Kevin's Burning Moment

Because the earlier post was technically Tuesday's flashback, this is Wednesday's flashback, and it is one of my all-time favorite Kevin stories.

Look at pasty pale he is. (Okay, maybe the kid
in the back skews it a little.)

When Kevin was a senior in high school, his entire senior class from OHS took a trip to Atlantis--our community pool. (Not community pool as in there are weaves floating in it, our community pool as in that sh*t costs $15 to get in unless you have a membership. My family didn't need a membership. We had a perfectly good above-ground pool that if we rocked hard enough with our floats could be turned into a badass wave pool. What?)

Now, you have to understand Kevin and pools. When Kev was a little kid, we spent every summer soaking in the sun, and he would get super brown and look almost like he didn't belong in our family of blond-hair, green-eyes, pasty pale kids. But at some point in his life, some flip switched, and he hated being in the sun. One family vacation in Virginia Beach--we decided Chris wasn't so bad and took him on that one--while Mom, Dad, Chris, and I swam in the ocean on an insanely overcast day, Kev sat on the beach in trunks, a t-shirt, a hat, and a beach towel draped over every inch of visible skin. I'm not sure when or how this happened, but Kevin turned into a vampire at some point during his teenage years.

So pale he's blue

Back to the real story. I distinctly remember leaving for school the morning of Kevin's senior trip to Atlantis, Mom asking him if he'd remembered to bring sunscreen. He replied something about other people will have some, it's no big deal. Well, Kevin's friend Jordan did bring sunscreen. However, no one bothered to check the expiration date on the sunscreen, and this resulted essentially in half of the senior class running around in the blazing sun wearing...lotion.

Wait, where does the mask end and Kevin begin?

When Kevin got home from school that day, he had quite a sunburn. Now, let's be clear here, this was not a terrible sunburn. I've had sunburns that blistered into disgusting sores and rendered me useless for a week. I've had sunburns so bad I couldn't wear clothes, and I've had sunburns so bad that I puked (and peed my pants) and had splitting headaches. Chris once had a sunburn so bad (coincidentally he got it on the insanely overcast day in Virginia) that he could barely move and his feet swelled up like maybe he was secretly pregnant. I mean, Kevin's sunburn that day was rough, but not the worst I've ever seen. Keep in mind, Kevin is a pansy. So he returns home from his senior trip in full panic mode. He tells me and Mom how terrible his sunburn is and goes immediately to lie down in bed.

Trying to make friends with the sun

Apparently lying in bed was simply too excruciating for his pink skin, so he decides--like a dummy--to take a bath. Now, I'm not sure if you understand skin mechanics like I do, but after you get out of a bath, your skin shrinks up a little bit (or some sh*t, I don't know), but anyway, after his bath, his skin tightened making him feel 100 times worse than he did before his bath.

I remember Mom and I going into his room as he's flailing around his bed whining and moaning about how much pain he was in. Mom and I, stifling our giggles, are trying to talk him through what he can do to feel better. But he thinks the only thing that can make him feel better is...if Mom lays hands on him and prays for him.

Oooooh. That's why he hates the sun.

Now, our family used to attend a Pentecostal Church and were taught that when someone needed healing, you can take a little bit of anointing oil, place it on their forehead, and pray for them. We had had, for many years, a small vile of anointing oil that sat on the refrigerator, reserved for when people had bad sunburns, of course. But when Kevin asked for Mom to lay hands on him, she stared at me, wide-eyed and motioned for me to join her in the kitchen. After we stopped giggling uncontrollably, she admitted to me that she hadn't seen that vile in years and had no idea if we even had any anointing oil in the house. So, naturally, I recommend a little canola oil. After scolding me for being blasphemous, Mom poured a tiny drop of canola oil onto her finger, instructed me to "seriously, stop laughing, Casi," and we headed back into Kev's bedroom.





When we got in there, Kevin was in full-flail. He was flipping around his bed like a fish out of water. He was whining and moaning like I've never seen from a full-grown man before. So, Mom lightly touched the blessed/delicious oil to Kevin's forehead and began to pray out loud for the Lord to heal Kevin of his horrid, debilitating sunburn. Suddenly, and without warning, Kev's entire body went limp and lifeless. Mom's eyes shot up to me in horror. Honestly, I think for a moment, she thought she'd killed him. Stunned, she whispered, "Kevin, are you okay?" And, somehow, without moving a muscle, he responded, "Shhhhh...I'm concentrating." And miraculously, he was healed.

So, there ya go folks, I bet you had no idea about the healing powers of canola oil. And the sheer whininess of Kevin. (This flashback has been brought to you by Wesson Oil.)

Flashback to Yesterday

Because it's flashback week, I had to show you.

This totally happened yesterday. Believe it. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, The 'Two Times, Ninja' Story

So keeping up with flashback week, I thought I'd give you one of my best former-Casi stories in the ole memory bank.

(Note: This post has no pictures because Facebook didn't exist when I was in college (yes, I'm that old), and the pictures would be too incriminating anyway.)

Diclaimer/Warning/"Listen up, this will only take a second:" This story is kind of gross (um, hello? I wrote it.), gives way too much information, and takes place in my more exciting  days that were filled with riskier behaviors. Read at your own risk. And if you're disgusted and think I'm an effing train wreck, just remember this happened 15 years ago when I was young and dumb. Okay, maybe 12 years ago. Truthfully, it was 9. I'm sorry, Mom.

