Goddess of the Cling Wrap

Summer class is dangerous for your health.

Really. I don’t get it why people volunteer to be roasted everyday just so they can get what? 3 or 6 units of additional credit, inching them closer to getting that university e(h?)ducation.

You’re supposed to be in school so you can learn. Let’s say that at the end of five weeks you can dig out the dirt in lit, and present a coherent minipaper on the carabao as the national animal. But can you really do that?

As for me, is that possible when you get rashes from chalk dust and blisters just for standing and talking your tonsils out for an entire afternoon and your audience is busily staring at the imaginary ants trudging their way across their photocopied readings.

I don’t know if it’s just the heat and the frustrating echo of my own voice, but I’m really starting to hate dermatologists. First off, I sit in their offices for like ten minutes. They look at me, prescribe medicine and oh, they charge exorbitant consultation fees. When I walk out, I’m armed with the knowledge that my genes have gifted me with faulty chromosomes resulting to atopic skin.

And now I’m at least a thousand pesos poorer.

The first dermatologist I’ve been to prescribed me with creams and ointments which did nothing but turned my rash into one angry red giant. Thoughts of my bone cavities getting eaten and a lifetime in a wheelchair sent me running to my next one, who took one look and said “Salt solution, every night.” It calmed me when the morning after I finally saw new skin growing and closing up the wound. But this new doctor is also more expensive, and has a bigger arsenal of medication ready for me to purchase at your friendly neighborhood pharmacy. Kaching!

I hate the ring of cash registers in pharmacies.

After every visit, I become more and more paranoid. Everything is suspect. My chromosomes are programmed to respond to the most mundane of things: the dust, the heat, the chalk, the airconditioning, the clothes that I wear, the soap that I use, the food I eat. Be careful you could be allergic to the freaking air that you breathe. But don’t be too stressed, lest you want another flare up. Before bed and upon waking up, I’m subject to washes and soaks, a battery of ointments and creams and pills and cling wrap. Yes, cling wrap. Not too long ago, I joked with some friends that so I could join them on a swimming trip, I’d just wrap my rash in plastic and proclaim it to be the newest fad to hit the beaches this summer. I’ll be just like Linda Carter. Oh yes, what trendy fashionista foresight! Look at me now, wearing dermatologist prescribed kink, feeling like Linda Blair prior to her prison movie phase. Now I know how those mummies in Egypt must feel.

I was ranting about this to a friend who was in town for a wedding. We concluded that (1) I’m not summer school material; (2) I’m allergic to the Philippines. So he was convincing me that maybe I should move to Bangkok and terrorize some Thais into submission. Just when I’m this close to being convinced, he started ranting about how at lunch, he rushes to the cafeteria and all but tears his jacket and tie off because the temp is a raging 42 degrees. Manila is somewhere between 28-36 and I’m abloom with blisters. Take me to Thailand and I’ll be one walking angry rash bitch.

What kind of fate would consign me to a tropical country and then gift me with progeny with bad skin? Maybe I should move to Alaska, or be one with the Inuits. Or maybe I’m not really meant to be in this world and I should start applying for a visa to Asteroid B-162. Maybe there I can proclaim myself Goddess of the Cling Wrap.

And that my friends, is the reason why you don’t see a lot of kantogirl this season. I swear, I’m this close to becoming Bubble Girl.