Growing up I was, according to my parents, very precocious and extremely inquisitive. This resulted in me being very independent and adventuresome, exploring all through out our home; the kitchen, the den, the living room, the bedrooms, anywhere I could get to. Consequently, my mother was constantly dragging me away from and out of places and situations that a young child shouldn't be in. One day, during the summer, when I was around 6 years old, while Mom was distracted by a phone call, I decided to go exploring.
A couple of weeks before, I was out helping Dad wash the cars one weekend. I kept spraying Dad with the hose every so often as I rinsed the cars off, all the while giggling and laughing as only a 6 year old can. Dad felt obliged to return the favor and spray me so by the time the cars were finished both of us were drenched and laughing to beat the band. Anyway, while Dad and I were washing the cars, I noticed a big gray metal box on the wall of the garage and thought, "that looks interesting."
Having escaped Mom's ever-present watchful eye, I managed a fast get away to the garage, where there was a treasure trove of things to explore and play with. The first thing I saw was the watering hose and remembering the fun I had with Dad, I chose to play with that right off the bat. I was having a great time spraying the floor, Mom's car out in the driveway, the walls and windows when I again noticed the big gray box on the wall.
My interest in the hose and water was immediately lost. Standing there in a pool of water, looking up at that box, I thought to myself, "What is in that box and how do I get it open?" I started looking all over the garage for something to reach the box so I could open it. Eventually, I found a long straight piece of wire lying on the floor behind Dad's workbench. I was ecstatic when I found out it reached.
So there I was standing in the water for several minutes, poking at the front of the box with this wire when all of a sudden the door suddenly pops open. I just stood there looking up in awe at what I saw there – all those switches waiting to be played with. I even noticed a black hole to be explored, if I could ever get up there. Eventually, I realized that I still had the wire and that it would reach, so I started to play with the switches. Little did I know just how much danger I was in! After poking at the switches, I stuck the wire in the black hole. Boy, was that a shocking experience (sorry, I know it's a bad pun but it just sort of slipped out).
The next thing I knew, I woke up in the hospital with Mom and Dad next to me and a splitting headache as I lay in bed. Apparently, what had happened was that as I stuck the wire into the black hole, I hit the ground bar in the circuit breaker box. With me standing in water, well I was just a great conductor. The force of the shock was such that it sent me flying across the garage into the opposite wall, which stopped my flight but not before I put a huge hole in the wallboard, as well as shorting out the electrical system for the whole house. In retrospect, my hitting the wall is really what saved me as my heart had stopped. When I hit the wall, it was like someone giving me a cardiac thump to jump-start my stalled heart.
When I finally woke up, it was two weeks later and even after that amount of time, I still hurt all over. Mom and Dad were ecstatic that I had come out of my coma and wasn't brain dead. After another week of observation I was discharged into my parents care.
Boy, if I thought Mom was protective before this mishap, I was greatly mistaken. The only time I wasn't out of her sight was when I was either in school, with Dad, the baby sitter (who watched me like a hawk per Mom's orders), or tucked in bed for the night.
It wasn't until about 15 months later that my gift started to manifest itself. One Friday I was at the playground at school with some of my friends. We were playing a simple game of Tag. Billy was chasing after Duncan when he slipped in the dirt and went into sliding into the chain link fence. His elbow took the brunt of the crash and stopped his forward momentum. Needless to say, he really got hurt. I was the first one to get to him and his arm really looked funny shaped.
"Duncan to go get some help," I yelled as I proceeded to help Billy.
Sitting him up, I said "Billy I'm going to move your arm." As soon as I grabbed the injured arm, I felt this electric shock run from him to me. It only lasted a couple of seconds and Billy didn't notice because he was in so much pain but I did. Shortly there after three things occurred; 1) help had arrived in the form of a teacher, 2) Billy's pain lessened dramatically and his arm looked normal again, and 3) I was overcome with a tremendous fatigue.
Well Billy went into the nurse to be checked and as it turned out that it was only a bruise. The rest of us went back inside to get ready to go home. By the time I reached home, I was extremely pale and nauseated. I just made it to the downstairs bathroom before I threw up. Well, Mom hustled me upstairs and into bed before I knew what was what. I really didn't care, as I was just plain exhausted. I slept for an hour or so when I awoke to find Mom watching over me.
"Jake dear, what happened and are you feeling any better?"
"Mom, all of a sudden, I got very tired out on the playground, maybe from all the running around I was doing with my friends and then on the bus ride home I felt sick to my stomach and then threw up when I got in the house. I have a headache and still felt sick to my stomach."
Apparently, Mom just chalked the whole incident up to my catching the flu and kept me in bed and quiet for the whole weekend.
It wasn't until I started high school, after experiencing many such events, that I was able to put 2 and 2 together and figured what was happening. It seems that between the massive electrical shock and the huge concussion, my brain chemistries changed resulting in an aberrant development of my mental and physical capabilities. The end results being that I could heal sick or hurt people by coming in physical contact with them and then drawing all their illness and pain into myself. The down side to all this was that I would become violently ill as my body purged itself of all the pain and sickness that I had accumulated. To watch my body go through this process, you would think that I was seizing. This was not the case. The psuedoseizure activity was just a part of the process just as was the violent vomiting and high fever that accompanied the purging of my body. I was also smart enough to keep this information to myself, realizing that if word got out I would become nothing more that a human guinea pig. Consequently, I learned early on to be very cautious and discrete about when, where, and who I treated.
Over the years, I have been able to refine my technique to the point that I can limit how much pain and sickness I take into myself. Additionally, I have developed an preference for curing children, as they are the innocents of the world and deserve a chance at experiencing life. Also, they are more appreciative of my actions.
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I have no family left now as Dad (an only child) and Mom as well as my Aunt Judy and Uncle Ken (mom's brother who's a lawyer specializing in Medical Malpractice), who have no children, were killed in a plane accident coming back from Cancun Mexico. Both my maternal and paternal grandparents, whom I didn't know, died when I was still a toddler. Consequently, after inheriting and settling both estates and selling of everything that I did not want, I had quite a nice nest egg set aside for my retirement.
I had been single for several years, after experiencing a very nasty separation from my last significant other/girl friend. Any ways, I was not really enthusiastic about going out and doing the Bar scene scenario. Don't get me wrong, I was and still am truly enamored with the female species and have had my share of relationships, I just was never comfortable going out and playing the Lounge Lizard thing in order to pick up women.
Because of my being single for quite a while, a couple of my buddies (CRNA"s) from work, took pity on me, putting their devious minds together and set me up on a blind date. With some trepidation, I went out with this girl.
Now I'm no "
Adonis"
by any means, nor am I a "
Frankenstein."
