I haven't posted for quite awhile, and I've missed it a bit. Hopefully, this will be the start of me getting back on track with blogging. I should warn you, however, that it's a bit of a departure, as it's more sentimental than humorous. You've been warned!
This past weekend, the Thomas family lost one of their own. The smallest member of the family, he was a lovely golden orange, with a beautiful flowing tail that trailed behind him impressively as he swam about in his fish tank. My son had been absolutely bewitched by him since the moment we acquired a medium-size fish tank and its two occupants a year or so ago. The larger of the two was dark in color--nearly black, in fact, with orange highlights--and had bulging eyes; this one, Owen named Donkey Kong. The smaller of the two fish was his favorite, probably because of his brilliant color and his light-colored eyes, which made him appear more expressive. Owen named him Togepi, after his favorite Pokemon, that particular cultural phenomenon being his obsession of the moment. The boy delighted in watching his fish swim around in their tank, and took his responsibility for feeding them very seriously, carefully feeding them precise amounts at appropriate intervals. He would frequently stand on a little stool, with his face quite close to the glass, so he could tell Togepi what a good fish he was, and he would expound upon the many virtues of his fishy friend to family and guests alike. You can imagine, therefore, the dismay with which my wife and I noticed late last week that Togepi was not doing well. He began laying on his back on the floor of the fish tank, and by Friday evening, his movements had become quite sluggish. By late Saturday, he had slipped this mortal coil, leaving his remains resting in the colored pebbles on the floor of his watery home. After putting the children to bed that night, I removed Togepi from the tank, placing him in a small cardboard box on a bed made from an old, soft rag. I was surprised at the emotion stirred within me by this simple procedure; poor Togepi still looked so lifelike, and he was such a beautiful little creature. I was seeing him through my son's eyes, and feeling the faintest echo of the sorrow I knew the boy would be experiencing the next morning. I covered Togepi with his makeshift blanket and placed him in the fridge to preserve him. I was struck by the silliness of it--here was the body of a goldfish, sitting in a refrigerator mere inches from leftover fish nuggets which our entire family consumed on a regular basis with great enjoyment, and yet we would be mourning the passing of this one little morsel as though he were a member of the family. I guess the bottom line is that, to Owen, Togepi was not really a fish at all, but a friend.
Anyway, the next morning, after breakfast, I sat the boy down and broke the news to him. He took it bravely at first, but I could tell the reality of it wasn't registering with him. Then came the moment I had been dreading: I asked Owen if he wanted to say good-bye to Togepi. He nodded, smiling the same smile he uses when he has just lost a game but is trying to be a good sport. I had already removed the box from the fridge; pulling back the cover, I showed Owen the little body it contained. He waved to the fish, said "Bye-bye, Togepi," and burst into tears. After he had a good cry, we got dressed, and the boy, his sister, and I (mom was at work) had our little fish funeral. Owen helped me pick the spot in the back yard where we would bury Togepi, and helped me dig a small hole. When I had asked Owen if he wanted to give Togepi something special to bury with him, he had gravely presented me with a homemade card, which I tucked into the little
cardboard coffin. In the end, he couldn't bear to watch me bury his friend; instead, he shuffled over to his swingset a few feet away and draped himself over one of the swings, with his face averted, until it was over. No words were spoken, I simply placed the tiny casket in its tiny grave--feeling somehow silly and sad at the same time--and smoothed dirt and mulch over the hole so that it blended in with its surroundings. I held Owen quietly for awhile, then; he didn't cry, just put his face on my shoulder, until, in a burst of inspiration, I explained to him that, when a person dies, their friends will often go to someone's house or to a restaurant to share some food. I suggested that the three of us head over to Dairy Queen for Star-Kist ice cream pops (which I find disgusting, but the kids love them), at which point he perked up a bit. Sometime later, as we entered the Philomath Dairy Queen, he asked me, "Daddy, why do people go to restaurants when someone dies?" I explained to him that it gives people a chance to talk about the deceased and share their good memories of them. He took this information in silently. A bit later, with two of the five points of his Star-Kist pop consumed, he looked at me and asked, "Daddy, can we talk about Togepi now?" And so we did. It occurred to me then, as I told Owen, that Togepi must have been a very happy little fish, to have such a wonderful boy to look after him.
