Faded Boxers

The road to adulthood is filled with moments that define what kind of person you become: your first fist fight, your first kiss, your first minor felony. Since most of the aforementioned defining moments occured while I was looking the other way, I was in desperate need of a “coming of age” moment that would herald in the age of adulthood. As is usually the case with me, when I was presented with such a moment, it was not without a hitch.

A few weeks ago, I was diagnosed with Impaired Glucose Tolerance (IGT); which is just a fancy way of saying “You don’t have diabetes yet, but you’re just as screwed. Hand over the ice cream, chubs.”

As a result, I have to closely monitor my blood sugar level two times a week. Owing to the fact that my mother’s a full-fledged diabetic, we have one of those DIY glucose monitoring thingies (henceforth referred here as the THINGAMAJIG). It basically works like one of them home pregnancy tests, but instead of peeing on it you get to bleed on it.

I remember one time, I saw on TV how Gary V spends a normal afternoon. I particularly remember the part when after playing basketball, he took out a similar glucose monitoring thingamajig and proceeded to demonstrate how it works. He nonchalantly showed the TV audience his lancing device which contained the needle that was supposed to prick his finger for the blood extraction

I was maybe 15 at the time, and as is the case with most 15-year-olds, I lived life with the false notion that I can withstand just about anything, and that everybody else was a pussy. “Awww, so Gary V can prick a hole in his finger while smiling. Heck, I wish I had diabetes just so I can prove that I can do it just as easily,” said my younger self.

It goes without saying that we all want to go back in time to share a bit of wisdom with our younger selves. If any of you ever succeed in embarking upon such a temporal journey, you might just see me grappling with my younger self as I make him kick his crotch with his own foot.

So back to the present. My dad is usually the one who handles the pricking and the testing. Unfortunately, he was in the province for business last night so there was nobody else in the house except for my mother and sister who were both having dinner at the time. Since nobody on this planet can make my mom do anything that doesn’t involve gardening or running the business, I hesitantly asked my sister if she could please inflict me some pain—a task which elicits no pleasure from either of us.

You see my sister has this knack for repelling blood. My dad once asked her to be the one to test his glucose, and what ensued was an episode of violence and torture that was as noisy as it was bloodless. When the smoke cleared, we saw that while my father’s finger had three holes in it, the wounds weren’t deep enough to produce the right amount of blood that the thingamajig requires.

Imagine my trepidation as my sister approached my finger with the lancing device with all the confidence of a teenager going to bed with a girl just to see if he was gay or not. When I felt the lancing device make contact with my skin, I closed my eyes and tried desperately to think of something pleasant, like having every Bangbus episode on DVD—*CLICK*

“Holy Godzilla Eating Penis Monkey!” escaped my lips before I could stop myself.

“Pau!” said my mom as a way of reminding me that we were still at the dinner table and that certain social graces must still be observed.

“Holy Godzilla Eating Penis Monkey Please!” I corrected myself while staring coldly at my sister who in turn could only manage to look moderately sheepish.

“Again!” I demanded, anxious to get it over with. My sister then said that she was going turn the dial on the lancing device to the maximum allowed of 5. Images of the needle punching through my fingernail made me take action immediately.

“What?! No no no no. Here, give it to me,” I said as I grabbed the lancet from my sister. A close inspection of the lancet revealed that it was set to 3.

“What? Why is it on 3? It’s supposed to be on 4. No wonder you couldn’t get blood from anybody!”

“Ah.” At that point, I was busy constructing an alibi for what I wanted to do to my sister.

“Ok, let me try again…” She offered, reaching for the lancet.

“No way! I’ll do it myself,” Good thinking Pau, that’ll show her. As my mother and sister went back to their food, I stared at the lancet and my swollen finger. Now what?

Running out of choices, I decided to bite the bullet and see if I can’t puncture a hole in my own finger. Deciding that the best course of action was to do it as quickly as possible, I turned the dial to 4, placed the head of the lancet on my finger and pray that I won’t scream like a girl.*CLICK*

SHOWER OF CUM! It hurt like a bitch, but when I opened my eyes I saw a big drop of blood happily sitting at the end of my finger. Relief flushed over me as I unceremoniously dumped the blob onto the glucose testing strip of the monitoring system, and logged my glucose reading.

Feeling quite pleased myself, I turned victoriously at my mother and sister only to find out that they were too engrossed with their conversation that they didn’t even notice my herculean effort. It’s a testament to the consistency of my luck that during an empowering moment such as this, nobody else was paying attention. At least I can say that I musn’t have made a sound during the whole ordeal.