, often made of burlap. In it you can store peanuts.
• The chant is a total of two words in length..

I continued to chat that to myself as the minutes cranked down to the end of class. I didn’t hear a peep out of Queen SBFS. I continued the mantra to myself while praying that he wouldn’t try to drop some of his “human ink” onto me.

*End Of 3rd Period. Still in the Classroom*

If I was a smart man, I would have known better. I would have just left class at that point and left the other teachers to handle Red Cross Lad.

I,however was curious. Despite feeling ill, I was curious to see what they were going to do with this kid who was spreading his blood everywhere for kicks.

I watch X先生 walk up to him.
Yes! Ok! Yeah! Come on….I have faith in you…drag him to the office.

He said some words to the Red Cross Lad..who then looked at his hypo-pen with what was sure to be an awful idea.

Uh oh…..be careful! He is totally gonna drop some blood on you! If that happens I think I will….

Red Cross Lad then took the end of the pen, popped it into his mouth, and preceeded to suck all of his blood out of it.

***

If you think I have a good ending for this, I don’t. I went to the teacher’s room and laid my head on my desk while I caught my breath. I went outside and walked around afterwards. I then came back in and had a cup of coffee. That’s it.  I do not know how I managed not to puke hooverpails or pass out again.

So what have we learned?

• I am easily grossed out? Yep.
• Twilight disease has spread to Japan? Maybe.
• Kids are gross? Of course.

But no… the real lesson we learned here is that whoever invented those syringe pens should be buried alive in a ball pit full of…syringe pens.

Now if you excuse me, I’m feeling a bit thirsty.

I limped away from a mass of mud-covered people of varying ages.  Some were wearing crash helmets.  Others jumpsuits.  Some high heels and skirts.  I, however, had managed to not get muddy at all.

“Well, what did you catch?”

An elbow to the eye, a crack in the ribs, a stomping on the foot and other injuries too manly (pansy-tastic) to report. I was shivering, wet, and could see my breath billowing out in front of me. All for….

“Beans.” responded I. “I caught beans.”

beans

I looked at the packet of dried beans. I shoved them in my pockets of my overalls and Osh Gosh Bgoshed my way out of the temple grounds.

****Two Weeks Ago: Nurse’s Office****

KaChunk!
The door closed behind with the aforementioned sound.
“Hello?”
The school nurse was busy watering the plants in her office. She was doing it with the kind of care and tenderness one would expect from a school nurse….that is to say she was pretty much just dumping cupfuls of water into the plants.

“What is it?!…oh! Nick! What’s wrong?”
Should I be doing this? Should I say anything at all? This is a school in Japan, Nick! If you tell her what is bothering you, half of the population of this city will know what is wrong with you by the end of the day. Maybe you should just tough it out. Go to a proper doctor. Besides, you never kn….
“It’s my foot. Something odd has been going on with it for the past few weeks~ can I get your diagnosis?”

DIAGNOSIS: FROSTBITE! A CHILLING TALE TOLD IN ONE WHOLE PARTS

****Four Weeks Ago: Hawk’s Apartment****

I had my socks off and was sitting in front of the heater in my apartment…well urban sprawling in front of the heater. It was a Sunday evening and too cold for me to do more than try to raise my body temperature a few degrees…well that and read comics…while listening to music….and eating some chicken noodle soup.

The 節分祭 I had attended had left my bones feeling like rods of ice.

if you were too lazy to click on that link, this picture and caption explain what setsubun is. see the bloke sitting down, looking not amused? He's a demon. See the over enthusiastic guy standing up? The one throwing beans? He's..a human. You supposedly throw beans at demons to make them get the ballocks out of your house.....so you can have goodluck or something. It is often said that many Japanese couples have divorces by doing this.

I had consumed my packet of delicious ( flavorless) dried beans and was washing it down with some Campbell Chicken Noods. Said noodtastic times were interrupted by a sharp stinging pain emanating from the fourth toe on my left foot.