The fish tank seems kind of empty now, without Togepi. Donkey Kong seems lonely to me; we'll probably get him a new friend soon. I'm sure it will get easier every time we lose one, until eventually it's just no big deal anymore. That's part of life, I suppose, learning to cope with death, not getting too attached to one's pets, moving on. Still, I hope that part of Owen will always be the little boy who loved a fish.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Just a Spoonful of Cinnamon
Because most of my misadventures that I've chronicled so far in this blog occurred in that ancient epoch that I think of as my youth, the casual reader of these posts might think that, as my years have advanced, I no longer indulge in the kind of rash decision-making that has led me into situations like those I've described. Indeed, the arrival of a certain incredibill (incredible, even!) lady at the end of my twenties ushered in a new era of responsibility on my part. The subsequent arrival of an incrediboy and, even more recently, an incredibaby required still more maturity from their formerly dimwitted pop; nevertheless, there are still occasions when an apparently oxygen-starved portion of my brain seizes the reins. One such episode occurred on a recent trip to Phoenix.
Incidentally, did you know that it is apparently impossible to swallow a spoonful of cinnamon? I mean, literally, physically impossible. I know, I was skeptical, too, when my brother told me this little fact, but he assured me that he had seen numerous videos demonstrating the impossibility of actually swallowing a spoonful of cinnamon, although he was a bit coy with the details of the failures he had witnessed.
I'm sure anyone reading this has already figured out where this story is going. In my defense, I really was curious about the mechanics of swallowing a spoonful of cinnamon; I mean, what physical property of cinnamon could make it impossible to swallow in significant quantities? And also, I must admit that, deep down, I suspected that I had enough innate skill and physical grace to swallow any challenge. You know what I mean. Oh, and there was three matter of the three dollars. That's right, apparently three bucks is my price for putting my life on the line in the name of science.
Bear in mind that our respective wives and children were present, so I had quite an audience. My wife and sister-in-law, though shaking their heads over this silliness, were both more than a little curious about our little experiment, so neither protested too strongly. Both, however, stepped in on my behalf when my brother, in a fever of scientific zeal, initially produced a serving spoon laden with what must have been four tablespoons of cinnamon. Their intercession and the subsequent reduction of the sample size to a more moderate tablespoon of cinnamon probably saved my life that night. Or at least my esophagus.
My son, the oldest of the four children present, sensed that something was up, and was becoming a little anxious. Recognizing that I was perhaps engaging in a bit of irresponsible parenting, but feeling that I was in too deep to call it off, I opted for damage control in the hopes that I could avoid any serious emotional scarring. I advised all of the children present (although my brother's newborn couldn't have cared less) that they should never, ever do what they were about to see daddy do. With the absolute minimum of my parenting obligations thus satisfied, I steeled myself and shoveled a tablespoon of cinnamon into my mouth.
For a moment, as the spoonful of cinnamon sat on my tongue, all was well...then I swallowed. Now, the thing that makes swallowing cinnamon so difficult isn't that it's hot--it was certainly milder than any pepper you might consume at a Thai restaurant--or that it tastes gross (which it does). It's that the act of swallowing the cinnamon instantly turns it into a cloud. I tried manfully to contain the cloud inside my mouth for what seemed like several seconds (but was actually probably less than a millisecond), until it began going up my nose, at which point I coughed out a huge cloud of cinnamon. I then frantically ran to the sink and began frantically spitting the disgusting mess into the garbage disposal. At about this time, I became aware of the second problem with swallowing a spoonful of cinnamon. The fine powder that actually comes into contact with the moist surfaces inside of your mouth immediately turns into glue. As I frantically rinsed my mouth with glass after glass of disgusting Phoenix tap water, I found that a surprising amount of the insidious spice remained firmly pasted to my mouth. Particularly troublesome was the ring of grit that was clinging halfway down my throat; too far down to rinse out with water, too stuck to the moist surface of my esophagus for me to cough it up.
