If you’ve read more than one of my posts — wait.  Let’s be honest.  If you’re read even almost half of one of my posts, then the following Facts About Emma are probably very clear to you:

Facts About Emma

1. I am highly prone to injury, illness, catastrophe, and other unpleasant occurrences, including but not limited to: being in the path of natural disasters; dropping very heavy things on my feet; walking into walls, doors, and/or columns; having no change when the Coke machine refuses to accept debit cards; and attacks by rabid raccoons.
2. I am a major nerd.  In fact, I’m relatively sure that the next edition of Webster’s Dictionary will supplement its definition of “nerd” with a photograph of me at age eight drawing pictures of kittens while wearing Welcome to the Dollhouse glasses, death-trap braces, and a Hypercolor t-shirt.
3. I love my job.  Love it.  My devotion to my job may be every bit as fanatical as the Monty Python Inquisitors’ devotion to the Pope.
4. I am especially a nerd when it comes to Internet memes, and I’m especially devoted to my job because it means I get to teach a class largely devoted to Internet memes.
5. I enjoy taking faux-artistic photographs with my iTelephoning device, though I haven’t yet figured out how to successfully use it as a phone.
6. My parents are way cooler than I am.

This Friday brought about the perfect storm of these six Facts of Emma.  I spent Thursday bouncing from doctor to campus to doctor, trying to figure out exactly what the hey was going on with my kidneys.  I was sent home with instructions to drink more water than I thought humanly possible and to go to the emergency room if the pain became unmanageable.  Emergency room sch-mergency room, I scoffed to myself in my best inner-monologue scoffing voice, No way, no how.

Here’s the thing: though malevolent maladies that have taken up residence in my body throughout the years, I refuse, refuse to go to the ER.  I’ve gone three times: once when a nurse practitioner at college forced me, once when I went into anaphylactic shock (incidentally, I waited until my eyes were swollen shut), and once when I fell and cut my chin to the bone.  Please note: I didn’t even go to the ER when I broke a bone in my foot in half.  Like a good Taurus, I am stubborn, and like a bad patient, I’m especially stubborn when it comes to the ER.

I’ve always said that I go to the emergency room only once in a blue moon.  That was, apparently, a bad idea.  I discovered on Thursday night/Friday morning what my doctors meant when they said “unmanageable pain” (HINT: it’s unmanageable) and soon I steered Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Transcendentalist Toyota, to the hospital.

There was, incidentally, a blue moon that night.

As you’re probably aware, the emergency room is meant for medical emergencies — i.e., moments when you require medical treatment and, like, immediately.  As you’re probably also aware, in the United States, going to the emergency room means a lot, lot, lot of waiting for a long, long, long time to receive the medical treatment required immediately.  And so I huddled in a contorted position in one of the waiting room’s impossibly uncomfortable chairs, checking my e-mail every five seconds (literally).  One of the eleventy thousand times that I checked my e-mail, I got a message from my dad about a new meme — Eastwooding.  Finally, I had a way to be productive while waiting.

That was a very long story meant to set up this photo of me Eastwooding in the emergency room.  The preface to the photo was probably unnecessarily long, but it’s an important reminder to myself that if you can find humor in such situations, they’re survivable.  The pain may not stop, but humor can help, if only by offering a momentary distraction.

Also, I think this should be a new Web Sport — Extreme Eastwooding.

“What do you want me to tell Romney? I can’t tell him to do that! He can’t do that to himself!”