Thumbs Up

Salads That Barely Qualify as Salads – Chicken, croutons, cheese, hard-boiled egg, parmesan cheese, bacon bits, more croutons, half a cucumber slice, and a leaf of lettuce. This is what health looks like.

Insomnia – When you’re stuck in the timeless nothing of tangled sheets and bone-crushing exhaustion, waiting desperately for just the slightest hint of sleep, you start thinking about a lot of things. Strange revelations, disturbing ideas, a barrage of nostalgia, and one or two coherent thoughts about your life all congeal into a meaty brain goulash. Your eyes well with tears as Lana Del Rey lyrics play through the back of your mind. Looking back on your life, you see the truth. You’ve been doing it all wrong. You’ve squandered all the greatest moments. All the amazing people, the experiences, the sausages. All gone. “I’ll change,” you whisper into the night. “I’ll appreciate everybody. I’ll look on the world with the optimistic fervor of a child. Everyone will know the depth of my caring soul. I will triumph over the cruel world.” “What the hell’s wrong with you?” your roommate says. “Go to sleep, or I’m gonna make you sleep outside again.” With an angry grunt, you pass a little gas your roommate’s way to demonstrate your deeply caring soul.

Thumbs Down

Insomnia – The next morning, the world hurts. Lack of sleep scrambles your system. Is this supposed to be in Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down? Why is it in both? I thought I was writing an editorial about sustainable toilet paper. Where am I? Is that an iguana? What is this waking nightmare?

That Shaky Voice Thing/Turning Red/Sweaty Palms/Shaking – There’s nothing worse than your body reminding you that you’re an insecure mess. Whatever the situation may be, you hope to go into it full of confidence, self-assurance, and a little something we here at The Heights call muffinswagger. Instead, the blood rushes to your face in 0.8 seconds, and you know that you look like a cherry, you sound like you’re having a small stroke, you’re sweating like a wildebeest and shaking frantically. Your body is in full-on panic mode. You are being assaulted by embarrassment and your only option is to run. Turning quickly, you take a bounding step and run directly into a frail older man, knocking him to the ground. Everyone’s screaming and you can’t breathe and the walls are closing in. You close your eyes, unable to escape this ridiculous scene, and then realize that you’re just words on a page in a college newspaper being written by someone who has to end this before he runs out of space. Thank God for meta Thumbs Down columns, you think, as you disappear into the nothingness from which you came.

Featured Image by Jim Cole / AP Photo