How I learned to smile.

Now, before you read this, it will have stuff that's already been said in this blog and maybe some minor details might not be 100% remembered correctly. These memories didn't happen yesterday.


   I first met Christian during something that no longer exists. Back when I was a kid there were these Cystic Fibrosis get-togethers. It was meant to help both Parent and the person with C.F. to find people who understand the stress of having C.F. or living with someone who has it. They had to stop them though because no two C.Fers have the same Bacteria in their lungs and by being around one who has the very bad Bacteria in their lungs could pass it to another C.F. who doesn't via coughing into the air. Our Mothers met first. They both were looking for someone to confide in. Christian and I met just because our parents became friends. After just a few minutes of us talking to each other about what it's like to live with C.F. we were friends. After a few years of being distant friends, my step-dad at the time happened to have family that lived in the same town as Christian and so my whole family moved there. My mom still had a job in the city so she put my younger brother Jason and I into the town's daycare which happened to be run by Christian's mother.

Whenever I saw Christian he always had a smile on his face. It amazed me so much. I knew he was sicker than me too. Unfortunately we only lived in that small town for a year, but Christian got sick a few times in that one year that required being in the Hospital for 2-3 weeks at a time. Shockingly enough though, anytime I saw Christian he had that damn smile on his face. One day I asked him about it and he told me "Why not?" in which I responded with "Because we're sick" and all he did was smile and say "Exactly". I wish I could say I got what he meant back then but it took me almost 10 years to fully understand it.

My last memory of Christian was when I was about 16 or 17 and we both happened to be in the Hospital at the same time. The Hospital ward we were on was a good distraction for a sick kid. The rooms all had free cable, the ward was covered in nice bright, welcoming colours, there was a lounge with a big screen T.V., a computer, and many different T.V.'s on wheels with various video game systems.

We hadn't spoken to each other in a few years. Not because we had a falling out or anything like that, but just that my mom moved us around a lot. Was very difficult to keep track of so many different phone numbers. A fun thing about Christian and I is that neither of us liked being in our rooms when we were sick. We found it too....depressing. When you sat in a room all day you couldn't help but think about the future and it was never a good outcome. We loved talking to the Nurses and keeping our minds busy. I had just gotten lunch and I was enjoying it in my room when I heard a voice talking to the Nurses. It took me a few minutes for my mind to register what I was hearing. When it finally clicked into my skull that it was him. I promptly rushed out of my room to greet that voice.

The moment when I saw him a joy washed over my mind. It was like seeing a family member that you haven't seen in a life time. We happily greeted each other at a distance because we couldn't get close to each other. A really crappy fact is that Christian had one of those very bad Bacteria in his lungs and if I kept too close to him for too long, I had too high of a risk of getting it into my lungs, making me much sicker than I already was. After we greeted each other we went around the corner and sat across from one another in the middle of a hallway, trying to keep our distance but still being close enough to hear. We talked for hours on end about how our lives have been going since we last saw each other. What made me so sad for him is when he told me he's been in the Hospital for 3 Months and wasn't seeing a discharge date anytime soon.

Amazingly, he still smiled despite knowing what being so sick meant. It meant he didn't have long left unless he got a double lung transplant. The Nurses came up to us numerous times and told us to keep it down, but we didn't. Neither of us cared. We needed each other. I told him about how I died when I lived in the states, how I twisted a Testicle, and I just ended my story with "Man, why is this shit happening to us? I don't know how long I can go unless life gives me a break". Christian just smiled and told me what he's been going through. He talked about some terrible stuff. How he basically spends up to 8 months a year in the Hospital and finished it with "I could get depressed and give up but what would that get me? I'd rather be happy and make those around me happy so that way when I die, I will die happy surrounded by those who I love and will remember me for never giving up"

I couldn't say much of anything after that. One thing with C.F. is that we are told at the ripe age of 13 how unlikely it is that we're going to live past a certain age. For me, it was 25.....yeah...Christian's was much sooner than that, but he never gave up.

Over the course of that Hospital stay we talked a lot. The Nurses even caught Christian having sex with his girlfriend. When he told me that I must have laughed for 20 minutes straight.  While I was being discharged Christian asked me if I could keep visiting him while he was there and I did. We couldn't hang out in his room but we played video games in the lounge while trying our best to keep a safe distance. After a few weeks, he finally got discharged and we lost touch. We talked over the phone a few times but we both hated talking on the phone. I got busy with school and I didn't know what happened to Christian. We both just....forgot about each other and we were never in the Hospital at the same time again.

