My Good Friend, Mr. Robo

     I would like to begin this post by saying that I am sorry for not checking in until now. It's been a few days, and I am trying to make at least one post per day for the first year of my joining this wonderful site. My excuse for my absence is that I have been miserably ill for past week or so, and have had no energy whatsoever to devote to my blog. However, with this sickness has come some interesting material to share with all of you.

     I spent the first day and a half of my sick-leave in a dazed and confused state, doing nothing more than staring at my TV and dragging myself to class in a zombie like stupor with no medication in my systemic circuit to curb the raging fever and uncontrollable cough that has been plaguing me. After my chest was sore and my head was in a vice from all the coughing, I finally broke down and asked a friend to take me to the store so that I could obtain some of what my dear mother used to refer to as "magic juice". She agreed and off we went.

     I went to the grocery section and began to fill my shopping cart with various soups, crackers, and vitamin-enhanced waters and then made my way to the pharmacy department. I picked up my usual remedy including a few different types of vitamins, some ibuprofen, 12 hour nasal spray, and an industrial sized bottle of my mother's magic juice cough syrup.

     I went back to my room and ingested the usual dosage of everything except the "magic juice" (aka. Mr. Robo, aka. the cough syrup). This I took a big gulp of for good measure and placed myself in bed. I then, or so I thought, passed out.

     I woke up coughing the next morning and grabbed the bottle of "magic juice" beside my bed and took another big gulp of the stuff. The next order of business was to right myself into a sitting position and take a look at my emails on my laptop. To my surprise, there was  a web site already pulled up on my screen that read "Irish Pen Pals". My foggy brain began to turn in on itself when I realized that I had magically acquired and account on this social networking site, complete with a profile to boot. There was only one explanation. The so-called "magic juice" had not allowed me to sleep after taking it. It had, on the other hand, gotten me so drunk that I could not remember doing this terrible thing to myself. I say terrible only because I am a mostly private person with no real interest in developing a relationship of any kind with someone across The Pond.

    Despite my initial shock and mortification of this recent development in my social networking life, I was sure that I could still undo the damage and simply delete the profile. After all, it had been less than 24 hours since I had created this profile. How many people could have seen it? So I went to the user account settings link and was relieved to find the "delete account" option. I was not, however, relieved to find what my profile actually consisted of. A picture of me from five years ago was there along with a paragraph about myself with I don't know how many lies involved and my personal email address. I could delete my profile if I wanted, but if even one person had already sent me something the damage would be irreversible. I flew through cyber space to my inbox.

     Empty. *sigh of relief*. Then a sneaky suspicion hit me. I clicked on the "sent mail" link.

     There they were. Two outgoing emails addressed to two men I had never met from a country I had never been to. The damage was done. I gave up. After all, if my subconscious wanted me to have a pen pal in Ireland, then who was I to say no? I let it go and thought I would be lucky if no one responded to this mess, and if they did, I would just have to tell them what happened and send them on their way. I closed my laptop. I rolled over and tried to watch TV.

     Then it hit. The second swig of "magic juice" I had administered to myself had kicked in, and this time I was AWAKE for it. I found myself laughing uncontrollably at.........you guessed it.........NOTHING!

     I resisted the urge to grab my laptop. I resisted the urge to go find company for my delirium. I resisted the urge to go to the bathroom. If I left this bed then the rest of my dorm hall was sure to see me in this state and never respect me again.

    I was wrong. Two of the girls here, including the one who had taken me to buy the "magic juice", found me in a giggling state of hysterics about two hours later. They took pity on me and led me outside for a smoke. One of them brought bagels and cream cheese. The other brought her bowl. I politely waved off the later due to my already shaky state of being, but nevertheless, we had a grand time of it just sitting on our fire escape high as kites on one thing or another, eating bagels and soaking up the sunshine on an unusually warm day in February.

     So went my weekend. And if you were curious as to whether or not I had received a response to my emails to the nice Irishmen, the answer is yes. His name is James and he is very nice.

     Looks like Mr. Robo was a friend to me after all and he brought a good-mannered Irishman along for the ride. I hope to feel better soon.