"I STILL WISH I COULD BREATHE UNDERWATER"

[song: rebel rebel by seu jorge]

i want to divulge a little known fact about myself here. something i don't know if anyone who will read this will previously know about me. something you will learn very soon.

it all began back in college. sophmore year, let's say. i used to have the hiccups just like the rest of you. even the "burp-ups" from time-to-time. sometimes they wouldn't last too long, but other times they were just annoying at best with their duration. until one day...

i learned somewhere (or maybe just heard from someone) that in the back of your throat everyone had a little flap (i'm lost for any doctor-speak on specifics) -maybe attached to or connected to the lungs in someway. and when this flap would "malfunction" and stay shut you couldn't get proper airflow and this would cause a hiccup in your breathing.

as it goes, my friend jim and i surmised that if we could use mind-over-matter and control our bodies to do what we wanted we could possibly fix this "flap" problem, and eleviate the DURATION of said hiccups. so not really knowing exactly how to do that i decided the next time i came down with a case of the hiccups i would concentrate on trying to open that flap and to make it stay open.

long story short, next time you're around and i start to hiccup begin to count the number of hiccups i'll incur. i promise, it won't last very long. as it goes, since that day i've not had more than 3 hiccups in a row, within a day; and usually i only suffer 1 or 2. i can't exactly tell you there is some magical encantation to say or some mythical mantra to repeat in your head. maybe god looked down on me and had pity; i don't know. i just know that i tried to stop having lasting hiccups that day; and that day something happened. i'm lucky, i guess; maybe blessed. mostly just thankful.

as it turns out, it is often the little things that make me the happiest.