Goodbyes and an itchy behind

Its Friday night and pouring out. This is the last weekend of the semester I could be out there drinking or doing other "fun" things, but instead I'm sitting in my room with an itchy ass.

That's right. My lower back, ass, and thighs are coated in hives. I won't bore you with the details, I'll just say that I took two medicines yesterday and got hives from one, and then I took a gamble tonight and only took one.

I picked the wrong one.

So before I drug myself into a good night's sleep, I want to say a word about the finale of ER last night. It's a poor introduction, but I don't want to waste too much time; it's me versus the benedryl.

When I was 10 years old, I settled on a repeat of ER one evening. My mother said absolutely not, so I snuck up to my room and played with the bunny ears on my crappy little TV until I got something of a picture. That was my first taste of it. For whatever reason, my mother decided that 12 was old enough to watch all the sex, violence, and gore that ER had to offer. I was utterly hooked. Also addicted was Kelly, and we bonded over it. Benched at the St. Gregs softball games, we would discuss last week's episode for all 6 innings.

While I had flipped between doctor and meteorologist as my possible future career since the age of 8 or 9, at 12 the decision was made. I would be a doctor, just like the ones on TV. On an aside, obviously I have not pursued a career in health care because I still want to be a doctor like the ones I saw on TV. I realized when I was 14 and started volunteering in a hospital that the doctors on TV were very, very fictionalized portrayals of the real deal. Nevertheless, I would have never volunteered in the first place if it wasn't for my ER obsession.

Back track a bit from when I was volunteering at 14 in a hospital. At 13, I meant Sinead. She was doing her Spanish homework. She told me she had to become fluent in Spanish because she was going to volunteer with Doctors Without Boarders one day in Central America. I asked her if she watched ER. We've been friends ever since.

I remember watching with my entire family the episode when smallpox came to the ER. I remember watching the season 8 opener with my brother Michael. I remember spending my summer afternoons ridding my bike over to Kelly's to give her the episodes I had taped that morning. I remember watching the ER/Third Watch crossover with Kelly and discussing adding another drama to our habit, and then bonding with my dad over developing a cop show addiction.

The spring of 2002 was the beginning of a great time in my life, and although the timing is coincidental, that also happened to be when I started watching ER. The memories are good ones, and it was bittersweet to say goodbye to a piece of culture that defined a really great part of my life.