Eid, North Carolina Style!

Baqra Eid is a religious holiday where Muslims give goat meat to the less fortunate. In many ways, it's like a Thanksgiving canned food drive except with raw goat meat.

Many Pakistani people in their everlasting quest to assimilate into mainstream American culture would just send money to the homeland to get a goat slaughtered there. After all, no one wants to see messiness of a goat sacrifice in the grand ole' US of A, where such an event would be grounds to get a pie in the face from PETA (a la Anna Wintour).

Such assimilation was not prevalent in our community in rural North Carolina. Maybe it was because we were so isolated from sophisticated, big city folk that we evolved differently than our fellow countrymen (sort of like the flora and fauna of the Galapagos Islands that Darwin found). In our neck of the woods, we did our annual goat slaughtering in my friend Raabia's backyard.

Raabia's dad was a surgeon so he knew how to sever the goat's carotid artery with an expert finesse. Usually, everyone would get together at the Bhatti house after Eid prayer and the dads would unload the baby goats out of the truck. The men would tie the goat to the old swing set and then slaughter it (in an emulation of how Abraham sacrificed his son Ishmael). All the bystanders would watch with eager anticipation for the fresh goat stew that we made afterwards.

Raabia, then in her tomboy phase, would often invite her American friends to watch the "cool" stuff her family did in the backyard and sometimes brought out the old video camera to document the proceedings. Nowadays, Raabia is married and an assistant buyer at Macy's; I'm pretty sure that the annual goat halaling has lost its appeal to her.

Anyways, since Pakistanis are super loud when they are together as they talk in loud Punjabi about the evil state of Israel, the neighbors would inevitably wander out of their homes to observe the commotion. I am fairly sure they would get scared at the sight they saw - hordes of brown people, in bright colors, excitedly gathering around a goat. They probably had a sudden realization that their seemingly well-adjusted neighbors were members of a pagan, occult religion that worshiped the blood of dead animals. Ahhh, to be a foreigner in America.

--By Mariam who is giving Bushra and Mahmood (aka Hamad the East Coast pimp who got all the Sunday school girls following him) a shout out. Holllllllllllaaaaaaaaaa.

A Drawing and Story from the Back Row

One day, when Farrah and I should have been paying attention during class (that's how one becomes a true healer), Farrah drew a picture and I wrote a story in an exercise of artistic synergy. The experience of creating art together was truly transcendental.

The beach was darker than usual. The waves lapped against the shore with a swoosh…swoosh. Lana had never been to Sandy Shores beach so late at night, and the chill of the air caressed and massaged the whiteness of her cheek.

She usually wasn’t so daring. She was a good girl – got straight A’s, fed her dog, did her homework with an extra vigor not previously seen before at Sandy Shores High, and she even drank eight glasses of water a day (but as a result, she had an overactive bladder and felt really bloated for most of the day).

Anyway, Lana’s life had changed one day when she stopped by the local SavMart to pick up her 2% milk for her whole grain cereal (“a wholesome breakfast for a wholesome girl,” her mother always said). Marcus Flutie, the dangerous wild druggie had stopped her.

“Hey,” he said in a deep sexy voice. Lana had always been frightened of him – their lives were complete foils of each other – the good girl with a virginal quality and the bad boy, who owned dirty Metallica and Nirvana t-shirts.

After that soft, breathy “hey,” they were inseparable. Tonight she had snuck out of her split-level home for a midnight tryst on the beach with Marcus.

She waited for him by Rocky Cove, an inlet on the far side of the beach. She heard a shuffling behind her.

“Marcus,” she said breathily. But the shadowy figure was too large to be Marcus. The night was jet black, and suddenly, Lana felt uneasy, frightened even. Paralyzed by fear, she looked at the sea, which was black as ink, instead of its usual beautiful aquamarine. The romantic night had taken a macabre turn.

Live Blog from North Carolina!

When Life Meets My Girl

It was the summer that I was 16. It was the blossoming peak of my teenage years, and I was walking home from my neighbor Jenna's house. A thicket of woods divided our houses because Jenna's mom valued privacy (she was an OB/GYN, and in Eden, North Carolina, that's the equivalent of being Liam Gallagher at the peak of "Wonderwall" fame).

Suddenly, I accidentally stepped on a wasp's nest, and five of them stung me simultaneously. At that moment, I flashbacked to Macaulay Culkin's character's tragic death in the 1991 prepubescent classic My Girl. Tragically, Macaulay went into the woods to retrieve his girlfriend's prized mood ring and was stung by so many bees that he died from toxic shock or something (back off y'all, not a doctor yet). Now, when you are 11, being stung by a swarm of bees and dying subsequently is tragic, romantic, and cinematic. At 16, an age when you are supposed to be gyrating in a seedy club in Cancun with a large, beefy man, going into a hyperventilating state due to bee stings is as dorky and stupid as Ducky from Pretty in Pink.