Of course, my son's concern had by this time escalated into full-blown anxiety, so between spitting and hacking gross brown sludge into the sink, I was delivering such nuggets of parental wisdom as, "Daddy's fine, he just did something very silly," and, "This is what happens when you do what Daddy just did." What a fine, shining example of fatherhood I am.
Anyway, eventually the ring of cinnamon-flavored mucilage in my gullet stimulated my gag reflex sufficiently that I began puking in earnest. I mean serious, projectile vomiting. And I had just eaten about a bowlful of guacamole for dinner. Fortunately, a couple of good blorks was sufficient to clear the last of the cinnamon goop from my throat, and to convert the other adults' laughter into concern (with a hint of disgust). I assured everyone that I was just fine, and we all had a good laugh.
And my brother gave me ten bucks.
--Incredibill
PS - If anyone wants to see what this looked like, just search "cinnamon challenge" on YouTube. There are some good videos of this phenomenon out there.
Incidentally, did you know that it is apparently impossible to swallow a spoonful of cinnamon? I mean, literally, physically impossible. I know, I was skeptical, too, when my brother told me this little fact, but he assured me that he had seen numerous videos demonstrating the impossibility of actually swallowing a spoonful of cinnamon, although he was a bit coy with the details of the failures he had witnessed.
I'm sure anyone reading this has already figured out where this story is going. In my defense, I really was curious about the mechanics of swallowing a spoonful of cinnamon; I mean, what physical property of cinnamon could make it impossible to swallow in significant quantities? And also, I must admit that, deep down, I suspected that I had enough innate skill and physical grace to swallow any challenge. You know what I mean. Oh, and there was three matter of the three dollars. That's right, apparently three bucks is my price for putting my life on the line in the name of science.
Bear in mind that our respective wives and children were present, so I had quite an audience. My wife and sister-in-law, though shaking their heads over this silliness, were both more than a little curious about our little experiment, so neither protested too strongly. Both, however, stepped in on my behalf when my brother, in a fever of scientific zeal, initially produced a serving spoon laden with what must have been four tablespoons of cinnamon. Their intercession and the subsequent reduction of the sample size to a more moderate tablespoon of cinnamon probably saved my life that night. Or at least my esophagus.
My son, the oldest of the four children present, sensed that something was up, and was becoming a little anxious. Recognizing that I was perhaps engaging in a bit of irresponsible parenting, but feeling that I was in too deep to call it off, I opted for damage control in the hopes that I could avoid any serious emotional scarring. I advised all of the children present (although my brother's newborn couldn't have cared less) that they should never, ever do what they were about to see daddy do. With the absolute minimum of my parenting obligations thus satisfied, I steeled myself and shoveled a tablespoon of cinnamon into my mouth.
For a moment, as the spoonful of cinnamon sat on my tongue, all was well...then I swallowed. Now, the thing that makes swallowing cinnamon so difficult isn't that it's hot--it was certainly milder than any pepper you might consume at a Thai restaurant--or that it tastes gross (which it does). It's that the act of swallowing the cinnamon instantly turns it into a cloud. I tried manfully to contain the cloud inside my mouth for what seemed like several seconds (but was actually probably less than a millisecond), until it began going up my nose, at which point I coughed out a huge cloud of cinnamon. I then frantically ran to the sink and began frantically spitting the disgusting mess into the garbage disposal. At about this time, I became aware of the second problem with swallowing a spoonful of cinnamon. The fine powder that actually comes into contact with the moist surfaces inside of your mouth immediately turns into glue. As I frantically rinsed my mouth with glass after glass of disgusting Phoenix tap water, I found that a surprising amount of the insidious spice remained firmly pasted to my mouth. Particularly troublesome was the ring of grit that was clinging halfway down my throat; too far down to rinse out with water, too stuck to the moist surface of my esophagus for me to cough it up.