What the germaniums is this?

Upon closer gazection, I noticed that said toe was bright red. There was a small bump on the …er knuckle?….toes have knuckles….yes? Whatever. There was a bump on my fourth toe.

What is this? Did something bite me? I bet something bit me in my sleep! Probably one of those uber small spiders you hear about….the kind you eat like 5 of every 2 years or whatever. This one was probably paragliding about my apartment, hoping to land in my mouth…when an upward gust of NMW (Nick Mouth Wind) caused it to change course and land on my…exposed toe? I don’t sleep with my feet out of my blankets! What the heck bit me!? Argusss!

Like a responsible adult, I went into the bathroom, grabbed some hydrocortisone cream, and rubbed it on my toe……ok so I decided to ignore it and went back to eating my chicken noodle soup. It was cold, ok!

****Two Weeks Ago: Nurse’s Office****

“Can I get your diagnosis?”

Over the past two weeks, things had gone from bad, to weird, to worse. Each day the toe got redder and grew in size…like a Ballpark Frank. I tried icing it, heating it, putting delicious relish on it, serving it with a side of chili fries…but nothing worked. It got painful enough that I was starting to limp quite a bit.

Ballpark Franks. They plump when you fly'em.

My limpy gait was causing a rather large callus to develop on the hallux(!) of my left foot. Thus my entire left foot was turning into a pain wagon…except unlike normal pain wagons, the only way to get off the wagon was to cut off my left foot.
…because the foot is the wagon in this analogy you see and…
….is there even such a thing as a pain wagon?

pain wagon?

The morning before coming to school, the little toe beside the goomba-ed toe had developed a red bump of it’s own. It was officially no longer a bug bite. It was time to take action…i.e.:

“I’m just the school nurse Nick…but I will take a look at it.”

I took a seat on a chair and took off my sock with a good deal of apprehension. Not only did it hurt to do so, but I was somewhat worried that a good amount of foot funky-times could emerge.
The sock came off.
There was no funk.
But the toes looked worse than ever. Reddish-blackish, medieval time, George RR Martin plot devices. This was not good. I made eye contact with School Nurse.

She laughed at me. This was not the response I was expecting.

「Oh this! That’s just 芋焼け！」she said like laughing and looking relieved.

霜焼: an incorrect translation

… that didn’t sound right. You see, 焼芋 is when you take a sweet potato and bake it via fire/large black cauldron. Etc…. as for what 芋焼け is…the only thing I could think of was if someone was ordering someone to grill a sweet potato…

still wrong

which would be weird given the current situation. We ended up playing the language game where I tilted my head as she said a word and she attempted to repeat it so I could understand it.

「芋焼け！疑問開け！霜焼！霜焼！し＊も＊や＊け」
We were clearly onto something with this 霜焼 business….however I had no idea what that was.

Now here is the problem with medical diagnosis in languages that are not your own.
In your lifetime you hear about a lot of medical illnesses…even some you have never had, you tend to know a little about. Common ones aren’t so bad…

For example, there are quite a few people in this world who have never caught the flu.
One day, you may feel yourself coming down with something that feels like a cold that is hyped up on cold medicine and Red Bull. You are in Japan and go to the doctor to find out what is wrong with you. The doctor says,

「咳か？軟便 か？ああ！その症状のパターンによって本症であると見分ける 事が出来りゃあ！普通のインフルエンザ！」–> “A cough you say? Some lose stools? From those symptoms I know what you have! It’s the flu!!”

And bingo, you know you have the flu. And that the doctor speaks Japanese rather oddly.

However, what I had was 霜焼. And her explanations of what I had were not helping me at the moment. She was basically looking at my toe, telling me about it getting cold and red…itchy and….

….wait. Cold? Red? Itchy? Where have I heard these symptoms before..