So one night whilst I was in college living it up, my friend Michelle asked me to come to her apartment and hang out. (Names have been changed because I recently found out that apparently people don't like you broadcasting their sh*t all over the internet. Whatev. I'll call you Michelle, or Sarah, or MaryLouBolognacorn. It's MY blog.) Now, when this friend asked me to come hang out at her apartment, I pretty much knew immediately what that meant. That we'd be drinking heavily. But I was game.

I walked over to Michelle's apartment--because even though my college was straight in the ghetto and it was winter and freezing and I was wearing a see-through sleeveless tank top and black dress pants (why do I remember that??), I still walked my ass everywhere like I owned the town--around 8pm and had my party pants on. Much of the next few hours at Michelle's is a blur. I remember being shown around her apartment, laughing, giggling, being silly girls, maybe trying on cute clothes, hell I don't know. I know one thing's for sure. We. Were. Drinking. Lots. I do know that, before we left her place, we noted that we had consumed a 12 pack of Miller Lite (I didn't even drink beer back then), a pint of Jack Daniel's (I did drink whisky, I no longer do), and most of a two gallon jug of wine. Keep in mind that I was the very young age of 20, 21--because it was totally legal--and went to a small, private college that listed "getting wasted" as its students' favorite past time. (Not really on that last part, but we sure made it our past time.) I could drink like the best of them, and Michelle could drink me under the table any day. After leaving the apartment, we ventured over the boys' dorm, which is what you did at my college.

Most colleges have fraternity houses, but because we were a small school, we had fraternity hallways. Each fraternity lived in one designated hallway and threw huge parties in that hallway every weekend. Michelle and I were both big fans of hanging out with the Pikes, so we went on up to the Pike hall. I remember getting up there and thinking that maybe I was a little too drunky and should take a seat...right next to the hooch cooler. About that time, I realized I hadn't eaten in a while, but luckily there was some delicious-looking fruit floating in that cooler, so I ate every last bit of it. At least I was being healthy, right? I also distinctly remember a guy friend of mine coming into the room where I had set up camp and warning me against eating any more of that fruit. He was being super stingy with his fruit, I thought, and just for that, I'll eat it alllllll!

About twenty minutes later, I discovered that I was much too drunky to be anywhere but home in my own bed. (Call me what you will, at least I know when it's time to call it a night.) So I made my solo venture back across campus to my very own dorm room. Upon entering my dorm room, I realized that lo and behold, I was gonna spew. So I promptly headed to the bathroom down the hall. Now, let me tell you a little known (wait, a lot of people know this about me) fact about Casi. Every single time I throw up--sick, drunk, crying, it doesn't matter--I pee my pants. Every time. So, naturally, as I stood in the bathroom puking my brains (and coincidentally a hell of a lot of fruit) up, I was simultaneously peeing my pants.

So, I finish up and head back to my dorm room. I get in there and peel off my pee-pee pants only to realize, holy moly, I'm gonna ralph again. I scan the room for anything that I can puke into. My trashcan is full to the brim (of trash, not puke), my roommate's trash can doesn't have a bag in it (I have standards, people), and there was little else that offered itself up as a puke receptacle. EXCEPT--a huge 32 ounce cup sitting on my roommate's desk. Quickly, I grab the cup and get down to business.

At that very moment, the girl from next door (a goodie-goodie from Michigan who--when asked--would show you where she was from on her hand, ugh), opened my dorm room door to "see if you are okay." There I stood, in a tank top, inappropriately skimpy undies (c'mon, it was 2003, judgy wudgy), puking into a 32 ounce paper cup and pissing all down my legs. Mid-vomit, I turned and mustered, "GET OUT," and went right back to my puking.

When I finally felt better, I cleaned myself up, got rid of my mess, put on my pj's, and settled into bed. As my good sense started to come back to me, I began to tell myself that no one should ever know about what just happened and that I would not--under any circumstances--tell my friends what I'd done. Right at that moment, into my dorm room bursts my roommate and two friends, Julie, Mary Jo, and EWells (this isn't incriminating, so those are absolutely their real names). Because it was winter and she wasn't an idiot, Julie had a long scarf wrapped around her and was covering everything but her eyes with the end of it making her look very, very much...like a ninja. And the minute they walked in, with everything I had, I screamed, "GUYS! I PEED MY PANTS. TWO TIMES, NINJA!!!!"

It was one of the most monumentally hilarious moments of my life.

From then on, I was referred to by my friends as Two Times Ninja and later on as TTN. My senior year of college, I was not affiliated with my sorority, because I was Panhellenic Recruitment Chair (for those of you who have no idea what that means, it basically means that for the first several months of school, I couldn't talk to my friends. And all the new girls in the sorority had no idea who I was). So, one night, after I affiliated again, I was up on the Pike Hall getting drunk with hanging out with one of the new girls in the sorority. And, she proceeds to tell me the entire story--with shockingly accurate details--of this awesome girl in her sorority who once got so wasted, she peed her pants two times and then told on herself. I replied simply, "Sweetie...I am Two Times Ninja."