To All the Floors I’ve Loved Before
July 31, 2012 § 15 Comments
Every time I faint, I take a few minutes of that quality time on the ground to reminisce over past fainting episodes. We’ve had some special times, the floor and me.
I will never forget the first one. Kindergarten. Morning singalong. I started feeling spacey during the Pledge of Allegiance. By the time we wrapped up liberty and justice for all and moved on to our first song of the day, my face and hands and feet were feeling oddly cold. The sound of my classmates’ voices was muffled by the buzzing in my dizzy head. Strange things were afoot at circle time.
I fought it. I tried to stay standing.
(You see, I had a mad crush on Chris M., who had been chosen as the “farmer” for that morning’s rendition of The Farmer in the Dell and who was way cuter than Chris R. and never ate crayons like Chris T. Problem was, another girl had been eyeing my man. Her name was Missy, and she had a jean jacket and many different colors of pom-pom socks. Yes, Missy had EVERYTHING, but she never said ANYTHING interesting. She just smiled at the space in front of her. All the time. But she’d been giving away the Play-Doh for free, if you know what I’m saying [which is that she was literally giving away free Play-Doh]; and Chris M. liked Play-Doh. If I didn’t manage to stay in the game, there’d be nothing to stop him from tagging her during the “farmer takes a wife” verse. I just had… to stay… upright…)
Thud. You can’t stop it once it starts.
I took that lesson with me for next time. Some other tips I can share from experience:
- If you’re near fire or water when things start to blur, get away from it. (Lesson learned when I fainted while serving as an acolyte at church. FYI, if you don’t go to a church that uses this term: an acolyte is a person who lights candles. With fire.)
- Put down any sharp objects immediately. (When the buzz crept in during our pig dissection in senior biology, I set down my tools and stepped away from the lab desk. I still hit the ground, but at least I wasn’t holding a scalpel. Or a dead pig.)
- If you fall face-first onto a newspaper, you will get headlines on your face. (Whether or not you have headlines on your face all day depends on whether anyone tells you they’re there, which depends on whether or not your friends are dicks.)
This type of fainting – “syncope” if you like fancy medical words, “swooning” if you live in 1870 and wear a corset – is pretty common. My blood isn’t pulsing through my veins so much as it’s just sort of pooling there, relaxing. Sometimes the oxygenated blood just doesn’t make its way up to my brain, so BOOM. Down I go.
If I could control it, this fainting talent would make a great party trick. But alas, I can’t. Oh, well. The only thing it has really cost me is any hope of a career as a surgeon. Or a stripper.
Once I had children, I worried about what might happen if I fainted while alone with them at home. Would they freak out? Fear my demise? Call 911? No. They’d get out a stepstool, extract the jumbo box of Cheerios from the pantry, and gorge themselves until I woke up. Thanks for your concern, kids.
So anyway. It happened again recently. My husband and I went to see Moonrise Kingdom and I slid floorward during the previews. Luckily, after a brief moment of denial on his part (“Get up! Getupgetupgetup! Are you getting up? No? You’re really down? OK.”), he rolled with it, propping me up on a bench in the lobby and sitting next to me as though he always took a zoned-out wax doll to the movies. He delightedly pointed out afterward that everyone at the movie thought I was drunk and had just passed out.
Hey, I do what I can to keep things entertaining. Good thing I didn’t end up with Chris M. He might not have handled it so well.
Did you know there’s such a thing as fainting goats? For real. Just like me. But goats.
(PS: Go see Moonrise Kingdom. Stay conscious for the whole thing. It is divine. Divine, I tell you.)
Great post! I was laughing out loud while getting strange looks at Starbucks. Though the businessman next to me kept making weird throat noises, do maybe the strange looks were for him.
Really, if you’re not doing *something* to get strange looks, it’s hard to fit in at Starbucks at 9 a.m. (If you really want to get strange looks, faint.)
Thanks for reading!
I also suffer from syncope here’s a tip when you start feeling woozy lay down it puts everything back in balance before the faint actually happens. BTW you are hysterical! found you from piwtpitt and I can’t wait for new posts!
Yes – that is a GREAT tip! Get as low as you can before your legs give out. Then there’s not so far to fall. (Also, rugs are cozy and warm when you break into the icy-cold sweat.)
Thanks for reading and sharing!
I found this post believable until you claimed that you didn’t really pass out drunk in the movie theater.
Great stuff as always, ML.
Thanks! (Trust me, there’s a difference. Fainting doesn’t give me enough time to go down in a blaze of glory. Drunk movie theater passing out would have been preceded with better antics.)
I am also a fainter!! But your stories are better. Mine have all been in seedy places (bars, tattoo parlors) or in a bathroom. Boooooooo.
The part with your husband in the movie theater cracked me up.
This is awesome. I keep hearing from fellow fainters today, leading me to this conclusion: It must be… a sign of genius. Yes. Like, our brains get so overheated cranking out brilliant ideas that it triggers a shut-down switch. Because honestly, the world isn’t safe with that much brainwork going on at once.
Or we’re just wimpy.
(Also, your comment just made me realize that all the examples I’ve given here are church, school, artsy movies… I have neglected to mention any of the less respectable fainting locales/incidents. Heh. THAT’S RIGHT, MOM. I AM ALL ABOUT EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES AT ALL TIMES.)
Hilarious! I’ve only fainted a couple of times: once at camp standing in line to turn in paperwork to the nurse. Hot…..still…..BAM! The other time was after my ears were pierced. The second one kinda crunched. Ewwwwww…… I stood up to leave and…BAM! And I can’t give blood either because it takes me, like, all day to recover.
“Crunched” – ?? [shudder] I think I’d have fainted, too, for sure. Thanks for reading!
Love your blog! I fainted as an acolyte too- while holding the torch, during the reading of the gospel, during a televised 11am service at St. Luke’s in downtown Atlanta. i woke to find my legs being held in the air by the priest who was yelling for a doctor as they put me on a wooden stretcher to carry me out. luckily the fire from the candle went out during my speedy “nestea plunge”-type fall and i only got a little wax in my hair. it doesn’t get much cooler for a 14-year-old – especially when teachers mention seeing it on TV in geometry class on Monday. as if being an acolyte isn’t dorky enough to begin with!
Televised??
You win.
I just read this…I am catching up on my life. Not going well. My daughter has a guest over for the night. The children think, or know, I am crazy. I was laughing so hard tears were rolling down my face. I couldn’t even verbalize that I was laughing. They just walked out of the room backwards scared of what I may do next. It doesn’t help that my husband is watching the Georgia/Missouri game and yelling at the TV like someone might take his “suggestions”. The guest may run screaming from our house by 11. Thanks for the laugh!
Just reading that ^ comment made me laugh! Thank you!