Have you ever almost killed someone you just met?
Sporadically, I become ashamed of myself and my overall laziness and decide to get my act together. For a few weeks I will do really well and then I accidentally get introduced to a show on Netflix that has ten seasons and my life is given a whole new purpose.
#thatrelatablemomentwhen
On one occasion, just after a horrible, heart-wrenching and personal experience, I was doing extraordinarily well for me fitness wise. I got everything down right. I had deleted my Netflix account to avoid distraction, I got whey too much brotein for human consumption, and I was lifting weights and running on a regular basis. I even got to a point to where I could fake looking like I knew what I was doing in a gym.
During one of my random jogging sessions that summer, someone decided to tag along behind me. There’s a scene in Forrest Gump where he runs across America. He was runnin' and along the way he picks up several characters who follow him. For whatever reason, he inspires them to also run with him. Perhaps they see a man who has it all together. Maybe they were searching for some sort of purpose and he provided that. Either way, this situation is exactly like that scene, except for I am not mentally disabled and running across all of the United States. I am reasonably abled and was running only about a 5K. Given the differing circumstances, I only had one person who followed behind me and he did not coin any iconic phrases along the way.
A 15-year-old, Sam, jogged alongside and kept pace with me, talking the entire way. We chatted about school, girls, and the problem of evil, how God can be all good and all powerful and still allow evil to exist in the world. We discussed until we finally arrived at my house. I always plan my jogs to end at my place due to the desire to not do any unnecessary walking afterwards. Sam, panting, leaning forward, and resting his hands on his kneecaps moaned, “I need to get my blood sugar up bro. I have hypoglycemia, probably gonna pass out.”
I have the curse of a vivid imagination. As soon as someone says something, I immediately picture it happening in my head. This comes in handy sometimes when I want to remember things, but usually my friends just use it to plant images of crude, yet detailed, sexual acts that I do not wish to see. That being said, as soon as Sam mentioned passing out, I imagined him fainting on my concrete staircase and busting his head open wide to let his brains spill out. Not wanting to have to deal with any medical emergencies that day, I invited him inside and I offered him some food and water. I tossed him a bottle from the fridge and dug around in the cabinet to find my protein bars. Throwing one of those to him as well, I started gnawing away on mine as we continued our chat.
He took a couple bites and froze. A look of utter horror crept over his face and his eyes went wide and panicky. I am not a very observant person, and am usually oblivious to things happening around me in real time, but I could tell that something bad was about to happen.
“Are there peanuts in this?” he asked accusingly. I replied, the passive aggressiveness never leaving me even in a serious situation, “Well, it is a peanut butter bar, I think it is safe to say…” but I didn’t get to say what it was safe to say. The world will never know what indeed it is safe to say, because he rudely interrupted my train of thought by yelling to me about his allergies. His eyes got even wider or maybe they were getting puffy. The point is, he started panicking and I started panicking.
“I left my epi-pen at home!” Not words I was wanting to hear. My car was not the most reliable of cars, because it had an incredibly handsome, but good for nothing mechanic, me. That week, it had decided to quit working and I had to ride a bicycle everywhere. So even if I had time to drive this boy to his house, I would have nothing to drive him in.
My mind went into crisis mode, but I had nothing to do so I just started pacing and saying things out loud. “Well I don’t want you to die, what should we do?” Interestingly the thought of calling for an ambulance never crossed my mind, despite being trained to always call 911 anytime and every time something bad is happening. Is there a fire? Stop, drop and roll and then call 911. Is there a medical emergency? Call 911. Is the cat stuck in a tree? Take a video and post it on the internet, because that is probably going to go viral, then call 911.
The kid ran up to me and pleaded, “punch me in the face as hard as you can!” I did not know then that epinephrine is a substitute for adrenaline, and that punching him in the face would actually help his body fight the allergic reaction. I did not, however, question the kid. He could have said, “spit in my face and call me dirty names!” and I would have instantly done his bidding.
Without missing a beat, I reared back and punched a 5’ 4” minor full force on his right cheek. The following actions then went in slow motion. As I pulled my fist away, his face turned to the left as his cheek rippled from the impact and spittle flew from his bottom lip. He looked up, grinned, and said, “thank you.”
Remembering that I had Benadryl, I ran upstairs in order to find it as he did push ups rapidly to keep his adrenaline flowing. Sam seemed to be doing alright. The crisis seemed to be avoided after I punched and medicated him. Just a face full of bruises helps the medicine go down, in hopes that you don’t go in anaphylactic shock.
I walked him home and made sure he was okay. I stuck around for a couple hours, playing halo and eating all his family’s leftovers, but the reason I stayed was to ensure his overall well-being. I found out later that shortly after I left he was sent to the emergency room because all I really did was delay the symptoms.
The moral of this story is to say no to strangers. If they are not going to try to kill you, that just leaves you to fill that role. It is inevitable.
