Fourth Wall

Friday, May 18, 2007

Weirdest Scav Injury Ever?

When I was a little girl, we had a book-of-the-month subscription to the Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Books... you remember, those big white books with lots of high-quality photographs. I greatly enjoyed the pictures of, say, shriveled-up Egyptian mummies, or, you know, cute fuzzy kittens, but was much less fond of the books about Reptiles and Insects.

"Why was that, Alice?" you may well ask.

"Well," I reply, "the photos were so high-quality, I was certain that if I touched one of the pictures of scorpions, spiders, or poisonous snakes, it would bite/sting me from the page. Around the same time, my father went to the Southwest and returned with a present for me: one of those resin paperweights with a dead scorpion in it. He thought it was cool, I thought it was creepy."

You may also wonder how a girl from a Northern California city developed a paralyzing fear of Rattlesnakes and Scorpions. I attribute this particular personality quirk to my mother, who grew up in Southern California and instilled in me a deep fear of looking under rocks or walking barefoot when at Grandma's house.

ANYWAY, more to the point: One of the items on this year's Scav Hunt list was [an animal associated with a phobia] on [a method of transportation]. Having already built a hovercraft for another item, our team decided to put their animal on the hovercraft...but didn't tell me, at least, what animal it was.

So there I was, blithely showing Jim the various items on the page he was judging, and I was rummaging around in the plastic bag looking for something when I scratched my hand on an item in the bag. It was a strange scratch, though... it felt funny, like being scratched on a nettle or something. One of the guys immediately ran over, saying, "Oh no! It fell off!"

"What was 'it,' Alice?" you ask. Well, 'it' was a dead, dried scorpion. I immediately repressed any obvious signs of my fears, but slowly the truth dawned on me... despite the assurances of fearless leader Kat (a.k.a. Jean-Luc Picard), the bite-like mark on my finger showed the truth: I had been stung by a dead scorpion! Or at least had an allergic reaction to whatever chemicals it had been soaked in.

* * * * *

My other scav hunt frustration stems from the fact that Sebastian couldn't see that I have eyes of two different colors... in part because we went outside for him to look at them, rather than staying in the artificial light that makes them more obvious. Four days later, at the Fourth-year and Faculty reception, I was making faces at Josie during Dean Boyer's speech when she whispered, with surprise, "you have two different colored eyes!"

I wanted to jump up and down and cry, "I KNOW!" So I'm just personally adding ten points to the Shoreland's Scav Hunt score whenever I think of it.

3 Comments:

  • You can show me your multicoloured eyes at Wings Night tomorrow?
    Le Vostre,
    GZT

    By Blogger Mr. G. Z. T., at 3:24 PM  

  • You're a heterochromiac? And you've got a blog?!!! (Sorry, corresponding with Patrick has influenced me to use exclamation points excessively.)

    By Blogger Joel L., at 2:07 PM  

  • I just realized now that you did not show off your multicoloured eyes last night. How could I forget?
    Le Vostre,
    GZT
    PS the word verification beneath this is "moors", I think that is cool because I will run them out of Iberia.

    By Blogger Mr. G. Z. T., at 9:27 PM  

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