.
Frustrated, she grabbed her English-Japanese dictionary and started inputting complex series of commands that made it obvious that she used this dictionary all of one time per year.

Cold….gets larger when warm…sometimes numb….this sounds bad…..is this….

「Frostbite! Frostbite! You have frostbite!」 she said with a grin.

frostbite!

….I was not grinning.

pictured: me not grinning

“Fro…..frostbite?”
「Everyone gets it in Japan! There is an enka song about it?」

My head was reeling.

What the bleep I have frostbite!? What?!?! Everyone gets it in Japan? Don’ t people lose LIMBS because of it?!? I don’t wanna lose lim…wai….did she say a POPULAR SONG?!?

I decided to tune back in:

「she is this single mother who has two kids and this was too poor to afford a washine machine. So she had to wash her clothes outside. Even in the winter time! And everyone in town remarked that she was a good mother because you could see the 霜焼 on her fingers」

Yep. None of these enka singers have fingers...

BLEEP! That woman lost her fingers and was proud about it?!? There is a song about this woman!? This is awful!! How have I never noticed this before….HOLY BEANSTICKS! I BET EVERY JAPANESE PERSON HAS ONE MISSING DIGIT!

「Just massage your toes in the bathtub every evening and wear warm clothing. It will get better…if it gets worse, you should go to the doctor. Don’t worry.」

The door KACHUNKED behind me as I exited the office As I predicted, everyone in the office knew about my “frostbite” and were surprised that I had never had them before. I decided everyone in my office was insane.

****Last Friday: Doc’s Office****

“Ok, let’s see that foot.”

Things had not gotten better. They had gotten worse. My toes were now officially the size of subs from Quiznos. My entire foot was killing me on the nightly basis now and I couldn’t walk like a normal person. I was Quasimoding about and getting stared at by a good number (everyone) of people.

Lunch break came and I made a beeline for the skin doctor that is about 700 meters from my school. I told the nurses what the deal was and they told me to wait in the waiting area. From the waiting area I could hear kids screaming:

「痛いいいい！痛いいいいい！」 -> “Doc, dude…this really hurts! Could you please stop doing whatever you are doing!? Sure, I am only the size of three apples stacked on top of each other…but I know pain when I feel it! Cut it out!”

Oh great. Just great. I suppose a little Japanese boy is getting his toe removed thanks to this 霜焼 business. You know what Japan?!?! You suck right now! I want to keep my limbs goshdarnit!

The crying boy emerged from the room with mucus running down his face. I was struck with a feeling of un-hunger.

“Come in!”
A smiling, goateed face beckoned me into the doctor’s office. I am not sure what surprised me more….the goatee or the English. I decided both were pretty shocking…which brings us to me showing the doctor my foot.

“Oh….this nothing! It’s just….”

please don’t say frostbite please don’t say frostbite or 霜焼

“Ah! Sorry! I forgot how to say this in English.　霜焼 It’s…what do you call it…”

This is when I made a crucial mistake. I should have allowed him to open his huge medical compendium and tell me what word was in that for what I had…but instead, with a look of defeat on my face I offered up what it was called…

“Frostbite?”
“yes! Frostbite! I have it now myself! Ha ha! It sure is cold out these days! Here! I will give you this, go to the building in front of this office and pickup this cream! It is a hormone cream! It will take care of it for you! Massage your frostbite toes in the bathtub!”

This is not right! How is it that EVERYONE IN THIS COUNTRY HAS FROSTBITE AND I HAVE NOT HAD IT UNTIL JUST NOW!!!! Why did he not bring up amputation!? What is this magical tissue regenerating cream I have not heard of?

I pondered this as I entered the pharmacy, grabbed the cream, and returned to school in time to have some spaghetti for lunch. Afterwards I rubbed the cream on my toes. They instantly felt better and the color started to return back to “normal flesh color”.

I was confused.

