The first is a recent event and is included with two other pieces written a very long while ago. The second part of the last one….no one has read until now. It was my own aide memoire of a time…with a green field. I hope you enjoy all of them for that was my intent.
ME AND THE MACHINE PLUS ANOTHER
“Yep, you should have more feeling, least 60%. Better go back in, look around. Pull your shirt up, let me have a look.” As doctors, we don’t bother with appointments and examining rooms; We’re standing in a hall by OR 2 where’s he’s about to go in and gift an insurance company with the cost of a Laminectomy. “Yeah, better go back in. Got ‘em written?” I hand him a hard surface with my own scrawled notes in the proper places. He signs. He leaves. I go through a door mark “Staff Only” in pursuit of my fav, Barbara who can work miracles with scheduling. Find her.
“Jesus, your writing is worse than his…let me think…Uh…” She whips out her note pad, looks it over…”Tomorrow, noon, I can squeeze you in. Ha.” It’s her own joke as what she’s going to squeeze me in is an MRI.
It’s just me, the tech and the MRI looking like an ad for bagels. “You know the drill, strip, skivvies and your socks.”
I’m ahead of her. Long, long ago I learned that if you wore almost any kind of underwear, there was every chance, as you were rolled into the guts of the machine, it would peel them from you and, insensitive brute, would not roll them back up as you exited. Thing is they insist on your wearing something-I once suggested a studded condom but that got nixed-so Hanes socks and an old fashioned jock, the sort that has BIKE across the waist band. Having been read the mandatory ‘information’ about the study we’re about to do, I’m laid out on the movable table, given ear plugs and, a good touch, the sides of my arms are wrapped in cloth to prevent the hair or skin from dragging on the inside of the tube. Fine, off I go.
I’m a pro at MRIs, just how many I’ve had….. just say lots and let it go. However, this series is very specific and requires that the movable table be shunted back and forth many times to get the images desired. Okay, through all three series, then out. Now we’ll do the contrast series which means a tourniquet is wrapped around my bicep, I squeeze my fist, the dye is injected and it’s time to go back in. Now, I’m aware that there’s a burgeoning problem but…to eliminate it, I’d have to move and we can’t have that. Back in.
Forward, backward, in, out, in out, out in…and the tech’s voice…’Doctor, uh, we’re getting a flooded image…are you moving?” No, I’m not moving, I’m contorting as their stupid machine trapped my cock under the elastic waist band and, given the ins and out, I got an erection and what follows that? Lets not always see the same hands. Yep, I ejaculated, came, popped the cork, blew a big one…inside the MRI. I know what’s, uhm, coming, which is I can feel the table moving out so she can inspect me to see…well, we know what she’s going to see. Am I embarrassed? Not really, looked at from one aspect, it’s funny; I’ve just been beaten off by the most expensive sex toy ever constructed.
She and I are veeery calm, no mention of what, specifically the problem may have been…only the problem of…who brings a change out set of underwear for an MRI exam? I’m handed a surgical gown, some paper booties to cover my socks and allowed to leave the room in search of…something. Fortunately, this is all in a hospital so I head for the Physicians locker room feeling, after the laughter dies down, the problem will be solved. And it is. First guy I run into is Tony Yu, hand specialist from Japan. Yes, he laughs then does something that is wickedly clever. Finding a long roll of four inch gauze he begins to wrap me in an approximation of a very popular form of male underwear in Japan, a Fundoshi. It’s an interesting look and I toss the cum encrusted jock in Physicians Laundry, usually meant for scrubs et al and go back to the MRI room.
Not a word is said but we smile at each other a lot. Because of the time break, I need to be re-injected, fine, arms wrapped, fine and back into the machine. Tony, knowing the problem has me wrapped so that the only bump one could see would be if there were a clump of hair. If I’d had been nullified, I couldn’t have been flatter.
Test over, I return to the room with the locker, get dressed, go commando if you don’t count the Fundoshi which, considering it’s coming unraveled, I don’t.
I’m expecting a call today from someone in the Doc’s office to schedule an appointment with him. If there is one peep, one chortle, one muffled titter, I swear, when I see him, I’ll pop him one in his nuts and offer to bring charges of gross sexual conduct against the machine; Everyone is suing everyone over sexual whatever, I’ll bet I’d be the first to drag a thirty ton machine into court.
ZEN AND THE ART OF LAWN MOWER MAINTENANCE\
Spring/Summer and the sound of the lawn mower is once again heard in suburbia. In some places, its been hauled out almost as tribute to the lawns and gardens that committed suicide in the heat of the past summer. Some actually find a fair stand of weeds to even out and, some, just contemplate the formerly green, green grass of home that’s now the dead, dead grass of home. And the forecast for a nine month summer isn’t encouraging. Still, the hopeful buy bags of seed and fertilizer, aerate the hoped for greensward and stand back to admire their handiwork. Which looks like a dead lawn with holes in it.
