My First Australian Nickname

I got stung by a wasp on tuesday. Right on the ear, too. I was just minding my own business at a house the church uses for the youth to learn house maintenance, and various other trades as well as hang out. We were finishing up for the day, and closed a garage door on the shed in the back, when I felt the on my ear. Like any real man would do, I slapped myself, screamed and ran. There were two other people standing there, and they were actually closer, and they didn't get stung. But they screamed and ran, so it wasn't that embarrassing. I remembered that every time I get stung, where ever I get stung, the swelling is always ridiculous. After about 5 minutes, the pain of the sting went away, and it just felt warm, so I was going to leave it alone. When I got back to Michael's house, they noticed my right ear was bigger than the other. Michael's wife, who is a nurse, suggested that I see a doctor, and it took some persuading to get me to go, because I would feel kind of weird going in with something as mundane as a wasp sting.

When I went to the doctor, he told me that I should take antihistamines and an antibiotic, because if the cartilage gets infected, it would take a much longer time to heal. He also mentioned, that if the swelling went up, I could get cauliflower ear, and have a shriveled disgusting ear for the rest of my life. He didn't describe it as a shriveled disgusting ear, but he would have if it weren't for the hippocratic oath.

My lopsided head earned me my first nickname: "Wing-Nut" or "Winger". It's such a great nickname, I really don't want the swelling to go down. I hope everybody gets used to the nickname before the antibiotics and antihistamines balance my head again. In my experience, if there is a debate between 2 nicknames, it is nearly 3 times less likely for the nickname to stick than if there's only one. In fifth grade I decided I was more of a "Drew" than an "Andy", so I got everybody I could to call me "Drew". There were those that refused to call me something new, and those that just couldn't remember that I wanted to be called "Drew". To this day, there's only one person who refuses to call me "Drew", and occasionally he forgets to call me "Andy", and calls me "Drew". You know who you are. This "Wing-Nut" and "Winger" situation is far more complicated though. I could just go back to being "Drew" if the swelling goes down too quickly or people forget.

Other than my nickname being in danger of failing, everything is going very well. I'm driving pretty smoothly, and I'm learning my way around. I'm not struggling as much with understanding phrases either. American English is very, very bizarre from an outsiders point of view. America was once a part of England until the independence war, because the British decided to stand still in a line for us to shoot at, which is a much easier target than a small, moving target. After America gained independence, in less than 200 year, an entire language mutated into American English. Our accents changed, and we started to drop phrases and come up with new ones, but rarely use them. It was admittedly tough, and still is somewhat difficult to understand everything they say here. I seems like in every conversation I have, I encounter a new saying, and have to pause them and ask them what it means. After a while it just gets frustrating and I just smile and nod. What's worse is when I don't understand something and I'm smiling and nodding the whole time, occasionally saying stuff like, "yeah", "yep", or "mhmm" (much like nurse Roberts from scrubs), and they ask me a question that I would have responded no too. Next thing you know, they're all calling me "Winger" instead of "Wing-Nut".