****The Weekend: Hawk’s Apartment****

I was in my apartment making a cup of tea, when my “you have new mail” alarm went off on my phone.

I checked the screen to see that I infact had new email in my gmail account. I checked it.
It informed me that I had a new message on my Facebook wall.
I checked that.

And there I saw a message that I didn’t expect to see:

IN NEGATIVE FOR NO GOOD REASON

Chill…blain? Chillblain? What an awesome name to give you kid to ensure he gets beat up!
I immediately went to webmd to see what they had to say about this kid. What they had to say was:

….what the….THAT ISN’T FROSTBITE!!!!

****The Lesson****

So, what have we learned today?

• You should always go to the doctor at the first signs of a problem? Sure.
• You should use more than one dictionary when translating words that sound ridiculous? Maybe.
• I should not wear dress socks with sneakers when catching beans in the freezing rain..nor should I wear overalls since I am a grown man? Probably.

But no. I think the real lesson we learned is that hormone cream is the best thing ever invented. Seriously, this stuff rocks! It’s like if the makers of Icey Hot and BenGay got together, injected their products with steroids, and mixed it with the powder of Unicorn horns! It feels great!

Now if you excuse me, I suddenly have a hankering for some baked sweet potatoes….

....wow...that is actually kinda adorable.

Except, apparently this cat had a large tongue…and it wasn’t as coarse as a cat tongue should be. In fact, it was kinda slimy.  One could say it was, a human tongue.  Or the tongue of a small boy!

this is not adorable...because if you age this 12 years, you have the thing that licketh-ed me-eth

「塩味！塩味！チョコジャネ～！塩味！」 shouted catboy as the other kids laughed.

I had just been reversed Datelined.

(note: if you are reading this on Facebook, which is known to distort things that are imported, I highly recommend you view it on the actual blog HERE. This blog is nothing to  look at as of right now in “awesome” wise, but squarespace was not doing what I wanted it to do.  Hopefully, by the end of the week, this will go from looking like a piece of cardboard to something more Nickish)

***Two Weeks Before LickGate***

It was ”recess time” at 善通寺西中, which meant that I should be relaxing in the staff room and the kids should be running around outside, screaming their little heads off.

Instead, half of the students were all around my desk going through my bag, reading my books/comics, looking at my money, playing with my cellphone, etc.. . the other half were trying to give me massages.  Recess time is a bit weird at 西中.

“What’s this?” a girl asked as out of my bag she pulled a bottle of Cocoa Butter.

This bottle. Seriously. This is the exact bottle. Internet is pretty neat, eh?

“…it’s cocoa butter.”

「ココア飛蝗?」 (chocolate locust?)

“No! cocoa butter!”

「ココアバター？えええええ？トーストに塗るん？」 (Cocoa butter? What the balls?　Ya spread this stuff on toast?)

“…..no. It’s for your skin…skin!” I said this while slapping myself on the arm.

She said nothing.

I then slapped my hand and then my face.

「あああ！ローション！ココアローション？エロい！」 “Ah! It’s lotion! Cocoa Lotion? Porntastic!”

“What?!?! No it isn’t! It’s just for really really DRY skin! I have dry skin! It’s not erotic!”

She however was no longer listening to me.  She was busy having letting the other kids smell my bottle of cocoa butter.  All of them remarking on how good it smelled and that “Of course Nick would have this.” 

***Two Weeks and A Day Before LickGate***

“Argggg!” I screamed.

“Arggggg!” an ashy version of myself screamed back at me from the mirror.

Winter is a roughtime for me.  Worse than the cold, it’s the dryness that makes things awful.  Many of you may know about this thanks to the Chappelle Show…but for those of you who don’t, I will fill you in.

If ye are of the Melanin’ Enhanced, wintertime means you look really ashy unless you use lotion.  You see, being Caucasoid has it’s advantages (simmer down now before you pop on the KKK hood) in that you have to be the dryest person alive for your dry skin to be visible.  At the most, your worries are having dandruff rain down upon everyone when you walk into work.  If you skin is even a little tan, then come winter time, you look like you walked through a cigarette butt factory,  unless you apply ample amounts of lotion to your skin.

