A Zombie Confessional and Octopus Hickies

"Hey, Goodlookin'," I thought to myself, catching a guy staring at me from across Costco where he idled near women's socks. I then realized just how creepy that made him and slid into the spice aisle. But what was this? Another young man staring at me as he dropped the superstore-size container of cinnamon (aka enough for Godzilla to do the "Cinnamon Challenge") into his cart? And that guy over by seafood who looked rather like a boiled egg. And that woman buying Spam, those kids running through the aisles, the workers trying to shoo  the customers out of the store...oh. I'd forgotten. I'm a Zombie.

For the past two weeks or so I've been plagued (oh the joy of puns) by questions such as:

"OMYGOSH, what did you DO to your face?"

"Are you OK?"

"Hi! How ar- OH. Um...what's that?"

"Not to offend you or anything...but are you turning into a Zombie?" (Yeah. This really happened.)

The short and short of it is what I thought was a little bump on my cheek turned into poison ivy. Then staph infection. Which can lead to death in extreme cases. On my face. It really doesn't get much more fun than that. Its been hard being a Zombie, let me tell you. Resisting the urge to hijack the shopping cart and ride it down aisles, arms spread, belting out "The Phantom of the Opera issss HEEERRREEE!" took a great deal of will power.

So there I was, living my everyday life pretending my face wasn't falling off, when Friday the 13th came knocking. Horrific as any skin disorder, the ACT was on the agenda for Friday morning followed by a day of work at the Tea Room. While studiously procrastinating and drinking tea, I mulled over my options. I obviously couldn't go with my face in it's current condition, so what WAS I to do? Wear a veil? A grim-reaper-esq hooded cloak?  A phantom of the opera half-mask? A paper bag with eye holes?

Friday morning came and I stepped out of the car into the spine-shilling drizzle early Friday morning armed with pencils, calculator, and a half face of ace bandages. It looked, in a word, ghastly. (Take that sweet vocabulary, ACT score!) Like a mummy that had been ressurected and was trying to live the life of a normal American teenager (Hey, new reality show anyone?) and failing miserably. My only hope was that my fellow prisone-ahem, students would be so distracted by testing nerves and their poor choice of wearing low-ride yoga pants coupled with high-ride Ambercrombie shirts they wouldn't notice me. Oh, how wrong I was. The moment I walked into the testing room it was like being the only white person at a gospel soul church. The only traitorous customer stuck in line at Wallmart who pulls out and runs for the newly opened lane nearby, followed by hateful glares. The weird peep in a peep package with half the face melted off. Possibly the only person who wasn't staring at me was the hooded delinquent sleeping on the desk that had "I Wishz I Waz High Right Nowz" carved into it. (Good for you, youth of America. Good for you.)

Some small part of me blames my Bible reading. I try to read at least a verse or two before I go to bed each night and recently began Job. I'm beginning to think God took my prayer for understanding the man's plight a little farther than I'd expected. I get it, God! Boils = bad. Job had to live without the horse-sized antibiotic pills. Now you can finish it up by increasing my wealth hundredfold like his, right? Right?

Hopefully people will think any scars leftover are from something a little more daring than some poison ivy. Jumping to conclusions that I received it deep sea diving for sunken pirate ships, being a alter-ego vigilante super hero, or fighting off grandmothers for a waffle iron on Black Friday. I've always thought that if I had to get a facial scar there is nothing better than a scar that runs from the eyebrow, across the eye, and below. Total villian chic.

I went for my follow up doctor visit today at a ridiculously early time (9:45 a.m....don't judge.) and earned the mark of approval from my doctor. I admit I did a little happy dance today called the "I Can See My Face Again and Am No Longer a Zombie!" Dance. The scars aren't nearly as jagged and piratical as i'd expected or that the doctor made them out to be (might want to rethink your bedside manor when the first thing you do is wince and say, "Oooh, I hope that doesn't scar TOO badly."). It looks more like, to be completely honest, hickies on my cheek. Octopus hickies, to be exact. On the plus side one looks a bit like a heart. That was sat on. Or, if you use your imagination, you can see a butterfly. That was also sat on.

What i've concluded from this experiment is that people take us zombies too lightly. Its not all fun and brains like the movies make it out to be. The unwashed hair, rigid arms, and mumbling of "BRAINS....BRAINS..." is a piece of human, its the walking the undead dog and living an average paranormal life that really pushes us to the test. Its exhausting trying to balance time for pillaging AND time to do math homework. But you know what they say, "I can always sleep when I'm dead." Oh, wait...

TMI,

Hannah