Five more things about Ms. Nylon

Kelly O tagged me for another meme; her five things were about bars, and really, not much interesting has happened to me in bars (except taking a few acquaintances home because they had been slipped mickeys) so I'll make mine about hm, let's see.... Ms. Nylon and fainting!

1. The first time I became aware that the sight of (mostly my own) blood made me faint was at a doctor's appointment when I was around five. The nurse had just pricked my finger to take a sample, then she and my mom turned their backs on me to do who knows what, and while examining the odd bead off blood growing on my middle finger's pad, I fell off the exam table.

2. Another blood-fainting event was right after I lost a tooth at age six or so. I wanted a better look at the space where my tooth used to be, so I climbed up on the bathroom counter. Somehow, I wasn't prepared for the gory, messy hole, and my mom found me on the floor of the bathroom. For dramatic effect, she told me that I managed to get the hairdryer cord wrapped around my neck while I fell, so it was an amazing scene.

3. A third recollection I have was while I was in college. Some friends and I went to see Skinny Puppy play during their VIVIsect VI tour, wherein the front man, Nivek Ogre (aka Kevin Ogilvie), dressed up like a surgeon and the stage was set like a laboratory. During one song, he wheeled out a stuffed dog on a gurney. Plush, not taxidermy.

While singing, he slowly snapped on some rubber gloves and pulled out an enormous syringe full of very red liquid; mind you, I was in no way convinced that any of this was real. He dramatically plunged the syringe into his elbow, pumped, then slowly extended his arm, letting red liquid (not blood) flow down in rivulets. Still okay. Then, he opened up his rubber glove and let the red stuff into the glove, so it ran into the fingers and all over his hand inside the laytex and THIS is where my brain had had enough and decided to shut me off.

I came to on the floor of the club, with a bunch of people I didn't know trying to pull me up, but managing to really mess with my dress. Ugh.

4. Also in college (during a summer break), I had a mole removed from right in between my shoulder blades. At the end of the day after the treatment, I asked my sister if she would changed the bandaid, to keep things fresh (I'm sure I was instructed to do so). While my back was to her, she peeled it off and in an extremely horrified voice, gasped and said, "Uuuuhgh! Oh my god!" and I yelped, "What?!? What does it look like?" But, my brain had already started to imagine oozing gangrene or something equally nasty and boom, on the floor again.

5. As an adult, I managed to make it through both children's births without passing out. Nevertheless, I once had a minor, minor procedure, also involving a mole and two stitches. When it was over, I think I saw one drop of blood on the paper on the exam table and I fainted.

It's very primal and illogical, this fainting response. After the first several times, I could anticipate that it was coming on, yet could do nothing to stop it, almost like a bystander.

Ach, our bodies & brains are mysterious things.

I'm tagging some new NaBloPoMo pals who are surely able to bounce off this theme (think of it as an exquisite corpse, um, except you can see what I've already done, and well, you know what I mean... I hope):

VDog
Stickyfeathers
Natural Mommy
Trish
Kara