I have nothing but sympathy for those who suffer from severe headaches.
During my first year in university, I was randomly assigned to a roommate. We shared a dormitory room that was approximately 4m x 3m.
Turned out that my roommate, Tony from Long Island, NY, suffered from severe migraine headaches. Tony never knew what brought them on, but on the basis of empirical evidence we narrowed it down to two main culprits. One was any bright, sunlit day that followed several cloudy days; the only window in this dorm room faced the setting sun. The second was peanut butter, which was ubiquitious in the dormitory dining room. Peanut butter was served along side ketchup, mustard, salt, pepper, etc.: it was a standard-issue condiment in dormitory life.
I don’t know how many times I saw Tony do this. Late in the afternoon, he would show up suddenly, dragging behind him the commons-room trash bin, one of those blue 30-gal. plastic things that in a pinch served as a perfect pony-keg 'n ice container. The drill was for me to get the hell out as he pulled the heavy blue drapes (his parents bought them for us) shut and, after dragging the blue trash bin right up next to his bed, lay down to die.
Then he lay there moaning and barfing as necessary, for up to 24 hours at a time (usually no more than eight). The poor bastard.
At the end of my second semester, my GPA was in the high twos. Tony had nothing to do with that fiasco, though. My low GPA was rather due to my inept first business venture. Another friend, a Japanese-American from Biloxi, Mississippi, and I bought two sheets of windowpane acid at $110/100 panes/sheet - a great buy. We should have made a fortune. Two weeks later, after selling like six hits, we ran an intense closing inventory and to our abject disinterest discovered the count was, like, ten hits remaining. I concluded that certain inventory consumptions were not conducive to longer term memory.
Christ, what a rotten deal migraines must be.