Now, growing up, there were two products that many of my Melanin Enhanced peeps would use for their dry skin.  Two and only two.  Those products were the following:

Above the age of 60:  Vaseline

Under the age of 60: Cocoa Butter

First, let’s tackle Vaseline….you know what? Let’s not. I hate that stuff. Blarggus.

"Pure Petroleum Jelly? What am I a car? Next!" - Nick Hawkins before knowing that 'petrol' doesn't always mean 'the stuff you put in your car in you are in New Zealandtown'

Let’s tackle Cocoa Butter:  Now, Cocoa Butter is known for removing stretch marks, sometimes appearing in stick form, and making you smell like a bake shop.  That is about it.  Despite what anyone tells you, it doesn’t particualry work all THAT much better than, say a bottle of Jergens.  However, Cocoa Butter is actually edible, and you get to smell like Mrs. Smith Cookies all the time.  Also: it’s brown.  These are the reasons that I personally believe Cocoa Butter is so popular among the Negroid community.  Yes, I am aware that for some reason, Negroid sounds 200% worse than Caucasoid. ..but I figure fair is fare…I mean fair.

Now, in case you think I am being racist...I want you to look at this bar of soap..I mean really look at it. It's made from COCOA BUTTER, CHOCOLATE, and HAZELNUTS. It says NUBIAN on the bar. It also says HERITAGE and IVORIAN. If that's not enough, the small print says it is "100% Black Owned and Proud". As a "black person" myself, I am not saying that Cocoa butter is a product only used by "black people"....but what I am saying, is that if you touch my bar of Ivorian Cocoa Butter Soap, I will punch you square in the taint.

Wow. That was quite a digression.

Anywho, after screaing at myself inthe mirror, I realized that I was out of my usual handcream that I use to tackle the ashy demon.  I did, however have my backup of Cocoa Butter sitting in my closet.  I always save Cocoa Butter for the super cold, dry months.  Mostly, because smelling cookies makes me feel less cranky.  Thus, out the bottle came and on the skin it went.

***A Few Days Before LickGate***

Now, when you start using Cocoa Butter in a country where everyone can smell everything all the time, you are bound to hear comments about it.   I was now at 善通寺東中  which despite the 東 character is not all that more East than 西中, but they had to differentiate schools under 1 km apart from each other somehow.  Upon entering the staff room and sitting down, it took all of 4 minutes before the teachers got to giving me their two cents on my body odor:

いい匂いネ！　　Smellin’ Good!

チョコある？         Got some chocolate there, pilgrim?

マシュマロの匂い！   You smell like marshmallows!

Look at that! All of those combined into one picture! Who doesn't love the internet? Me! I doesn't not love it....wait.....

Now, as none of these comments are bad, I tend to just nod and go about my business.

However, when it comes to entering the classroom, the students take a different approach.  And this approach is to mutter when you walk by and sniff you.

Hard.

Like one of those stupid Downy/Snuggle commercials where everyone sniffs the dude walking by wearing a neon colored towel.  It always ends with him with a grin on his face as everyone sticks their heads out of their cubicles to take a whiff of the walking Fragrance Bum.  Or better yet..it’s like a Juicy Fruit commercial…

….except you are the stick of Juicy Fruit.

Juicy Fruit's ads have gotten weird...

Again…I digress.