Elsewhere, those who abandoned hope for the lawn have fired up the barbecue to prove, to each other, that each is a meat man par excellence. As carcinogen laden smoke drifts lazily over children playing with dead things in the garden, meat is hauled out. Some has been rubbed with a “special” dry rub, some has been plunked in a bed of sea salt for a couple of days, some have been “hung” although where and to what purpose isn’t revealed. And there’s a reason for all that. I’m told that everyone has a “secret” recipe/process/marinade that isn’t to be shared but theirs is “the best”. I’m told that about fifty times and, quite possibly, one of them well may be correct but my taste buds are still recovering from some of the more exotic things done to a simple, good steak and so the verdict is out.
Then there’s the delicate, arcane art of “starting the fire”. Naturally, none of these Chefs d’meat Cuisine would stoop to using something so commercial as tinned fire starter so there begins a test of will and patience to produce fire, every man his own Prometheus. Of course, these early efforts produce nothing but a collection of dead matches scattered on charcoal-or wood chips depending on the Chef’s preference. It would seem unkind, even rude, to tell them that given a section from the Wall Street Journal some twigs and graduated sized logs and one match I can get a fire going in about five minutes but that would depress them and they’re already in need of anti-depressants as it is. But there has been dirty work at the cross roads, It seems that every “Chef” just happens to have a bottle/can/container of fire starter they “found” in the garage. In the back of a sack with ACE written on it. Of course some of the cheaper sorts simply siphon a quart or two of gas from someone’s car/SUV/Truck and dump it in the pit filled with wood or something combustible. Add one lit match and the space station, looking down, wonders if they should ring 911 or if a new volcano has just emerged outside Cleveland. However, apart from some singed fur and a terrible loss of outer clothing, the game is on, the meat is produced and the cooking begins.
Over the many years I’ve been privileged (?) to attend some of these, I don’t know, parties/get togethers/ barbecue (How the meat is killed and cooked, it’s always called a “barbecue”.). Some years ago I learned to not accept their kind (?) invitations as my lungs couldn’t take it. Also, the invitations dropped off after I revealed that my favourite thing to prepare at a Brai (South African Barbecue) was Kudu. In the past I even ate some of the burnt offerings out of a sense of being a good guest but as the meat hauled by my esophagus to roughly the depth of my ascending colon I took to feigning an allergy to whatever I could think of. Allergies to things, among men, is like the proverbial “bad back” among men. Hours can be spend exchanging tales of how they “pulled a muscle”, “ sprung a tendon” or ricked a vertebrae starting the lawn mower/the weed eater/the mulcher or the edger. So, now, I wish them well, offer to “help in any way I can” and don’t go.
All of that was fine and dandy but now I’ve a son and he wants to be part of whatever seems to be going on around here. Jason has come as something as a surprize to suburbia. Friendly as a puppy, with the mouth of a sailor, and knowledge they don’t even need to know exists, I’m trying to tone him down and if not ease him into polite society, then see to it that he has some places to go beyond home. Thus far we’ve only had one outdoor event which he attended and the reviews are…mixed. We were doing well enough until some of the “young married men” decided to have a water fight in the back yard. Before I could grab him and insist he keep his shirt on, it was off and, in rather large letters, “100% White Boy” could be seen arching over his belly. Some of the others are really more inflammatory if you know your gang parlance-and I’ve learned it-but the one mentioned was the one that stopped their clocks. Also, their concept of “rough housing and his idea of rough housing vary by about a misdemeanor on a slow afternoon and a felonious assault on another. We left early.
HIND SIGHT IS 20/40
I wrote the above before the tornado came through and, rereading it, it seems almost a return to the Eisenhower years, Kennedy horse play and Johnson holding up two dogs by their ears. Now I’ve got a plague of contractors-a plague regrettably overlooked in the Bible-all wanting to do things around the place. I know I need a new roof and no search parties went out seeking selected sections of fence. Also, until some heavy equipment can get through the (missing) gate to the back yard and haul away trees I’ll just have to assume what might be there, certainly that’s what the landscape architect did. Luckily, my best friend knows about grades of wood, what should produce a good roof and, in general, stands as my moat between me and those who would confuse me. Which leads me to my kid. At some point in what now seems a very long time ago, I dimly remember his telling me he wanted to play baseball. Now I love him but that love does not blind me to certain facts about his past and one of those is….no way in hell that kid ever played baseball. To test that theory I brought up the New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox and the Kansas City Royals. Only on the latter was there a flicker of interest but his comment revealed something else. He thought he’d knocked over a jewelry store by that name on the Plaza in Kansas City. So what with one thing and a tornado I forgot about it. Until yesterday.
