I've considered giving a peace offering to the Universe. Does that show weakness? Or is it my survival instinct?

My birthday was last Monday, and I had come home from my new dorm to sleep over on Sunday.  The plan was to return to school on Monday for the first day of class.  Which sounds like a pretty good plan until you consider the fact that I'm an idiot and was all "hey, you know what sounds like a good idea?  An accelerated Portuguese class at eight o' clock in the morning.  WOW GOOD IDEA."  So I'm all ready to leave my house at a ridiculously early hour, so as to make it to school with time to get ready for class and such.

As it turns out, there's this boy Doug who is somehow related to my mom's boyfriend in some obscure way.  He goes to the same school as me, so I'm set to give him a ride back since it's on the way.  Poor, poor Doug.  (He's not dead.  I didn't kill him.  Almost, but not quite.) 

I drive out in the wee hours of the morning, I'm all jabbering about how it's my birthday and OHEMGEEEE I'm 18 now, can you believe it DOUG?!  Also, Doug, do you KNOW how OLD I AM?!?!  GUESS, DOUG!  Just guess.

And he's being all politely interested as we zoom...right past the freeway entrance.  No fear!  I shall simply flip an innocuous u-turn up yonder!  It shall be a frolic!  A breeze!  Perhaps we shall laugh airily whilst our hair billows in the completely harmless wind which happens to be accompanied by rain and booming thunder!  Tra la la!

Ten seconds later, my beautiful car is totaled and Doug's all "AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!" except he was too polite to do that so mostly inside his head he screamed "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!" but what he said was "Um...it's not so bad."  What a guy.

Two policemen and an interesting phone call to my mother later, Doug and I are on our way to school again, but this time in my mother's car.  We dropped Doug off at his apartment, then I started to feel kind of odd.  And not odd in the normal way that I usually feel odd.  More like in a "Hmmm, I physically feel crappier than normal" kind of a way.  Neck, why won't you move properly?  Eyes, focus!  Balance, you seem to be even more absent than usual.  Methinks something is slightly off.  I expressed this concern to my mother, who promptly started driving in the opposite direction of my dorm room, and soon we ended up at a hospital.

We walked into the emergency room, and I was kind of disappointed because no one rushed up to me and started yelling "STAT!" like they do in movies.  I assume it's because I wasn't bleeding.  Except maybe in my brain.  But you can really see brain-blood right away, so the doctors were probably like:

Doctor 1: Hey, Richard, an emergency patient!  Hurry, get your STAT! ready!
Doctor 2: EVERYONE, PREPARE TO STAT!  Where is she bleeding?!
Doctor 1: Um well...oh I guess she isn't bleeding.  Maybe she's delivering girl scout cookies.
Doctor 2:  Oh!  I love thin mints.  Alright, false alarm, everyone.  Save your STAT!  No, Teresa, I said SAVE IT!  [Camera pans out the window to a scenic sunset] We don't need it...not today...not right now.  But there's always the threat of tomorrow.  [Theme music plays, credits roll, and they don't even show my visit to the E.R.  Those JERKS.]

(Doctors totally say STAT! right?  I feel like you can't say the word STAT! without caps and an exclamation point.  It would be a misspelling.)

Anyway, I very anticlimactically entered the Emergency Room and this lady took me to a room and pointed at a poster of a bunch of faces with expressions on a scale of happy to sad, which was supposed to indicate my level of pain.  She told me to tell her which face was most like my pain, and I was kind of confused because she could see my face better than I could, and if she wanted me to tell her which face matched, she could at least have given me a mirror or something.

So finally I get into my "room" and they made me lay on a hospital bed which was much less cool than you'd think.  Except maybe no one would ever think that was cool but me.  The guy in the room next to me was yelling and going "UUUNGHHH Aaaheihoi! Gurglejwoiphwoi!" and I felt the blood drain from my face because it occurred to me that they might put needles in me.  Like...an IV.  Or something.  And suddenly it didn't seem so bad that maybe I had a concussion.  A concussion isn't so bad, right?  It's just a little bump from the world to say "be more careful next time!  Here's a lollipop, kiddo!"

The nurses and doctors came in and out of the room for a while, and then a nurse came in and tried to make me wear a neck brace, but that didn't work out, partially because I didn't want to wear the "pretty birthday necklace" but mostly because the adult size didn't fit me.  So the nurse came back and strapped on a brightly colored child's size.  Apparently my neck is the size of a six year old's.  Good thing I went to the Emergency Room, or I would have never known that crucial fact about my neck.
The nurses and doctor were all very nice, and listened to me rant about how it was my birthday and AM I GOING TO DIE?!  Except I had more composure than that, don't worry.  Well, the wonderful staff gave me a little plastic tub full of birthday candy and goodies, and they all signed it.  It was a very nice little souvenir.

After that, a nurse pulled up the bars on my bed and pushed me in to the CAT scan room.  She wheeled me in and whispered "stay here."  At that point I was pretty confused and I wanted to whisper back "where am I gonna go?'" because I was wearing a neon neck brace and hospital gown, and I'm pretty sure that if I'd left the hospital that way, I would've been back PRETTY DANG QUICK.

Apparently nothing was wrong with my brain, and I was surprised they didn't mention the obvious crazy.  Maybe they were just trying to be delicate.  They did, however, ask me if I was pregnant at least three times.  Maybe they get a lot of pregnant chicks coming in for CAT scans.  I can understand that.  If I were pregnant, a CAT scan would be the first on my list of "things I should do."

My mother and I sat in my hospital room for an hour waiting for various paperwork and CAT scan results and such.  My mother walked up to my bed very nonchalantly.  That's how I knew she was about to do something crazy.  She looked out the open door, made sure no one was watching, and then gave the bars on the bed a violent shove.  And I was all "I'M SORRY ABOUT THE CAR" but it turns out she wasn't punishing me.  She was just fascinated by the bars.  She spent about twenty minutes yanking, shoving, and (my favorite) kicking the bars trying to get them to come down.  Meanwhile, I laughed hysterically.  Every twenty seconds or so, she'd look out the door at the nurse who obviously thought there was something wrong with us, and smile innocently.  And wave.  And stand awkwardly.  Born actress, that woman.

Four hours after coming to the hospital, I left, nothing whatsoever wrong with me except this horrible, terrible thing called "whiplash."  As long as I live, I will always hate whiplash.

I went home to my dorm, and then the ridiculous continued.  The next morning, I couldn't turn my neck, and therefore had to turn my entire body when looking at anything not directly in front of my face.  It was very normal and no one stared at me at all.

The next few days went like this: I lost the key to my dorm, lost the key to my mailbox, lost my school I.D. (which happens to be the only way to access my dining plan=NO FOOD FOR MEGAN), lost my class schedule, lost my campus map, got lost after an evening class on campus as a result, wandered around for two hours, seriously considered sleeping on the concrete all night, dragged my aching body back and forth from my dorm to the last place I'd seen my keys over and over, and then finally had someone working in my dorm let me in my room.  Then I paid for all new keys and I.D., only to receive a message from a very nice person saying "HEY I FOUND YOUR STUFF" and so now I have copies which is cool except they're changing my locks just in case a psycho had found my keys and tried to break in and steal all the Capri Sun from my mini fridge.  Also, my computer decided to refuse to connect to the internet, despite the purchase of an expensive anti-virus program and an ethernet cord, because I need to "update" my computer, so I DOWNLOADED EVERY STUPID UPDATE and it still doesn't work.  Then I got offered a much needed job, had that job cruelly taken away from me by no fault of my own (for once) and did not get to ride on a unicorn.  Again.

I've come to the logical conclusion that I'm not very good at college.