unclean
The back-story: I had never, ever developed hives before. I’ll be honest — when people talked about other people “breaking out in hives,” I just kinda nodded and smiled and figured it meant they had a really bad case of temporary acne. Until I myself broke out in hives. Late Friday night, at work.
Now, imagine that you’re coding away late at night, and you just finished eating your Subway sandwich. You stand up to nonchalantly stretch your legs, scratch them a little, and then pull up your pant leg to reveal what looks to be a HUGE FUCKING RASH, something that looks like a hybrid between some bizarre STD and leprosy.
Now, you gotta understand, I used to grow up in this Chinese Sunday School, where we were taught the sermons of Jesus by Ms. Ina Wong. Every other week we would be taught the story of Jesus and the Leper. Ina would emphasize how lepers were not only at the bottom of the societal food chain, but would have ears and noses fall from their face the way you and I lose pocket change. “Unclean!” she would shout. “UNCLEAN!!” She would scream “unclean” loud enough to make a roomful of Chinese kids want to start scrubbing their hands with a pumice stone. I think Jesus had to do with that story too, somehow, but I forget.
Where was I? Oh yeah. So I look at what seemingly looks like a giant body rash, think leprosy, and start freaking out to my co-workers. After showing them my irritated skin, they pointed me out to a website on hives, where I learned that no, I wasn’t dying of leprosy but sure, you can go home anyway. It was probably something I ate or stress or the new detergent I was doing laundry with, and besides, it’s nothing an antihistamine couldn’t fix. (It did help, by the way.)
The actual story: Fast-forward to this morning. I am walking to my cubicle and I bump into my co-worker waiting for the elevators. There are maybe, I dunno, four or five other people waiting for the elevators with us. “Ernie!” He greets me in his accent. “SO DID THAT RASH CLEAR UP FROM FRIDAY NIGHT?” I swear to God, that sentence echoed in the elevator. “So did that rash-rash-rash clear up Friday Night-night-night?”
Let’s just say I’m laughing right now as I type this, because it would be really tacky curled up in a fetal position hiding under my computer desk at work.
