This Ain't My First Rodeo

Tonight my wife asked me to do something unusual. Very personal. Something intimate. I happily agreed to do it. I'm going to be bold and tell you about it. But first, let's go back to my hippie days, to explain why I was willing.

I had dropped out of college (and life in general as most of you know it) for a couple of quarters. But I still lived in a dorm and used the university's labs and computers. A couple of friends and I had found ways into various buildings to use terminals that were sitting idle nights and weekends. We programmed, learned, played games and chatted. I learned as much about software on my own as I did in some of my classes.

One of the EE building's glass doors was never locked properly. The bolt at the top would engage, but not fully, and the bottom bolt wouldn't engage at all. A good hard yank would flex the door and it would open.

It was a comfortable, if gray, Sunday afternoon about four o'clock. The only person around was a little, old lady walking her dog. I yanked on the door. It flexed as usual... but didn't open. I yanked again. No dice.

"Miles, maybe you shouldn't..."

"No problem." I yanked a lot harder. The door flexed. The glass got angry. "You won't like me when I'm angry."

The glass shattered. It was right. I didn't like it angry.

A large piece of glass, about 3/8" thick and more than a foot square was falling straight toward my left foot. My arm spazzed and ran interference. The glass deflected, leaving a ragged, two and a half inch gash in my arm. It (the glass) shattered gloriously and beautifully in the dull light, showering my bare toes with shards. Somehow they remained unscathed. But bright red drops fell from my arm.

As silence followed in the wake of the glass explosions, an old woman's voice shrieked a sing song, up and down pattern. "You broke the glay-ass! You broke the glay-ass!"

"Yes, ma'am, I know." I held out my bleeding arm. "We're going to the doctor, OK?"

"You broke the glay-ass! You broke the glay-ass!" Her small, beautifully coiffed poodle began barking a furious counterpoint. It was a rather nice polyrhythm but I wasn't properly appreciative at the time.

I shrugged and we began the two or three block trek toward the infirmary, me trying to stop the bleeding, one friend helpfully reminding me they told me not to yank on the door, another talking about the crazy old lady, the third joining in her refrain (possibly quoting the dog as well, but I don't recall). As we turned the corner a block away, the woman was still rooted to her spot, stuck in an infinite loop. Thankfully the sound fading with distance and obstacles.

While I had my old, student ID, I didn't have a currently stamped fee card for some reason I'm sure was unrelated to the fact I wasn't actually in school that quarter. At the infirmary the nurse at the desk explained that they couldn't help me without that card. But another nurse overrode her and let me see the doctor.

He had a lovely, cultured, London accent; he was "doing an across the pond residency exchange". I got two stitches, a roll of gauze, and a pressure bandage. He didn't press for details; I got the impression from things he said he might have some escapades in his past. In any event, he told me to come back after 10 days (or something like that) so he could check the stitches.

I was meticulous about cleaning the wound and applying antibiotic. I went through plenty of gauze and wrapped my arm in the pressure bandage to keep the seam immobile. It healed up nicely. When I went back, only the nurse who'd been overridden was on duty. She refused (properly, which I recognized even then) to let me see the doctor. But the same doctor was on duty, and he overheard. He called from the other room.

"What seems to be the problem?"

"It's the boy who cut his arm. He still doesn't have his fee card. I told him he has to produce one or leave."

"Oh, quite right! We can't have that. But it's too bad, because I'd love to have seen how it healed. But he needs to go to [the local charity hospital]. Or if it looks really good, I'd have told him he could always just take the sutures out himself. If I could see him. But of course, without a fee card, I can't."

I thanked the (somewhat irritated) nurse, said I understood she was just doing her job, and left. As I walked past a window, the doctor waved and smiled.

Back at the dorm, we pooled our resources. We had no hemostats. The only sharp knife we could find was my Bowie knife-- a bit large and unwieldy for the task. We had no scissors. We had needle nose pliers. We had fingernail clippers.

Since the wound was on my forearm, I couldn't wield both pliers and the clippers. My friends, it turned out, were a bit too squeamish to help. If you've ever looked at properly done sutures (these were beautiful) they're small and tight. There's not a lot to work with, and they're snug against the skin. At the same time, they do flex when you push against them... including down into the skin.