I was working, was aware that a person or persons were in the kitchen. Normal, lots of people are in and out of the kitchen. But the next sentence revealed a new, darker train of thought. What I heard was, “Well, $%^&*, now I’ve got my )(*&^% shoes stuck in the SDR%^&UIJM< floor.” And there was an answering voice, “Well you little $%^ I told you not to wear your cleats in the house. Just step out of them and we’ll pull them out later. The kitchen floor is being replaced so you just caught a %^&U* break”. It was my child and his Godfather returned from wherever. A small philosophy of dread overtook me. Jason, bouncy as always, came in fully dressed in what was either a baseball uniform or his Halloween costume. I feared it was the former and I was right. From his double stockinged feet to the ball cap with the mandatory silvered “Oakleys” on top of the brim, I was viewing one ball player. That he’d never played, at least to my certain knowledge, made no difference. Simultaneously I made a mental note to check my Amex bill just to see where all this paraphernalia came from and what it had cost. But, worse news, the man I would have trusted to not go out to the old ball game, his Godfather Steve, came in similarly attired. His opening sentence left me rigid with fright.
“We found a church league to play in.” Was there no half way house trying to get up a team? Weren’t the police in conjunction with Parole Officers trying to find a social experience for their charges? How the $%^ did they find a church league and, I dreaded asking, which church? Just not the Episcopal church although forming baseball teams isn’t what I associate them with as doing for recreational projects. A dance at the club, A week on houseboats at some lake, a weekend at a Chief’s game but not this. And it wasn’t. No, they’d found something like the Sons and Daughters of I will Arise Baptist, a mega church where everyone smiled and, according to their advertisements on television, everyone was welcome. A policy I felt would soon change. On the plus side, I risked no chance of excommunication.
Trying to be the “father” I asked what I believed was a question that reflected paternal interest. “What positions do each of you play?” There was a certain silence followed by a Niagara of verbiage that indicated that the exact positions had yet to be assigned. “Coach” would do that at a meeting this Saturday. Right after a prayer breakfast. To which I was invited. To which I would not go. I had no idea who this “coach” may be but I could with stunning accuracy predict what would happen. It was quite possible that there were actual players who had played, knew the rules of the game and had played last summer, perhaps even for several summers. Now is one of those moments when you don’t want to break your kid’s heart but you don’t want them to walk into a loaded situation that won’t end happily. I vamped for time. And I had noticed something. “Jason, are you going out for baseball or did you plan on playing goalie for a hockey team?” “Huh?”
“To put it bluntly, what have shoved down your pants? Part of my coffee service?”
Steve had an explanation…of sorts, “Hey, bro all the guys are getting over sized cups, it’s just what they’re doing….” But his heart and mouth weren’t in it. “Whatever, but you are not going out of this house looking deformed, go to your room and take whatever it is out. I want you to look like a nice guy going out to play ball and have fun not as if you were standing at stud.” He left. “You too”. “Hey, mine’s real, we take showers together at the club, remember.” “Never the less, you can drop down a size or two. You’re not young and this isn’t your fad. Go”.
I will grant you that mine is not the typical situation with a kid who wants to do something he’s really not equipped to do. But in writing that, I think of all the other fathers who face my exact problem, we don’t want our children to fail and yet we do not want them to enter something that could damage their egos and their psyches. Sure, they all have to start somewhere, learn the game or the sport, but to thrust them into the too advanced world of making them believe they can do it when they cannot is unfortunate. When our children come to us, they expect, and should get, our enthusiasm for what they want to do and our support in what they do. But they also deserve the wise counsel we’re supposed to have even if we ourselves are not always sure we have it. It’s a case by case evaluation and, God help us, most of the time we don’t even know the rules, the only standard we can use is our love for our children and hope that it’s sufficient to whatever may happen.
These were two pieces, one about barbecue and one about my son, here shown as one under the ‘Lawnmower’ title were written more than a fifteen years ago before my child and his Godfather were killed by a drunk driver. I still love both of them…they are as real and standing somewhere near me as they were when they said, and I believed them, that, sure, they knew how to fix a toilet…..I was 62, now I’m 77 but I’m lucky to have had the few years with him, puzzling tho they often were. Salvador Dali painted a picture called ‘The Persistence of Memory’…I believe he realized it correctly. PJ
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