One cool morning last fall, I woke up at the crack of dawn to catch the 7:30 C-1. Trying to admire the scenery on the ride, I noticed a flyer posted on the bus that read, "Chances are, someone on the bus has chlamydia. Get tested today."
Who cares, was my initial reaction. As I started to look around a little more carefully, however, I realized that the only other person riding the bus was a biomedical engineer with high-water pants and a Scooby-Doo lunch box.
I quickly realized that this could be a problem. Statistics don't lie.
For the next couple of weeks I was pretty down in the dumps. Knowing my days were numbered, I started to reflect back on a life full of regrets. Could the high point of my life really have been in third grade when I was crowned math flashcard champion for seven consecutive weeks until Nov. 17, 1995, when Rami Mikati beat me to 7 x 9? What kind of a person defines his life based on multiplication tables? Could this really be the end?
(On a side note, Miss Foster had tilted the flashcard in such a way so that it reflected sunlight coming in from the window, and all I could see was glare. Rami, with his Transitions lenses, was completely unaffected.)
After a brief period of mourning, however, I suddenly noticed a turnaround in the way I started approaching things. A little more spring in my step, if you will. I went out the next day and joined Duke's premier all male a cappella-bhangra fusion group. After class I went over to the Allen Building and changed my major to Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Out of the blue, I decided to learn how to play the banjo. All the things that I had never had time to do suddenly fit into my schedule. All the things that I was too afraid to try now seemed to be right up my alley. A few days later, I took a weekend off to go visit Venice.
A couple months after my unofficial diagnosis on the bus, I decided to stop by Student Health to be tested for chlamydia and to get the bad news over with. Even though the closest I had ever come to possibly contracting such a disease was when I shared a water bottle with a Tri Delt once freshman year, I was shocked to hear the results were negative. I demanded to be retested.
Still negative.
Furthermore, the nurse tried to explain to me that chlamydia isn't even life-threatening. I demanded to be retested one more time.
They kicked me out.
Surprisingly, I wasn't all that elated about the news. For the last few months I felt like I had been flying by the seat of my pants. I was living for the moment without a care for future consequences. I wasn't afraid to try new things, and I was living each day with no regrets.
For the first time in my life, I was feeling, dare I say, happy.
Meanwhile, I'm back in Pratt, miserable, and still trying to get Miss Foster to reinstate my championship certificate that she took away after I punched Rami in the face and smeared peanut butter in his hair at lunch. If there is one thing that I can take away from my time on death row (other than six weeks of banjo lessons) it's the importance of living as if the end might be just around the corner. Try not to let the fear of failure dictate what you do or where you go.
Lastly, don't put too much faith in medical "fact." I don't care what the doctors say. For those magical two months, I did have chlamydia.
Nick Alexander is a Pratt sophomore. His column runs every other Tuesday.
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