He's A Drag. A Well Known Drag.

It's a pretty well known fact that I don't do well in bars, a fact that I once again proved last night. You see, a bunch of us got together to celebrate a few of the group's birthdays at a trendy restaurant/bar downtown. After about five hours I went outside until Paula was ready to leave. I'm pretty sure that a few in the group came away with the idea that I was pissed at the end of the night. So here are a few reasons I wasn't pissed; at least maybe not for the reasons they think.

1. "I"m sorry, what was that?"

I've always had a real problem hearing in noisy situations. No, it's not me getting old. It's not even overexposure to sirens and air horns. I don't know how to explain it. It's not loud noises. I just can't seem to filter out one sound in a room full of similar sounds; one voice in a room full of shouting voices. I feel myself constantly leaning in and asking someone to repeat themselves. Which gets pretty annoying for me so I can only assume it's doubly annoying for the person that I keep mindlessly nodding and smiling at. Not to mention the fact that the constant noise begins to get to me. My leg starts to nervously bounce and I eventually clench my jaw resulting in a raging headache.

2. "None for me, thank you."

I don't drink. Never have. Never will. Lot's of people know that about me. Unfortunately a lot of them probably think that I don't enjoy bars because I don't agree with drinking. And twenty years ago that used to be the way I thought. But now? Well, now I really don't have a problem with drinking (the non-alcoholic variety.)

There was a moment many years ago when I decided I was going to take a drink. I remember thinking that my life would be a little easier if I did. Not because I might use alcohol to cancel out any aspect of my life. No, it really was just a desire to fit in. And apparently that was the moment when I became okay with the idea of drinking. It was like lifting a weight off of my psyche. I never did take a drink, but it was a real sea change in my thinking. It sounds a little stupid, I guess, but that's how it happened.

So, the problem now isn't an objection to alcohol as a substance. No, the problem is that as a twelve year old I made a promise to the man upstairs not to ever drink. The promise went something like "I promise to never drink if everything in my life goes okay." Sure it sounds kind of like a stupid promise, but I've kept my end of the deal. And so has he. If I was to start drinking and something bad happened to Paula or the boys, I wouldn't ever forgive myself.

I don't sit in bars and obsess over some of the unpleasant things about my life that were directly related to alcohol use. Instead I find myself full of regret; regret I ever made that promise. You see, I love my wife and will do just about anything for her, except take a drink. So a night in a bar leaves me feeling very inadequate as a husband and friend. I can't be that guy for my wife. And the longer the night goes on the more angry with myself I get. After that, anyone kidding with me about taking a drink, no matter how innocent the joke, doesn't strike me as funny. It's more like salt in the wound. The end result is that I'm pretty pissed off with myself and just no fun.

3. "Isn't there a Surgeon General's warning about those?"

Cigarettes seem to have a cumulative effect on my mood. At first I can tolerate them pretty well, but in a bar it doesn't take long before I've reached my tolerance. The bar last night was even on a second story patio with a really good breeze. But somehow all I could smell was the cigarette smoke. That with the constant noise just overloads my senses.

4. "Really, I'm okay."

Rather than ruin the mood of the party by staying, I often I end up leaving the immediate area. I get out of the noise and smoke to let my senses off the hook for a while. Invariably what happens is friends start to try and get me to return which inexplicably annoys me. I know they mean well, but I really just want to "decompress."

In conclusion, This entry isn't me looking for pity. Not at all. I've made my choice and am willing to live by it. But that doesn't make it any less hard or irritating for me. So, if any of my friends from last night, or previous nights out, are reading this I sincerely hope that I didn't significantly dampen the mood. I did have a good time for as long as I had a good time. Sorry I left without saying goodbye to all of you.

I've Got An Itch

It all started this morning. I had fallen asleep on the couch last night, as I often do, and woke up around 6:00 in the morning. I turned off the television and went to bed to sleep for another hour until the boys got up. The area around my waste itched and I chalked it up to the elastic waistband in my shorts. But when I got up to take a shower I was amazed to find about thirty nickel sized welts all over my torso.

That's when the itching started. I figured I had picked up some chiggers at Stone Mountain the day before so I sat down at the computer to read about them (God bless Google.) The article dispelled a bunch of the myths surrounding chiggers but I found out that some of the information in the Wikipedia article wasn't true to my case.

So here's my guide to chiggers separating fact from fiction:

1. Chiggers burrow under the skin and poop. The poop is what causes the itching.

FALSE - Chiggers don't burrow and it's their saliva that causes the itching. They don't drink blood they drink liquified skin cells. How do I know? Well, I read it and the picture to the right happens to be an actual picture of one of the chiggers on me (I used Ben and Luke's Eyeclops electronic magnifier that they got for Christmas last year. It came in real handy since you can't use a magnifying glass to see something on your waistline that's 1/150th of an inch.) The chigger is the larval stage of the harvest mite. It has six legs but when it matures it will have eight.

2. You can get rid of chiggers by putting nail polish over the area. The nail polish will suffocate the chigger.

FALSE - Nail polish might kill them but it won't stop the itching. That damage is already done by the time the welt appears. Rubbing alcohol and a really hot bath of epsom salts doesn't kill them either. Nope the Eyeclops doesn't lie. Those bad boys were still moving their legs after all of those treatments.

3. You can get the chigger off with a piece of scotch tape.

FALSE - Not scotch tape, duct tape, electrical tape, razors, or a dried patch of Elmer's glue. None of those pulled the chigger off of my skin. The only thing that did was some hair removal strips that I found under the bathroom sink. The wax on the strip is gooey enough to get into the microscopic crevices of your skin and attach to the chigger. The picture at the right is of one of the wax strips with the bugger trapped in a honey grave. On the plus side you get baby soft hair free patches of very itchy skin.

4. A warm soapy bath is all you need to rid yourself of the chiggers.

FALSE - I tried a hot soapy bath and with the Eyeclops found the guys unmoved. I then took a scotchbrite scouring pad and scoured my whole body in a very hot shower. No luck. A bath of very hot water with epsom salts. Still no luck.

5. Chiggers are not transferrable.

TRUE - Once a chigger bites it uses its feeding tube. If it's dislodged before it finishes the tube breaks off, thus the chigger larvae is doomed to die an early and hungry death. And besides, as you can see above it's really hard to get them off of you. If you don't believe me just ask Ben and Luke who are completely unaffected even though they were all over me the rest of the day. Ben even climbed into bed with me in the early morning.

So what have we learned? Well....

1. Wikipedia isn't always right (there's a newsflash.)

2. Don't sit on a lichen covered rock in the shade near the tree line at Stone Mountain.

3. The Eyeclops is a really handy toy and oddly unsettling.