Remember all the funny and weird things that happened to you when you were a kid?
Some of them were good for a laugh, others you really didn’t want to remember, and then there were those things that may have scarred you for life.
For those of you who may not recall them so well, let me refresh your memory.
There were swirlies, wedgies, being pantsed, and I’m sure you will all remember the one classic childhood memory that affected all of us, brain freeze.
Brain freeze is that moment in your life where you take in too much slushy, slurpy, ice cream or whatever at one time, and your state of being is altered.
You will know you have it when you get this wrenching pain in your head, and you have to lay down and give it a few minutes to go away.
It is usually accompanied by batting of the eyes, some crying and shaking of the head.
Up to this point in the semester, things have seemed to go pretty well, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
As a student body we have encountered a significant raise in tuition, the usual parking problems, a change in various faculty and administration members and Greek rush.
Add to the list a winning football team, a basketball team that is expected to go far into post-season, the unforgettable day of Sept.11, a significant campus power outage and the anthrax scare.
Well, my readers, it is this point in the semester where we are all prone to experience brain freeze.
We have been bombarded with so much this semester that we are going to crack sooner or later.
Trust me, life is stressful enough as it is — car payment, rent, relationships, spirituality, etc.
To throw in a full-time job, academic pressure, and the stresses that the world in general may also cause is just too much for one person to handle.
It just so happens that brain freeze occurs at one of two times — the first bite or slurp, or during the middle.
Chances are that some of you caught brain freeze at the beginning of the semester, and have been wandering around lost and out of it all semester.
What usually happens after brain freeze is a cooling-off period, where one doesn’t want to do anything but just rest, and often they do not continue drinking or eating afterwards.
Or else you will be the victim of brain freeze during this week — yes, Homecoming.
You’ll get so caught up in the activities and fun stuff that you won’t know what hit you, and from here on out you’ll begin to show symptoms of “burnout.”
What is so sad about brain freeze is that it still affects us all, and its symptoms are indeed inevitable.
So what’s the cure?
I can’t think of one now; I’ve got brain freeze myself.
