MAGIC!! (Not the Card Game)

As you may or may not know, I have possibly the most helpful brother in the entire world. For instance, I recently changed my phone number. My sweet, gentle brother took time out of his day to tell me that it was “the single gayest phone number” he had ever seen. Thanks, brother! He also regularly lets me know that Jesus hates me. It isn’t just pointless criticism, either. He gives me reasons why Jesus hates me (presumably so I can improve myself, although Jay has never said as much). Another theory of mine that I (assume) my brother disagrees with is that I generally trust Magic to fix problems in my life.

You see, I might be dying. I have weird leprosy spots of dying skin littered over my (manly? burlesque?) physique. Sometimes they itch and I feed them lotion, but other than that they spend their time quietly spreading over all of my body. Sometimes one of my eyes gets inexplicably blurry. The specific eye that blurs varies, but it is always just one of them at a time. Which is nice, I suppose. Also, one day I was trimming my mustache and I think my gums started to bleed. I tasted blood. I would’ve investigated further (probably by continuing to stand in front of the mirror and opening my mouth) but I was tired and went to bed instead.

Why don’t I see a doctor, you ask? Well, I’m poor. And if the liberal media has taught me anything, it’s that poor people are refused health care. I mean, I could try, but what’s the point? (As an aside, I’m thinking of having that last sentence tattooed on my forehead, next to a picture of a stick figure shrugging. It’s about as good a summary of my life as anything.)

But fret not, my dear four readers! I have faith I will survive… Through the power of MAGIC. This isn’t a baseless hope. MAGIC has helped me before.

Sometimes it helps me in little ways. Once, back in high school, the TV in my room started smoking and smelled like cap gun pellets. I shut it down for two weeks and when I turned it back on, MAGIC had fixed the problem. That TV lasted me until last year. Another time MAGIC made Creed break up. If more people believed in MAGIC (it’s like Santa Claus, Jesus, and Tinkerbell—it gets more powerful the more you believe in it) than maybe Scott Stapp would’ve been hit by a car instead of just outed as a douche, if he hadn’t been already.

The best example of MAGIC benefiting my life comes from college. Let me tell you a little tale! My freshman year of college was not the most hygienic year of my life. Occasionally I would sniff the day’s underwear before I went to bed to test if it was clean enough to put back in my drawer and wear again. One time I peed down the stairwell. I angered my dorm-mate every Sunday morning because I would use his Foreman to cook one of my favorite meals (chicken with a side of steak or vice versa) while lying down on our futon. I still maintain that this makes sense—that way I got to cook, eat, and nap without having to do anything more strenuous than rolling over.

Probably the least hygienic thing I did, however, was drink Kool-Aid. You see, we didn’t have a dishwasher in our dorm, and I was too lazy to do the dishes anyway. So I just made new Kool-Aid on top of the old Kool-Aid residue and drank straight from the pitcher (no sense in dirtying a glass). I started doing this my first week in college, and by the end of October I had successfully worn down my body’s defenses. I was sick. The hurts to breathe, “did I just cough up really solid mucus or a very runny testicle?” kind of sick.

I was sick enough that time that I actually did go to the doctor. Well, not the doctor, exactly, but the Iowa State Student Health Center. So kind of like a doctor in Mexico. At the end of my visit, during which I spoke to four different “doctors,” I was given a prescription for a bottle of happy pills. Incidentally, the doctor that prescribed the pills was the one who had spoken with me the least. When I filled the prescription, the guy at the pharmacy desk said what you hope to hear when you’re handed a bottle of pills: “One of these will slow you down. Two of these… will really slow you down.”

I took two pills and went to class. Holy shit was I high (legally, mind you) but my throat still hurt like the dickens. So scratch science. At least qualified science. My next step was to self medicate. Saving my super-duper pills for when I was healthy enough to enjoy them, I decided to cure my throat with a concoction of two different cough medicines, some of that spray stuff that numbs your whole mouth, cold pills, Advil (why not?) and Sucrets. Five days passed. I was still breathing thumbtacks. I decided to stop self-medicating, although my head did feel pleasantly lighter than the rest of my body. I switched tactics, by which I mean I quit trying and got outrageously drunk. The next day I awoke with mysterious drunken leg soreness (am I the only one who gets that?) but a clean bill of health. I breathed without pain. I breathed again, just to test it. I stopped breathing, not wanted to be greedy. I started breathing again when I remembered I would die otherwise. It was beautiful. MAGIC had cured me.

Not everyone believes my version of this story. When I told my mom, she said “Well, sometimes all you need is a really good drunk.” I’m sure you’ve all heard the same thing from your mothers countless times. However, I maintain that MAGIC fixed me. And like everything else in life, it's no less magical if it is aided by alcohol.

I just hope the MAGIC happens soon, because I’m really starting to itch.