My dad packed me into the minivan and sped through our development to get me to the ER. Suddenly, a police car started chasing us through Oak Ridge Drive for speeding. In between gasps for air, I croaked, "Stop. Police." My dad, in the manner of that awesome car chase sequence in The Bourne Identity, kept racing to the hospital because he wasn't going to let his only child be beaten at the hands of some stupid, lame bees.

--By Mariam, who is now in a location where saying "y'all" and "purty" is pretty much business as usual.

Drawings from the Back Row

I made this picture during lecture on the back of a Professor evaluation form. She's not dead, just sad. The combination of boredom and presence of colored pencils brought this art out from somewhere deep down. If it makes you cry, I've done my job.

-- By Farrah, an MS1 who enjoys snowflakes (both paper and weather type)

Disclaimer: You know I'm not emo, right? I just think emo things are really funny because they take their emotions so seriously. Emotions were made to be ignored. You really thought I was emo?! You don't understand me at all... ok, that last line was kinda emo

Guest Blogger Day

The BackRowBallers have designated Saturday guest blogger day! Today's guest blogger is Liberty, a native of New Hampshire, who sits in a different place everyday during class. However, one constant in her variable seating habits is that she always sits with Emily F., who has very stylish dressing habits.

Midwestern Neighbors

My first experience with the new Toledo neighbors occurred quite by chance. My family and I were still roaming around my new house, and we noticed a person on the porch next door surrounded by 5 large dogs! We meandered over to meet Roy, a petite man in his mid-fifties who had a shiny-bald head rimmed by white hair, delicate, round glasses, and a tank-top.

Move-in day finally arrived. My family and I frantically pulled furniture and random objects out of the moving truck. Roy officially introduced his wife Martha, who chatted about the neighborhood and the weather with us. The first thing I said to her was, “I love your flower garden!” She immediately offered to cut me fresh flowers! The friendliness was somewhat of a shock to this jaded New Englander.

One day after settling in, I looked onto the street one day and saw a large blue metal frame came into view. Roy was riding down the street on a retro blue Schwinn with a little wire-basket. He had a radio on his head with big earphones and an antennae extending aiming for the sky.

The neighbors on the other side were silent with perpetually closed window blinds. The first words I heard emanating from the “silent house” were, “Hey, if you leave that bike out, kids will steal it,” a teenage girl sat on the stoop. I introduced myself, forcing a smile, though the girl stared blankly back at me. The exchange was anything but neighborly.

Later on, a tall, scruffy, tattooed guy emerged from the house with a huge, unleashed dog. The dog meandered through my front lawn into my backyard, where he took a poop. The dog continued blissfully with his business of soiling my lawn. When I knocked on the neighbor’s door to “discuss” the little problem with their poopy dog, they never even answered the door.

Another day passed and I dreaded the necessary confrontation over the “dog problem” with the neighbors. I imagined what I wanted to say to them: “Keep your stupid dog off my yard. If he poops on it again I’m going to thwack him with my closest available shoe.” This was probably not the best way to make nice with the neighbors.

When the silent house neighbors finally emerged from hiding, I went out to introduce myself to the mother, who was following her daughter around the postage stamp lawn barking orders at how she should mow the lawn. I was “introduced” to Kane, the giant dog, who sat penned in a steel cage.
“Oh.… actually, there was dog poop in my yard the other day, and I was hoping you’d keep him leashed,” I meekly approached the subject.
“Oh, no. I keep him in my yard,” the mother responded……..

(To Be Continued)

--By Liberty Elliot, who because of her devotion to this blog has found a special place in BackRowBallers' hearts.

The Back Row Ballers Go to Olive Garden

The annual Christmas concert had finally arrived! And the individuals of the back row love nothing more than to listen to songs about Jesus and the holy spirituality associated with Christmas (not its crass commercialism and extreme emphasis on gift giving as a means to show how much mommy loves little Johnny). Farrah sang beautifully (and convincingly) about Jesus in her emo dress of all-black. Watching non-Christians sing about Jesus' birth has always been a particular hobby of mine.

Afterwards, the back row people went to the very height of haute cuisine in Toledo, The Olive Garden. Something was missing, though. The night had a brisk cool and the warmth of conversation about the beauty of Ken dolls warmed the cackles of my jaded heart; but something was off. I vocalized such concerns, when Farrah realized what was missing - the Back Row Ballers' homie, Ashot. The group was just not foreign enough without him.

