We are told to internalize pain, whether it is emotional pain from a devastating breakup, or maybe physical pain from breaking both your legs in a fall. While containing whatever slew of sensations following such events may help you to temporarily regain your footing, it can come back much stronger than before.  But what happens when the pain becomes too much to simply stifle using sheer will? It explodes.

I speak, of course, of my extremely irritated bowels.

As a healthy young man, I seldom succumb to such immense physical pain.  My father, who had grown up on traditional Korean values, is quite a severe man.  I aspired to be as thick-skinned and stoic as he, even to the point of mimicking his impossibly perpetual brow-furrow.  Like then, I only come up with a silly, pained yet confused expression as I tighten my grip, knuckles white, on the reigns of my rectum.

Unsurprisingly, it is not the first time I have felt this way, and I have spicy food to thank for all the wonderful memories.  Quite the forbidden fruit, spicy food is.  For the man who desires something more from his food, capsaicinized comestibles ought to do the trick: you bite, they bite back.  I, for having bitten out of the forbidden fruit, suffer a horrible and prolonged lower-abdominal discomfort.  Another one for the books, I guess.

[As a writer]

Kids never truly know how to use writing as a form of self-expression — at least not until they see how it’s done.  Ironically, I wrote up an instructional series aptly titled the “How To” series, containing acclaimed works such as “how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich”, and “how to plant a pumpkin seed”.

At some point I abandoned the monotonous and formulaic how-to series; it was around the time I began reading non-picture books.  A painful severance it was, having to let go of the colorful illustrations and lively visuals for pages upon pages of bland, mindless text.  What was even more sobering was having to later read non-fiction books, which eventually became the norm in all classes outside of ELA, as it was called in grade and middle school.

Writing, however, was something I never noticed myself growing in: it was something like not realizing how you grew a foot over the summer, or how your voice dropped a few semitones while you were all-too focused on how much the 13-year-old life sucked.  Much worse than life in communist Russia or Nazi Germany, really.

Maybe it was all those books?  Was I perhaps imitating my favorite authors, comedians, and/or internet personalities?  There is no wrong answer.

Having been in school for most of my life, I can say confidently most academic writing is not creative.  It sounds obvious, as academic writing, on paper (ha ha), is quite the opposite of creative writing.  We sometimes wind up in this pitfall of always writing scholarly (at times flat-out snobbish) pieces that might earn an A, but are devoid of character or personality.  Writing doesn’t have to be a chore, and I encourage more people to have fun with it wherever and whenever possible.  Though, I wouldn’t recommend cracking penis jokes on a company business report — someone would certainly have a bone to pick with you on the matter.