Death by Mango

I lay in my bed wondering why I even bought a clock with a 4,000-watt light in it. I glows a blue 5:00 am and the room is as bright as daytime. My mind starts to question the situation I am in, as I cannot sleep and have a huge presentation in class later this same morning. You may be asking why I cannot sleep. That answer is simple. I am laying on my bed praying for death. My hands search the circumference of my body in hopes to find an overdosing amount of sleeping pills or a revolver with a single bullet in the barrel. My suicide reasoning? Earlier that night, I ate a mango.

This may sound weird to some, and understandable to others. This was my first mango, and my last. About 45 minutes after devouring this juicy and quite delicious fruit, I discovered that I was allergic to it.

I have never had any food allergies, until this one. I literally tore it apart and loved it. This was about midnight. I was finishing up some homework when my throat started to get scratchy. My nose started running. I then decided to just lie down and go to bed. My halogen clock glowed 1:15. This is my favorite part of the story; this is when my throat began to swell. I had to take slow breaths and I thought that I should maybe give a quick call to the old hospital; after all, we do go way back.

Then my mind wondered in other directions. I couldn’t help but think about my favorite comedian, Dane Cook and a bit he does about ways to die. He talks about getting killed with a “rogue tire” and about dying as a result of being stung by a swarm of bees. In his literary excellence he states, “fuck bees”. I laughed at this point. I thought about allergies in general and about how people can be killed from things that shouldn’t kill you.

If I died on this pathetic night, I would have been killed by a freakin’ mango. A MANGO! How sad is that. And what if I had an extremely adventurous life before that. My tombstone would be awful. It would read, “here lies Brandan Baki, he was a loving father and husband, mountain climber, skydiver, crocodile hunter, ninja fighter. Mango’s were his kryptonite.” That is sad. To die from any allergy is embarrassing; poison ivy, penicillin, peanuts, milk. All of it sounds so crazy and you would think that we humans, you know, the rulers of the world, would have a little defense against these silent killers.

So I now have a little laughter and the night doesn’t seem so terrible. I continue laying there and it is now that awful 5:00 am death light that I stare at. I get up to blow my nose more. Here is where I discover the best part. I glance in the mirror to find two extremely puffy eyes that are about 1/16 of an inch open and a jaw that is wider than Brad Pitt’s. I laugh again, but it hurts this time. I lie back down and stare at the ceiling thinking about how long it would take them to find my decayed body. I hope that they think I died of an extreme amount of manly testosterone instead of finding a mango in my fecal matter.

My phone rings and it is my girlfriend. It seems like days have passed but it is only 8:00 am. The swelling in my jaw has gone down but it is sore and I try to explain my situation to her worried voice but it is hard to talk. Being in college I have found one thing to be increasingly evident; I need my mommy. So I called her. She told me to go to the store and get some medicine and so I suited up and started my travels.

Living in Chicago has many perks, one being the minorities. I love seeing this cluster of countries all grouped together and living in the same building. This was not a good thing this morning though. My swollen eyes were now just swollen puffs underneath them. My eyes were squinted and I looked Chinese. This would seem okay, or even funny, but I think that was the problem. I live in a building with old people, Chinese people and some college kids. I rode on the elevator for 16 floors and the Chinese people stared at me. I walked to the store and the Chinese people stared at me. I felt bad because I felt that they thought I was making fun of them; if that makes any sense. They stared like I put makeup on before I went out to look Chinese. As you and I both know, this was not the case. I felt I should apologize before getting a samurai sword to the skull. Instead I just kept my head down and ran in and out of the store.

I took my meds and carried on. The day was rough and I looked like I had two black eyes. I rocked my presentation and went to class and work all day. I was a trooper and I know that I will never let a mango whoop my ass again.

I prayed that this would be the end of my week but it was not. The following day I was kicking a soccer ball in my apartment and I popped my back and couldn’t stand up so I napped on the floor for four hours and was able to stand but not turn my head. The next night I came home at four in the morning and had been drinking a bit. When I walked into my apartment, the lights were off and I stepped on that pesky soccer ball and fell into the corner of a wall. I gashed my right eyebrow open and it bled for about an hour. I went to sleep with a paper towel on it and it hurt something else to rip it off in the morning. I have a rad scar but a pathetic story as a result.

This ramble was just to help the world to understand the dangers when living life. You can’t think about them from day to day but you have to know that the littlest things could totally end you; a bee, mango, soccer ball, angry Chinese with samurai swords. It is these dangers that make life so unpredictable and beautiful. Live your life to the extreme and don’t ever be surprised if you find on your grave, “death by mango”.