Doctors are really good at delivering grotesque news in perfect deadpan, because they’ve seen perhaps thousands of buttholes and also looked inside them.
As a group, the Jezebel staff has been told our eyes don’t produce enough tears, our eyes produce too many tears, our uterus is the size and shape of a walnut, our ear canals curve upwards making earbuds a challenge, our ribs are out of place, we have a heart murmur but don’t worry about it, we have a mole that isn’t cancerous but “will probably keep getting bigger,” that our wisdom teeth have roots that go down to our jaw, that we have the most iron-rich blood the nurse had ever seen, that we have sludgy blood, that the yellow goo coming out of our dislocated elbow is just arm fat. One editor who suffered a very significant injury was told her pelvis looked like a smushed soft pretzel. Our bodies are oozing three-dimensional Picasso paintings. Beautiful.
But before we get to rude or gross (not necessarily sad or scary) doctor asides and diagnoses, let’s look at the most embarrassing dares you ever accepted.
People seemed to love this dare completed by The Bitterbitch which makes me kind of embarrassed to think about but was definitely worth the reward:
I made nothing but “Hamilton” references during a board meeting. For two hours, I was only allowed to speak lines from Hamilton.
Them: “You did really well with this new implementation!”
Me: “I’m a diamond in the rough.”
Them: “We will be out of touch for a while, so you’re on your own.”
Me: “Awesome. Wow.”
And so on for two hours. The person who dared me? My boss. The payoff when I flawlessly executed this? Three days off without using my vacation pay.
I found this dare from MadScienceTeacher’s friend very charming:
This was not my dare, but I’m including it because it’s my favorite memory from high school (which says a lot about how much I enjoyed high school).
Freshman year, one of the teachers went on a rampage with handing out detentions one week, giving them out for the slightest infractions. This meant that I, and a bunch of other nerds that had never been in trouble before now had detention with all the usual suspects. (I was in for taking a sip of a Fruitopia that was in my locker upstairs, where we were not allowed to have any drinks but water).
Another freshman, even nerdier and quieter than I, came in early, sat down, and a group of Seniors came in after him, and sat surrounding him. Somehow, they convinced him to stand up 2 minutes before detention ended and say to the attending teacher, “Excuse me, Sir, I have a potato in my pants.” This guaranteed him another stint in detention, but also got him a huge boost of popularity that lasted for the entire rest of the year (it was a very small, Christian private school).
This from Meatpudding, which went horribly wrong:
My best friend and I were in the parking lot of a church (we attended his great-uncle’s funeral) when he dared me to sneeze on his deceased’s face. My friend absolutely loathed his uncle, and for good reason. But he’d promised to briefly attend the service and not make a scene, so he wanted one last posthumous dig vicariously through me.
As I was about to fake sneeze, I legitimately did, and the force of the real one and strength built for the fake resulted in a major snot rocket clear across the corpse’s right eye. There was an audible gasp. As the priest came over - straight-faced as a Speaker of a Republican House - and tried to gently wipe away the snot, he inadvertently re-opened the eye lid. So, with everyone absolutely horrified, and the widow even more inconsolable, the Dearly Beloved decided to close the casket.
This is what friends are for.
And mine, of course, was wearing a tail for a week.
So, what is wrong with you???