However, the back row people persevered. Sarah made loud inappropriate comments about infertility and marriage in front of a young girl of about eleven. Nevertheless, the night was truly a success! I went home, and did not study at all. So it does look like that getting beaten to a bloody pulp by the head people of MCO is becoming more likely by the minute.

--By Mariam, a MS1 who really hates animals

Pop Quiz!

Several months ago, I killed a spider on my wall with a high heeled shoe. The dead spider's remains are still splatered on the wall because:

a) I am too lazy to clean it up
b) I have to study, so I don't have the time
c) As a reminder to other spiders not to f**k with me

Fears

Sometimes I have an overwhelming fear that when I'm slacking off in the back row, blogging, being a good friend, and loving sunshine, CBC will show up right behind me and just smack me upside the head. I don't think I want to mess with her (she has lots of spunk and sass), so I better go study.

--By Farrah, who has stopped putting her last name on blog entries due to scary serial killer nature of internet.

Fast Cars

There is an obvious gender bias in our blog's fan base. Girls find us hilarious as we offer laughter in times of annoyance when one just can't find that cardiac plexus in a juicy cadaver. On the other hand, guys call this blog names because the very essence of their masculinity is threatened by even reading it. So per Cristina's suggestion, this entry will be about my car so as to attract a male audience.

My car is black. It has large wheels (six-spoke, 17" aluminum alloy) that take me places. It has a 3.5 L V6 engine and 270 horsepower with a 19.2 gal fuel tank. And some ass tool keyed the side of it in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Not cool, not cool at all.

--By Mariam, who would ask Best Buy's father for proposal of marriage if it were physically possible.

Self-diagnosis

Every time somebody asked a member of my family what I was like as a child, they inevitably mention that I used to eat dirt. (Don’t say “that explains a lot” – you’re not as funny as you think you are) I was two years old – it seems to be a very small part of my life in the grand scheme of things, but apparently it was memorable. My own theory stems from my love of chocolate cake – dirt kind of looks like chocolate cake… right? Anyway, I would sit happily in front of the potted plants in my house stuffing tiny handfuls of dirt in my mouth. My mom had to start putting the plants up on counters and tables so that I couldn’t reach them. My older brother and sister would promptly put the plants right back on the ground to laugh at their stupid new little sister.

Now that I’m an adult (ok, the adult part is debatable) in medical school, I can diagnose myself. I had Pica – specifically Geophagy. Pica is defined as an appetite for non-foods. Geophagy is defined as a practice of eating earthy substances such as clay, chalk, and laundry starch. It’s quite common in children, but as long as it stops around the age of two, your kid will probably be okay. Now you’ve learned something new – ergo this blog was not a waste of your time. Take that!

-- By Farrah, a winter coat enthusiast

PS - The kid in the picture is not me. I just found it on the internets. I told you pica was common.

FARRAH AND SARAH’S GUIDE TO “McGiver”-ing Rx

Do you have conjunctivitis? No time to go to the doctor? You have three options:

1) Find some antibiotics. Crush them up. Pour them into visine. Shake it up! Drop into eyes.

2) Don’t have any antibiotics? Find some Neosporin. Squeeze into Visine. Mix into a slurry! Smear over eye.

3) No Neosporin? Let a dog lick your eyes because their saliva has anti-biotics. Make sure the dog wasn’t just licking his own ass – that would be bad medicine.

Journey around the Classroom in 180 Days

After talking to the plebeian masses, I realized people like blog entries about medical school. Since I am an egalitarian writer who writes for the public (in the manner of those $6.99 mass market paperbacks sold at Wal-Mart), this entry is about how I found my seat in the back row, left side of medical school.

When classes started, I chose the left side, middle aisle for a seat, mainly because the front rows were prime real estate for individuals who got to class at 7:45 A.M. and set up their pencils in an organized manner. I began to call these seats the "cheap seats" because the people who sat there 1) were stragglers, having the audacity to come in at 8:04 A.M, and 2) had not yet found their five best friends they would do everything with (short of sharing underwear). Sadly, only one person in that row would talk to me – JPL. Even JPL, though, would get tired of me saying weird things to him, like "You have a crush on [insert older male professor’s name here]," and he would tell me "sssshhhh" so he could learn how to be a doctor. It was a lonely time.

One day, second row, right side aisle invited me to sit with them. Although the company was enjoyable (hi Emily, Jack, and Christy!), it was emotionally disconcerting because I could see the teacher so well. I could see the teacher's mannerisms, his facial features, but most importantly, I had to pay attention. So, I moved.

Then, Block 2 began. I walked in (late) and saw Sarah, a student with a husband (hi Adam!), sitting in the back row, left side. Since Sarah never came to class, she was like a rare flower that only blooms on a certain day in December during the winter solstice; my excitement upon seeing her was quite understandable given the circumstances.

