Quite a few people have asked me where I got the nickname 2% from (ok, not really but it makes me seem more important starting the blog out this way). I got the name from my best friend after one of my many "episodes". She had been watching tv and one of those pharmacy commercials came on that said something to the effect that adverse reactions only happen 2% of the time, she quickly surmised that that is my life story!
The truth is, until we met our best friends I thought I was normal...that everybody gets themselves into the types of predicaments that I do (and always have), apparently not. After talking about it, we figured out that my condition must be hereditary, and I must have got it from my father. The first incident that I can clearly remember happened on a trip my father and I took to pick up our camper when I was about seven. The beginning of the trip was fairly uneventful. The return trip started out the same way, until we passed through the friendliest town EVER. Seriously! Everyone in this town was waving like crazy! I figured that mom must have really done my hair cute that day, so I sat up on my knees to get a better view and gave my best Miss America wave (elbow-elbow-wrist-wrist).
As we left town, and dad and I were still talking about how nice they were, I noticed quite a bit a dust blowing up on my side and remarked so to dad. Suddenly his whole demeanor changed, "Are you sure its dust?" I looked closely into the side view mirror, "That's all I see, daddy."
"Mel, stick your head out the window and make sure."
Really! Could this day get ANY better? I excitedly cranked the window handle and lowered the window as fast as my little hand could. Deciding to take advantage of what I was SURE would be the only time I would get to lean out of window without getting in trouble, I thrust half my body out the window, hanging onto the interior of the van with one hand and pulling my bangs out of my face with the other.
"Yea, daddy. It's dust...or it could be smoke from the flames."
Or how about the time my dad drove over a mattress on the interstate and managed to get it lodged under the van, causing blue/grey smoke to billow from behind it? Course that one ended with dad calling the nearest fire department on his bag phone, racing to a stop in front of the firehouse and me being rescued and carried to safety by a muscular, uniformed fireman so I'd say that time the 2%ness was definitely in my favor.
Incidents like this plagued my life so one could easily understand how, to me, this was normal. I didn't know that spraining your wrist and getting strep throat the week before your wedding, then while on your honeymoon discovering that your allergic to nuts and coming down with a stomach virus was abnormal. Or that when other people had tonsillectomies they didn't have adverse reactions to the medicine, have a seizure and fracture the ball thingy that holds their shoulder and arm together (course that ended up fun too 'cuz whenever someone would see my arm in a sling and ask me what happened I'd just say, "I had a tonsillectomy." and leave my bf, Carla, to explain!).
Since these are only like, 2% of the 2% moments of my life (it would take a novel to cover them all) even I must conclude that the nickname fits.
2%
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