One thing about being sick so much is that you made friends with your roommates or other sick people in the Hospital. Christian and I made this one friend who was a really awesome guy. His name was Justin. I don't talk to Justin anymore because of what news he brought me.

The next and last time Christian was brought up in my life was on my 18th Birthday. I was relaxing at my computer when Justin sent me a message on MSN. No "Hello",  "Happy Birthday", or anything normal. Just "Dude, I'm so sorry". I was of course confused by this and said "What? Why are you sorry?" He preceded to send me a link to an online obituary. It was Christian's... I read it and I did nothing. I didn't cry, get angry, or anything. I just sat there, blank. I don't know how long I was like that but it was long enough for my Sister-in-law to check up on me because I wasn't answering her when she called my name. I still had the webpage open when she took a look at my computer.

She read it and began crying. My little bother heard her, came into my room, and she told him. He too, began to cry. My Mother heard them both, started shouting to see what was the problem and they told her. She ran up the stairs and she too, started crying. I still, was blank. I wish I could say I changed here I became the happy person I am today but that didn't happen for a few more years.

See, after Christian's death I did change but not for the better. His death made me realize something important. Life is fucking short. Unbelievably short. So, why bother trying anymore? I stopped caring about everything in my life. I never went to another class in school again. All I wanted to do was hang out with my friends and use them as a distraction. I stopped caring about my family too. It sucked. I was in this black hole of despair and unable to get out of it. In my mind it was all useless. I wouldn't live long enough to get any use out of school, but making sure I was remembered was my main priority.

That was my entire last year of high school. When everyone graduated and started going to University or got a job. I just played video games and slept. That went on till I was almost twenty. I was in the hospital and my lung functions were at an all time low. They started the Lung Transplant assessment to make sure I was sick enough to be put on the list without getting it too early. I don't remember much around this point but I do remember that during the end stages of the assessment a new Cystic Fibrosis Doctor came in to talk to me.

She saw the child so mad at the world that he didn't care about his health. She flat out told me that if I didn't stop being a dumbass then I wouldn't even get on the list, I'd just die. Her honesty shocked me so much. Everyone up till that point had been comforting me with a constant "Everything will be okay", "Everything will turn out fine", "New lungs will solve everything". She left after saying that and I demanded immediately that she became my new primary Doctor.

That Doctor and Christian's smile made me pull my head out of my ass and Happy Randy started coming around. The way I viewed my health changed, the way I viewed school changed, the way I viewed EVERYTHING changed. It was amazing. Because of those two people I was able to push my Transplant off for another 3 years and I even tried going back to school to graduate. Unfortunately, I was too sick at that point and unable to complete it but I tried and that's the important thing.

Thug Life

I've been in trouble with the Law a few times in my life.

The first time I remember being in such a large amount of trouble that the Police needed to get involve was when I was about 12 years old.

I lived in the North end part of my city(Basically, the really shitty area of town) and we had a 2 floor house. My room had a window that was above the roof of the kitchen on the first floor. Like you see in the movies all the time. Well, one night in Summer my younger Brother Jason and I were sitting out on the roof and for some reason we had an idea to start running around on the roof.

One nice thing about the Roof is that it connected to the Roofs of our Neighbors.  So, ya, my Brother and I started running around our Neighborhood via the Roofs. It didn't take long for the Police to be called. We saw the Cop car coming and we quickly ran back to our house. There was a tree on the other side of the roof from my Window. I managed to get to that point while Jason dove into my Window and shut off my room's light, ran to his bed, and pretended to sleep.

I'm stuck behind the tree waiting for my moment to run. The Cops are searching around my house with flash lights and I thought I had an opportunity, I ran for it but got caught. The Cops told me to come down and whatnot. I did and they went to the Door, rang the doorbell and promptly waited for my Mom to come to the door. She answered it and the Cops told her what I was up to. She did a smile and said I'd be grounded, and what not. After the Cops left, she took me to my room and smacked the shit out of me, not because I was causing trouble but because I was risking my life by running on slippery roofs at like 2 AM.

Ya, I never went on the roof again after that.

