It happened again last night.

I’m not going to go into the embarrassing details (such as why one of my socks went into toilet water), but I WILL let you folks know I fainted again. Yeah, that’s right: AGAIN.

I, Nick Elmer, am a fainter.

Ashamed? I was. I have been. Waking up on the floor of a YMCA after jogging a mile is never ideal for the ol’ self esteem. Yet I’m trying to make the best of it. We light-headed folks like to make light of our problems, you see.

The first time I dropped like a sack of potato shaped rubies was during high school at the aforementioned YMCA. I heard report afterwards that while standing over the water fountain I swayed a bit, commented “Oh, that’s not good”, then landed on my butt (but thankfully cushioned the blog with my skull).

It’s easy to see why I fainted THAT time: YMCA’s are yucky places. My body was most likely trying to protect itself from germs through accelerated hibernation. The human body is a wonderful mechanism in that way.

The second time was ironically shortly after letting my friends know I was a fainter. A game of Ultimate Frisbee in the school gym had become intense and I took a tackle to the gut. Being a good sport, I shook it off and walked to the wall. Being an even better sport, I showed the tackler there were no hard feelings between us by keeling over and drooling on new hardwood floor. Now, because I attended a public school I was given the best of treatment (cups of water) very quickly (after the third time I passed out).

This time it’s a little trickier to pin point why I fainted. Yet, I feel it was a higher power teaching me not to brag about my physical short comings to my friends. I rubbed my fainting in THEIR faces, so karma decided to rub MY face into the school’s gym floor. Lesson learned!

The third time I passed out was when I babysat some kids who went to a preschool I used to work at. We were running around, killing each other with make believe light sabers, and doing what children generally do. Then I banged my knee on a rock! Really hard! As you can imagine, knowing it was only a matter of time before I fell unconscious, I wanted to use the remaining minutes to assure the kids not to worry. I did this by unsteadily crawling up their drive way on all fours very slowly then resting my head on a bush. The kids were delighted at the silly noises I made as my brain slightly choked. I woke up to them happily chanted “Wake up, Nick!” It was then I knew I wasn’t dead because neither heaven nor hell would pay me 8 bucks an hour for that.

This time really shines a light as to what causes me to faint. After all, what is the common factor in all three of these stories? …Doing stuff! Doing stuff makes me faint! Ah ha! Problem solved. Now that I know the cause, I can prevent future fainting spells by avoiding any and all activity. This has been a boon for medical science.

And yeah, there were a bunch of other times I fainted but they aren’t very funny stories except for that one in particular that I’m thinking about right now.

REGARDLESS! That is my history of fainting. If you are a fainter, I suggest you follow these tips I had to learn the hard way:

1. Fainting? Sit down. No chairs? On the floor. Public place? Put out a can with some change in it and try to look as homeless as possible.
2. Don’t eat a lot of food before doing some physical activity. That diverts blood away from your brain. Blood is what tells your brain “Don’t faint right now!” so it’s good to keep those love birds together at all times.
3. Don’t become a pilot of The Blue Angels.
4. If you stand up quickly and feel yourself get dizzy, try to turn it into a sexy dance move to save face with those in your company.

If there are better tips around I’m certainly not CONSCIOUS of them!

Tags: babysitting, faint, fainting, gym, ultimate frisbee, ymca