Todd's Stories #9

As many of you know by now, growing up I was a strange child. From the mask wearing to the get-it grabbing, I was (and am) the type of child hilarious stories are written about. What many of you may not know is that I was also a very sickly child, and in this edition of Todd's Stories I shall lay out for you a few examples of my sickliness.

The first example is not as much of sickliness but of my overall odd physical attributes. We all know of my escapades while wearing my head gear, but the head gear wasn't my only dental issue. I had braces for several torturous years, and before and during that my teeth were grossly disfigured. The culmination of my terrible teeth was when I had a double tooth with another tooth behind the double tooth, at which point I looked like Sloth from The Goonies, and all three of those teeth had to be pulled out. I also had several other teeth pulled out, all of which were excrutiatingly painful.

My next example of my sickliness was my horrific case of the chicken pox. While normal children get a red bump here and there, I had them covering every inch of my body, and I got them during the summer when it was the hottest. I had them in my hair and in my hears. I had them on the bottom of my feet and on my tushy. I had them everywhere, and during the scorching hot days I had to stay in the tub all day in cold water to make it a little less itchy. Simply no good.

My third example of my sickliness comes with my asthma. Although I am one of the lucky ones that was able to overcome asthma with age, I did have terrible asthma when I was younger. I had to use various types of inhalers and steam machines just so I would cough a little less. When I began to violently cough up flem and other grossnesses, I can assure you it was not a pretty site.

A final example of my sickliness was my knack for getting swimmers ear. In fact, I got swimmers ear so frequently I had to have ear plugs made specially for my ears so that no water could get in. Imagine how cool I looked jumping into the pool with a red ear plug in my right ear and a blue ear plug in my left ear. Cooler than you could ever imagine, I'll tell you that much.

I had other issues growing up as well, but these are some of the more sad yet comical issues I had. Although I am now the portrait of all that is man, in my younger years things weren't quite the same. I was the definition of a dufus, and though my stock is rising now, trust me, things weren't always that way.

The moral of the story is that sometimes the slow, fat kid with asthma and one tooth can grow out of it. Sometimes.