Next up was when we moved to Boston. My brother and I had an idea to start throwing eggs at Cars that went past this park behind our House. We threw alot of eggs and we had no more money to buy more. Naturally instead of being smart and ending it. We decided that.....rocks were the next best thing. Thankfully, we never caused accidents. But people sure did call the cops. All I remember here is, we took a break from it all and I started coughing. I put my head down and coughed away. I look up and BAM. Cop right infront of my face. I look around and my brother is nowhere in sight. He apparently saw the Cop and fucking ran without a word. When the Cop brought me home, he was in our room watching TV trying to act like he never left the house. After the last time he ditched me, I made sure he got punished with me. I told them all that he was with me and just ran off to not get caught.

So, the Cop asks us to come to the Station to talk about pressing Charges. My mom was  horribly pissed off at this point. We drive to the Police Station and, I'm not really sure what happened but the mood during the Car ride there got really light and happy. We get to the station and for 30 minutes,  my mom is discussing the possibility of charges being pressed on Jason and me. Jason and I keep getting asked questions about why we were throwing stuff at cars. We never had a plan before hand, we were in different rooms, and strangely we both had the same story. We told the cops that this big kid came up to us and started saying "Throw these eggs and rocks at cars or I'll beat the living shit out of you". We don't know if the cops bought our story.


 Somehow my mom managed to show such anger that the Cops let us go without any charges. The cop said to me before we left. "We were going to press charges but with how badly you're mother is going to beat you, we didn't think you deserved both". That scared the shit out of me. I was nervous the entire 2 minute walk back to the car but when we got in the car and started driving home. My mom started cracking jokes. She started saying shit like "Next time, don't ditch you're brother, Jason" and other stuff like that. We went for Burgers before we went home.

Was awesome.

Numbero trio.

We're still in the states but shit with my mom and her husband at the time was going terribly and Jason, my mom, and me were moving back to Canada. On what was to be our last day of school. We took all of our friends and just skipped the entire school day. Was our last day, we wanted to hang out. Well, apparently cops really care about skipping school.

It started by us going to the local Mall and just wondering around. This Cop sees us and starts following us. The mall had this decline into a dead end Basement with a single elevator going back to the first floor. We made it to the Elevator and were waiting on it with the cop entail. The Elevator shows up and all of us but my dumbshit brother enter it. He's standing in the middle of the Hallway staring at the cop like he was made of gold. We're screaming at him to get into the elevator. Finally, one of our friends just grabs him and drags him into the Elevator. It was like a movie with how close that cop was to catching us.

After that, we figure the Mall is too hot to hang out so we wandered around town and it was fun. We talked and talked and even ran into the Mother of one of our friends. They were about to get a lecture but then I told them that we're just having a fun day because it's our last day in the Country. His mom was pretty chill and just said to have fun before going on her way.

3:40pm was coming around and we needed to get back to school to get onto the Bus. We were waiting infront of the school for maybe 10 minutes and they called the Cops on us. There was a forest line between the school and the main road. We were sitting on the school side of the forest and happened to see several cop cars go by. We all agreed it was too risky to be there and were on the move to a new spot. Jason decided that he didn't want to be with the group and took off.

Ya, he fucking ditches people alot...

So, it's me and like 5 other people. We all walk out of the forest line on the main road and 3 Cop cars stop movie style, pinning us in. We're thinking "Holy fuck". I get arrested yet again and as I'm being put into the car, I see Jason walking by with a massive fucking smile on his prick face. If I wasn't in handcuffs I'd have ran towards him to punch him in his asshole face.

The cop takes us back to the school and drags us to the Principles office while they call my Mom. While Jason got on the Bus and fucking went back home. Since I'm waiting on my mom to come kick my ass, I tried to defend myself by telling em, "It's my last day in the country, I'm chilling with my friends." That apparently was a bad thing to say. They're very not okay with people leaving the Country suddenly.

Finally, my mom shows up and tells everyone I'm lying my ass off just so I don't get in trouble. The School looked at me like I was brain dead, suspended me, and I got to go home. During the ride back home, my mom just told me that it was a secret because she didn't want to do all the paperwork or something.

When I got home, I punched a wall instead of punching my dumbshit brothers face in. Fucking ditching me yet again.

After that, I stopped doing things with Jason that could get me arrested.

And that's my thug life. Thanks for reading!