Gifts from my father

I've been in pain for awhile now. It started as an occasional throbbing in my lower jaw, the result of some dental work. The dentist warned me that it might hurt for awhile. But the occasional throbbing has begun to morph into a dull stabbing inside my ear, sometimes traveling up the side of my head to the tippy top of my brain. Sometimes it travels into what I can only imagine is my sinus cavity, sometimes it goes into my throat. I've been kind of ignoring it for awhile, but it's gotten bad enough that I'm stepping foot inside the dentist's office tomorrow to start the lovely process of figuring out what is causing this (now constant) discomfort.

Of course, I have to admit, I am imagining the worst. While it is probably the result of an ill-fitting nightguard (that thing I bite down on while I sleep to prevent wearing my teeth away), I have already convinced myself that I probably have a brain tumor. I owe this amazing talent to my Dad, who has the most wonderful, fatalistic imagination I know.

It may sound like I'm poking fun, but I rather appreciate this ability. Sometimes it probably keeps me rather safe. For instance, every single time I get on my scooter I imagine getting slammed into by a big truck and flying fifty feet to my death. The result, I drive incredibly defensely and am always on the lookout for the driver not paying attention to me.

I remember fondly being tucked into bed at night by my Father. "Okay, Julie," he would say, "You wake up in the middle of the night and the house is on fire. What do you do?" My first answer, of course, is to run downstairs to find Mom and Dad. "No! No!" he says, "We are burned up already. Think about it! What do you do?" I, of course, have no idea where he is going with this, but eventually he explains that I should jump out of the window (despite the fact that we're on the second story) and don't take anything with me, not even my piggy bank or my stuffed animals. Just get out, and fast!

Despite his best intentions, I still don't know what I would do if I woke up to a burning house. But I have no problem imagining the many horrible things that may be going on in my body, in my neighborhood, even in the world as a whole! If only I had grown up in a spookier part of the world, I could have been the next Stephen King.