It took a half hour, working one handed with only a pair of nail clippers, but I finally got those sutures out! Without tearing the nicely knit skin. Without any new cuts. A little alcohol, a little antibiotic, a little gauze and a pressure bandage, and I was home free. Thank you, British doctor!

...

Fast forward to this evening. My wife had six sutures in her arm. (Her cuts did not involved breaking and entering. She exercised her constitutional right to have a highly trained doctor slice her open and sew her up.)

This time we had tweezers and small, sharp scissors. Only a couple of the sutures offered any real resistance, and I had them all out in well under ten minutes.

I'm still not a pro; I don't get paid for suture removal. (I did get a kiss, but I get those even when I'm not pulling unnatural substances from her epidermis). I'm not even ready for Synchronized Suture Removal at the Olympic games in two weeks. But I do feel all medical and stuff. And I am pretty sure if you need thread cut and pulled from your epidermis that I can accept payment in small quantities of chocolate without triggering a "tax event".

So, for all your suture removal needs, contact me. For the right endorsements-- or sponsorship to the Olympics-- I'll even waive the chocolate.

Old Dog, New Trick

Did you ever wonder if you really can teach an old dog a new trick? It turns out you can. It works with people, too.

For instance, tonight taught me that putting coffee beans in the basket and trying to make coffee only makes slightly brown water, and turns the beans too soggy to use.

I love munching on coffee beans. Not these; they have the consistency of rubber. Yuck. Note to self: "Don't forget the grinder!"

Distractions and coffee making when you need coffee don't tend to mix.

Mom's Disease - Humor

Mom had this disease, a speech impediment which caused her to say hysterical, dumb, or embarrassing things. She explained it this way: "My tongue gets wrapped around my eye teeth, and I can't see what I'm saying."

A lot of things she said cracked us up, worried us, or embarrassed us. Sometimes all at once. I doubt most of them were original, but the way she used them, they were hers. Even during my teenage years, after I'd heard them all a thousand times, they would still crack me up. Even in front of my friends.

My brother, Bill, recalls, (you'll have to ask him how fondly) her saying, "I brought you into this world and I can take you out." I don't recall her saying that to me. Draw from this what you will.

Most double mastectomy breast cancer survivors don't tend to make a lot of jokes about it. Bill reminded me that Mom did.

"I was standing in a group (at Publix) showing off some new meatballs and my boob dropped onto the floor."
("Who else could say that with a straight face?" -Bill)
He forgot to mention the second part. "As I bent over to pick it up, apologizing to the embarrassed man in front of me, the other one fell out!"

The one that always made me nervous was the one she used if she owed me something, such as if she were a couple of bucks short at the grocery store and borrowed it from me.

"Mom, may I have my two dollars?"
"What two dollars?"
"You borrowed it from me a couple of days ago at Safeway, remember?"
"Don't worry. I'll owe you til I die before I'll cheat you out of it." "..."

Even when it made me nervous, the way she said it, so innocently, so sincerely, so tauntingly (all at once), usually made me smile.

She would have done well on stage.

Dad has a great sense of humor as well, but Mom articulated hers a lot more. We kids all ended up with it. When our self described "Evil stepmother" (who I lovingly call Mom now that Mom #1 is gone)-- a wonderful counselor and hospice manager-- called us together to help us prepare for Mom's death (her 412th (whatever) bout with cancer was finally claiming her physical life), it rapidly degenerated into a joke fest, discussing things such as bronzing Mom and standing her up over her grave, and what her pose should be (picking up her rubber boob after it fell out?). Wink just stared at us at first, then relaxed. We might not cope normally, but we'd cope.

And we have.

As I finished writing this, I realized that Mom kept her promise. Over my childhood and teenage years she probably borrowed $20 - $30 ($50 to $100 in today's money) from me. She owed me til she died, but she never cheated me out of it.

Paging Mr. Roadkill

(I wrote this Nov 11 of last year. It's been lurking ever since, but I found it just now, peeping through the disk drive.)

A while back at a restaurant, I ate spicy, Italian food and, shall we say, made the bench seat vibrate. My niece said, "I think your pager's going off."

"I don't have a pager."

She and my daughter looked at each other. Realization dawned. They both jumped up, making faces. "Eewwwww!"

Tonight, at Chuys (Tex-Mex) my pager went off a *lot*.

I still don't have a pager.

Hi, Ashley and Shaunda!

Who Needs Drugs?

