ferrousland.com - true stories

faint

when i'm sick, i never really look very ill, i look pretty much the same as i always do. here's a story to demonstrate this.

ages ago, when i was about eighteen or nineteen, i was overseas in the philippines with some friends. we'd gone to a place called 'paradise island' the previous week & decided to go again. it was a beautiful little island with a gorgeous beach, clear water, covered in lush palm trees .. you get the idea. it was gorgeous.

on the second visit one of my friends was having fun throwing people (read: me) around in the shallow water on the beach. during this i landed with my full weight on my hand on a hard surface under the sand. it hurt a fair bit & when i looked at my hand, i could see that the skin had broken, low on my hand, near my wrist, & it was bleeding. now on the previous visit to this island, one of the other guys had cut his toe on some coral & over the week, he had started to get red marks up his leg, which was a sign that he may have been poisoned by the coral, which is quite a serious situation.

with this in mind, we sought the help of the locals to try to fix my little cut. as we stood in the shade under the grass roof of the shelter waiting for someone to turn up with a band aid, thoughts of the possibilty that i may also have been poisoned by coral started going through my head, "what if i have to get my hand amputated? what if i have to get my whole arm amputated?"

my tiny injury didn't really hurt that much & i'm not squeamish at the sight of blood, but i must have worked myself up a bit with my dire thoughts because my vision had started to go blurry, i felt a bit weak, my hearing was going 'fuzzy'. from these symptoms, i deduced that i was going to faint. being the practical person that i am, i thought i'd better tell someone. so standing there with my father, a guy called rod, & my best friend jude, i announced, "i think i'm going to faint."

.. nothing. nobody responded.

so i said it again, "i think i'm going to faint."

.. still nothing! the fainting procedure had now come to the stage where my knees started to buckle. fortunately, jude was standing behind me & threw her arms around me in time to catch me & lay me down on a beach lounge chair that happened to be nearby. as i slowly recovered from the near-faint & my hearing & vision came back to normal, the two men & jude were now standing around me, looking at me. i asked them why, when i had said that i was going to faint, nobody had done or said anything.

rod explained to me. "well," he said, looking sideways for a moment, "you looked so normal." i said to him, "great .. next time i'm going to faint, i won't say anything, i'll just look really bad."

leave a public comment