I am the Greatest Hypochondriac Who Has Ever Thought She Was Dying

It might be true.

As many people who have read this blog before will know, I can be a bit dramatic when it comes to everyday ailments, as is demonstrated by the end of this post, as well as this post, and just a wee bit in this post.

Anyway.

We all know that I'm kind of a hypochondriac, and also sort of a germ freak (maybe you didn't know that before, but you know it now.)  But, you do not know just how long I have been this way.  To tell you that, we must go far back, to the days of old, when stuffed animals were my friends, and the sandbox was my kingdom.

We must go back to kindergarten.

This is the story of the first, and last, time I ever faked sick to get out of going to school.

I'm pretty sure that I just didn't feel like getting up that morning.  I wanted to sleep, and the TV had told me, many times, of children faking illnesses to avoid being sent to the dreaded school.  So that's what I did.  I told my mom that I had a stomach ache, and she let me stay home from school.

My sick day started out simply enough.  I slept and watched TV, then slept some more.  My mom was a stay-at-home mom at the time, so I didn't throw any wild kindergarten parties, I was just kind of chilling out at my house, without a care in the world.

But I was determined not to be caught in my lie.

I did such a good job at trying to convince my mom that I was sick, that I managed to convince myself of it.  Soon, I actually became sick, with an actual stomach ache, and possibly also a fever.  But that is not the worst of it.

The worst part was the hallucinations.

To this day, I'm not entirely sure if all of this happened, but I have a distinct memory of looking out of one of the windows in my house and seeing the neighbor kids walking home from the bus stop, dressed up as milk cartons.

Milk cartons.

For real.

They were very convincing milk cartons, too.  All I remember thinking about this was that "Aw, I picked the wrong day to be sick.  Everybody got to dress up as milk cartons and I had to stay home."

And so, from that day forth, I never again faked sick, for fear of missing out on another "Dress Up Like a Milk Carton" day.

So yeah, tiny me had some mad mental skills.  Or mad mental issues.  You decide.