My move to the back row, left side was an excellent decision as it led to the creation of this blog. The back row, left side is accepting of my weirdness (except for Tahir who thinks that I "have already mapped out the conversation before I even talk to [him]," an accusation with a tragic ring of truth). The back row, left side is awesome because (mostly) everyone here is exactly like me (mainly Farrah, the Iranian, more emo version of me). In conclusion, although my journey around the classroom was like Odysseus’ torturous wanderings to get back to Ithaka, the wonder of the final destination has made the temptations I had to withstand completely worth it.

--By Mariam, who likes to eat chicken carcasses whole (No, just kidding that was a reference from Amelie)

Entry from Second Row, Right Side Aisle

Today we have a contribution from a guest blogger, Emily, who sits with Jack and Christy in the second row, right side aisle.

MR. CLEAN IS MY BOYFRIEND

So I think I'm going to go and get one of those handy-dandy Swiffer cleaners and some Clorox wipes. I know, they're too expensive and very yuppie-ish, but OH SO HANDY! And come to think of it, I'm kind of turning into a yuppie anyway, aren't I? I'm 22 (young), smack-dab in the middle of Toledo (urban), and learning to be a doctor (professional).... scary. Anyway, besides, I just don't have the time to be all housewifely and actually mix up a batch of Lysol and use rags and then hang the rags to dry and then wash them and blah-di-blah blah. That's one thing that sucks about being a med student.... no time or money.

I also need to get it out of my head that weekends are when it's time to clean. That's always how it was when I was growing up, so I think it's embedded in my brain. But it makes for a messy, dirty little apartment here, because if I get busy and don't clean the kitchen on the weekend, I'm like, "Dangit! Now I have to wait until next weekend!" Um, no. Cleaning is allowed on weeknights too, I promise. (Note me talking to myself. They say it's one of the first signs of insanity, and I do it all the time.)

Another thing. My dishwasher? SCARY! It's like a separate entity all by itself. Ignore the fact that it's loud.... many dishwashers are, no big deal..... it's still scary.
First thing: It doesn't turn off when you open the door. Like, if you start it and then realize you forgot to put in a pan? TOO LATE, the water cannot be stopped. The dishwasher never looks back, it is driven and one-track-minded. Creepy.
Second thing: It is angry and forceful. If I put lightweight plastic dishes in there, like plastic cups or tupperware containers, they end up all upside down and on the floor of the dishwasher and full of water, and very traumatized. My dishwasher is a bully, for sure.
Third thing: It is HUNGRY. I put my contact case in there, to get it good and clean? Opened up the dishwasher, and the contact case was gone. The dishwasher ate it. It did the same thing to the bolt that held on the handle of my saucepan lid. Yes people, my dishwasher managed to unscrew the bolt from the lid and eat it. Seriously, it's gone. The dishwasher scares me.

Hmm... I just said I don't have time to be all housewifely, but I look back and see that I've filled up three paragraphs with RAMBLING ABOUT HOUSECLEANING. I need to not be so lame. I need to lead an exciting and eventful life that I can look back on and smile and tell thrilling stories to my grandchildren.

But first, I'm going grocery shopping.

--By Emily Muller, a MS1 who knows lots of things about science.

The year 2000 is so retro

The year was 2000. Not so long ago for VH1 to do a variety special on the year, but long enough to be just a little retro. I was sixteen years old. It was the new millennium when we were just a little terrified that the world might come to an end and/or we couldn’t program our VCRs properly. I personally was more afraid of what Conan O’Brien would do with his “In the year 2000 sketch” after the year 2000. NSYNC was at the top of the charts with their first album – girls everywhere swooned, as boys everywhere rolled their eyes. But there was another hit song that year, which brings us to the story at hand. Who let the Dogs out by the baha men was all over the summer charts. (By the way, the baha men won a Grammy that year, a f*ing GRAMMY, for this song)

On weekends, my friends and I would often have a sleep over in the basement. We were all fast asleep on the floor the next morning after watching several movies and insomniac music videos. My mom came over the house intercom, and the loud beeping jarred us awake. My dog, Pepper, had trapped himself in the garage and started barking. She beeped the intercom precisely three times, echoing pepper’s barking. The she said in a falsely deep voice, with her adorable accent, “who is going to let the dogs out?” echoing the baha men. Three more beeps, and then she said again, “who is going to let the dogs out?” The answer to this question was me; I was going to let the dog out. We all started laughing, and my mom was established as the chillest mom in the world.

-- by Farrah, a native of Colorado

A Short and Trashy Romance

This story is crap, so I deleted it. I'm just keeping the space to host this photo, lame of me, I know.

--By Farrah, a native of Colorado