Anyway, they never say anything outright to you…just keep smelling you quite audibly and muttering to each other that either  you reek (臭え！), smell awesome (臭ええええ！), or smell like a bag of a$$es (臭えええええええええええええええええええ).   However, keeping in mind that any strong ordour is 臭え to the delicate Japanese nose, I tend to ignore it….because these same scampers smell really awesome when they come back from PE class (臭ッええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええええ！)

However,  no matter how much they claimed I “reeked”, they would all flock to me after class to smell me and tell me how much like a Bake Shop I smelled… especially one small boy….one small boy with catlike qualities…

***LickGate***

I showed up at my 1st period class about 3 minutes early.  I spent the entire 3 minutes with kids flocking to ask me where they could buy my “Porno Lotion” while getting noses jabbed at me like….like…..like…raisins get jabbed in Raisin Oatmeal?  Sorry, sometimes my analogies don’t work as well as they should.

I am aware I overuse the phrase "Delish and Nutrish"...but come on! Look at that! Who doesn't want a bowl of raisin oatmeal? ...... what's that? everyone but me? hmmmm

The bell rang, signaling that Raisin time was over and class was going to begin.  The teacher of this class, although quite an expert (he speaks, I kidyou not, 6 languages and has made up his own written language…but Captain Linguist is worth an entire post..more on him some other time), he is quite dry in class.  Thus, it is up to me to patrol the class, making sure students don’t throw pieces of paper, pieces of erasers, pieces of pencil lead, pieces of broken razors,  or pieces of Reeses Pieces at each other.  One of those was made up.  Unfortunately, it was not the last one.

 I was walking between the student’s desk as they tried to figure out how to say/write 「ミイクは日本語を話す事ができます。」 in English (translation–> Mike can speak Japanese)  I walked past a particular boy who had a strange gleam in his eye.  The kinda gleam that says, “I am totes about to do something to you! Look out!”  Given my students, I assumed the something he was going to do was tap me in the nuts with his pencil.

Thus, when I passed by his desk, I carefully turned my back towards him while covering my buttocks with both hands.  That’s when it happened.

 A cat licked the palm of my hand.  Except, apparently this cat had a large tongue…and it wasn’t as coarse as a cat tongue should be. In fact, it was kinda slimy.  One could say it was, a human tongue.  Or the tongue of a small boy!

「塩味！塩味！塩味！」(Salty! Salty! Sallllltastic bonanza!)  shouted catboy as the other kids laughed.

I had just been reversed Datelined.

Now this is where things got weird.  After the teacher settled the class down, he turned to me and in a joking manner, said, “You are like the color of chocolate, and smell like chocolate, so he probably thought you would taste like chocolate.”

Before I could respond to this, said teacher repeated the same thing he said to me in Japanese…but in the most casual way ever!

「チョコ味と思った？」　(Did you think he would taste like chocolate?)

and Catboy responded:

「うん」 (I sure did! I mean of course he would taste like chocolate!  He smelled liek Chocolate didn’t he? He looks like a walking bar of chocolate..well if one had a brillo-pad for hair! Heck, he even likes to eat chocolate and uses Porn Lotion that is made from Cocoa…which is chocolate! thus, one could deduce that this chocolate man would taste like chocolate!  I didn’t want to lick him, mind you…but I had to! I had to know!  And imagine my shock when I discovered that he tastes like salt!  Just like you and me!  I guess we have all  learned a valuable lesson today…and that is no matter what color our skin is…red, yellow, black or white…none of us taste like chocolate.)

"None of them taste like chocolate...not a single one." - Chris Hansen of Dateline during a speech he gave to convicted pedophiles that appeared on his show. Unfortunately, police then tackled Chris Hansen, assuming that he knew from experience....

Much more laughter occured and I went through the rest of class with my hands in my pockets to avoid being licked again.

***Post LickGate***

I’m really not all that sure how to wrap this one up.  We shared the experience of “Lickgate” together, you learned that once again, ‘appropriate’ is not a concept that really exists in Japan, and many of you learned the secret behind the Chocolate Chip cookie ordour I have been emitting for the past couple of weeks.  Take from this what you will.

Now if you excuse me, typing all of this has made my hands quite dry.  I require some Butter divined the Cocoa plant.