Skip navigation

Tag Archives: midlife crisis

Engineeringoma

A good while ago, not long after I first started working, I noticed that I was having some speech difficulties.  I would often forget words, mix up my gendered pronouns, and I was starting to affect a stutter.  I was really annoyed with myself.  Forgetting words occasionally doesn’t bother me.  It happens.  But it seemed to be happening more frequently than normal.  And what was going on with mixing up my gendered pronouns?  I was raised in the US.  I may have learned Chinese first, but English is definitely my dominant language.  I never had problems with pronouns before.  And I have no idea what was going on with that stutter.  I figured, I was just tired and I just needed more sleep.  But I was wrong.

I learned that I have engineeringoma.  I am quite fortunate that I have friends who are healthcare professionals to set me straight.  My respected medical professional friend defines engineeringoma as a

cancerous growth of the engineering, which is located somewhere in the brain.  It causes compression of the ventricles and the lobes to swell up, affecting Broca’s area and thus causing stuttering.  Progressive state causes sickliness.  Growth metastasizes into all organs.  There is no cure.

When he told me that, suddenly it was all clear.  I used to get headaches (this was pre-MLC) sometimes.  They were probably one of the symptoms of the growth getting bigger and causing pressure in my skull.  It was affecting Broca’s area, an area of the brain necessary for speech production.  That probably explained my forgetting of words and stuttering.  I was getting sick more often.  I totally had engineeringoma!

Or…not really.  Sometimes my friends and I like to pretend we have weird, fake, and often gruesome diseases (or really, I like to pretend that I have weird, fake, and often gruesome diseases and they are more than willing to oblige me and make up said diseases for me if I find the real diseases to be not gruesome enough…then we make them even worse in banter).  But what was really funny was that I had written the definition (it’s a really good definition) on a scrap of paper and put it up on the outside of my cube wall.  One of the other noob engineers came by to talk to me one time and saw the definition.  He thought it was real.  He was having similar symptoms and he was actually sick during that time.  He came in to ask me how I found out about the disease.  Then he did a double take, probably because I looked so amused at his reaction.  He figured out rather quickly that it wasn’t a real disease.  And then he learned that my sense of humor is parched and arid and I really wasn’t to be trusted regarding these things.

Good times, good times.

Advertisement

Midlife crisis (Part 3)

And finally, the last part on my series of posts detailing midlife crises (MLCs).

These series of posts all came about by an offhand remark from her brother about my MLC taking a Backstreet Boys cruise.  I had no idea such things existed.  I didn’t really look at the site, but I assume it’s just a cruise on which there are the Backstreet Boys.  I guess they perform while you’re cruising?  I guess?  It doesn’t sound very interesting to me.  Actually, it sounds closer to “downright horrid” to me.  Cruises are not interesting to me already to the point that the very idea of being on a cruise is barely tolerable.  If you add the Backstreet Boys to an idea that is already barely tolerable, doesn’t that bring it squarely into the territory of downright horrid?  I’m pretty sure it does.

Anyway, my MLC shared the comment her brother made with me and we decided to speculate about who would want to go on such a cruise.  We suspect people who want to relive the 90s.  Maybe those going through their midlife crises.  I’m not sure if that fits exactly, because isn’t that a resistance to change instead of a strong desire for it?  I could see how there’s emotional turmoil though.  I mean, these aren’t really the Backstreet Boys anymore.  They’re more like the Backstreet Men…maybe even the Backstreet Geezers.  That probably would cause you a lot of emotional turmoil if you remember them and prefer to remember them as the Backstreet Boys (BSB).

So, once again, I’m really glad I have a master craftsman MLC who only gives me headaches instead of horrid cruises in which I have to listen to the Backstreet Geezers and be around all these other women (maybe some men too) with their inferior MLCs going through all this emotional turmoil and possibly strong desires for change.  But just for fun (snort), let’s consider if I were on such a cruise.

From glancing at the website, I believe that their itinerary involves Florida and the Bahamas.  These destinations are unacceptable to me.  I would obviously have to move the cruise so that it would go to Alaska from Washington.  So then, I’m on a cruise with my MLC, because this is a BSB cruise after all and only people who are going through (or have) MLCs are allowed on them, and we are going up to Alaska.  Seeing as how I dislike cruises and BSB cruises even more, I might have to somehow maneuver the situation to where the ship can hit a titanium seal, which would rip a huge hole in the bow and then promptly start sinking the ship, because obviously the ship is just like the Titanic (I do know that the Titanic didn’t hit the iceberg head on, but instead scraped one on the starboard side, but we’re talking about titanium seals here and not icebergs, and the shoddy design of passenger ocean liners in general).  It’s important that the seal is a titanium seal, because the seal has to escape unharmed except for maybe a bruise or two.  I have nothing against seals.  Only BSB cruises.  Also, the ship has to hit a titanium seal because icebergs are in short supply up in the northern Pacific.

So, the cruise ship has hit a titanium seal and has started sinking.  My MLC might decide to make herself known right about then.  Everyone will then try to abandon ship, of course, because they all have inferior MLCs and are thusly afraid of them, not realizing that my MLC is a master craftsman and does exquisite work and only causes headaches.  Not to say that she can’t give you emotional turmoil or a strong desire for change, but that’s amateurish.  Now then, my MLC and I are now on an abandoned ship that’s sinking.  I think we might have some trouble doing anything with it.  And um…I can’t really remember what we had decided a good plan of action would be.  Maybe I’ll just ask the titanium seals for some help.  They probably don’t like BSB cruises either.  They would probably help us get to shore.  They also probably wouldn’t shoot us after getting us there.  Like I said, I have nothing against seals nor do I have a history of being cruel to animals so they don’t really have much reason to shoot us.

So…yeah.  The end.