On occasion, I'm asked why I don't drink. Once in a while, I get asked whether I do drugs. Although it's typically more like, "Really? You don't do drugs? Then how are you so weird?"

It's simple. My mind naturally produces controlled substances.

The DEA routinely kicks in the door to my skull, runs in wearing black masks and with guns drawn, seizes my brain, takes it to an open field, and burns it. Then they have to collect all the animals that breathed the fumes and sequester them in the hopes they'll return to normal. Apparently a rooster who thinks he can fly an airplane or cow who thinks she can produce technicolor milk (and especially one that does these things) is a threat to national security. Livestock that don't return to normal eventually end up in politics.

Which explains why so many of our federal legislators have absolutely no clue what the Constitution says. They're hallucinating.

So there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth.

And don't forget, horses are livestock, too. If you see one repairing flats off I20 in west Texas, wave. That's Uncle Jerry.

Veggie head

To this day, many people believe I was brought to Austin as part of the "Keep Austin Weird" campaign. I'm OK with that.

But most of these same people express surprise when they meet my wife. "You're so normal," they say. "How did you end up with a weirdo like him?"

What they don't realize is that Sharon keeps up with me, and at times surpasses me. in weirdness. Just two days ago (this is all true) she went to the doctor and had a lima bean and a new potato removed from the back of her head. Really. That's what the doctor told her. A lima bean and a new potato. I didn't ask whether the doctor ate them. I don't want to know.

I also don't know how she had vegetables embedded in the back of her head that required doctor's office surgery to remove. Sharon claims she doesn't know, either.

This doesn't surprise me. Ask any parent whose child has required medical help to remove a bean from their nose or a wad of Play-Do[tm] from their ear canal. "Little Bobby has NO IDEA how that got in there."

You and I, of course, know full well how it got in there. Either little Bobby stuck it in there exploring, or a sibling did it out of sheer siblingtude.

Since my wife's siblings are all at least 900 miles away, I think we can rule the latter out. But she insists, and I have no reason not to believe her, that she didn't do it herself.

The only other explanation I can come up with involves the CIA and space aliens. Frankly, knowing my wife, that seems a lot more likely. She's always expressed more interesting in eating her vegetables than burying them under her skin.

Although, in today's economy, that might be the safest place to stash something for troubled times. Unless you fly somewhere. Then the TSA will know, and report you to the Department of Hoarding which will report you to the IRS, which will sneak in and cut half your rainy day food out of the back of your head, thus throwing off the CIA's inventory and causing friction with space aliens.

That's all we need, war with Alpha Centauri. With fuel prices as high as they are, the troops would get stranded half way there.

So, to avoid an interstellar disaster, please do not bury vegetables in the back of your head. The world as a whole thanks you, except for the parts to busy killing each other to care.

Occupare Die!

Occupy the Day!

Part of a facebook conversation at the end of high school winter break, 2012 ...

Michaela: Oh yeah, I do have to wake up and go to prison tomorrow. I was too busy being happy to think about such a terrible thing.

Me: Go transform school, girl!

Michaela: Yes Raul and friends, that IS the life. I can't tell the difference between our school and a factory. So, ya know... Haha Miles, always encouraging!

Me: I suppose I could be discouraging if you'd rather.

"Don't worry, Michaela, soon enough you'll walk out those prison doors, a free woman at last, only to be gutted by a very small UFO flown by a drunken, miniature Alpha Centauran. As you lay in agony, bleeding on the steps, one of the wardens will walk out, look down, and say, 'You forgot your backpack', and drop it. Right on your gut. A few minutes later, about the time you think you may be capable of moving a hand enough to grope for your cell phone, a kitchen guard will walk out, look down, and say, 'You didn't eat your last lunch room Jello'", and drop it. Right onto the hole in your gut. As a swarm of ants hurl themselves futilely against the 'lime' flavored jello (which appears to be 87 years old) you'll realize that you forgot to turn in your final final, which is most likely inside your backpack, now coated with blood, 'lime' flavored Jello, and furious ants. At this point, a small UFO will land beside your head and an interstellar cop will crawl out (looking for all the world like an over-sized ant in a blue uniform), look up, and say, 'You'll be happy to know we caught the bum who gored you, but not as happy to know that he was uninsured, and the judge let him off because he had diplomatic immunity. Good day. Say, mind if I have some of that "lime" flavored Jello?'"

Is that better?