Of course, my son's concern had by this time escalated into full-blown anxiety, so between spitting and hacking gross brown sludge into the sink, I was delivering such nuggets of parental wisdom as, "Daddy's fine, he just did something very silly," and, "This is what happens when you do what Daddy just did." What a fine, shining example of fatherhood I am.
Anyway, eventually the ring of cinnamon-flavored mucilage in my gullet stimulated my gag reflex sufficiently that I began puking in earnest. I mean serious, projectile vomiting. And I had just eaten about a bowlful of guacamole for dinner. Fortunately, a couple of good blorks was sufficient to clear the last of the cinnamon goop from my throat, and to convert the other adults' laughter into concern (with a hint of disgust). I assured everyone that I was just fine, and we all had a good laugh.
And my brother gave me ten bucks.
--Incredibill
PS - If anyone wants to see what this looked like, just search "cinnamon challenge" on YouTube. There are some good videos of this phenomenon out there.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
The Circle of Life
I had a couple of other ideas for my next post, but an occurrence from the last couple of days has brought to mind a truly bizarre experience from my childhood that I hope you will appreciate.
For the most part, I don't anticipate delving into my childhood for source material, primarily because I don't remember all that much of it. This is probably because there was nothing particularly remarkable about it; however, one event from an otherwise hazy time has always featured prominently in my memory, and I was recently reminded of it by, of all things, my son's trip to the local feed store.
It seems that in this particular feed store, they currently have a clutch of newly-hatched chicks; indeed, seeing these chicks is the reason my wife took the kids there in the first place. These cute little chicks caused quite a stir with the family and, in fact, even prompted some discussion about acquiring some chickens (guess who was the wet blanket in that conversation!). All this talk of chicks, however, took me all the way back to a certain spring day in 1977: disco was in its heyday, Gerald Ford was in the White House, and I was in kindergarten.
It was a rainy, dreary day. But something marvelous was about to occur: one of the little girls in my class (I no longer remember her name, although I can still picture her--dark hair, glasses, freckles) had brought in a chicken egg that was about to hatch. We would be witnessing the miracle of birth! We would actually get to see a baby chicken emerge from its shell and live!
Naturally, I missed it. I was doing arts or crafts or some such crap and the whole damned thing happened without me. No ringside seat to the wonders of new life for me, thank you very much. What I did not miss was the opposite of a miraculous birth, which happened almost immediately.
In the aftermath of life's greatest miracle--hell, right in the middle of it, actually--a heinous crime was committed. As it was related to me by the girl who had brought in the egg/chick (dammit, what was her name?!), one of our classmates, a boy named Jay (his name is indelibly burned into my memory!), had seized the chick, still a-borning, placed it in the doorway of our classroom, and slammed the heavy wooden door on its tiny neck in such a way that its head popped right off.
Its. Head. Popped. Right. Off.
Bear in mind that, as disturbing as this chain of events was, I had still not personally witnessed anything troubling. Yet. My young, fragile psyche was still unscarred. Hoping to remedy this, I quickly rushed to the scene of the crime.
Aside from having its head severed from its body, the chick was not what I had expected. I had pictured a fluffy puff of downy yellow feathers; instead, its still-damp feathers were plastered to its body (which had not yet completely emerged from the egg), giving it a scrawny, alien appearance. The kindergarten teacher had scooped up the mortal remains on a piece of white paper (we didn't have printer paper then, it was probably typewriter paper or mimeograph paper, and if you're too young to know what a mimeograph is, I hate you). The body, still half-in, half-out of the egg, lay a few inches away from the head, which had a little pool of blood around it. I remember being a little surprised at how small that pool of blood was. But mostly I remember how fascinated and horrified I was by the fact that the head was still alive.
Of course, it wasn't really alive, but the little beak was still opening and shutting silently; I could almost hear the ghost of the peeping sound it was trying to make. The beak would open grotesquely wide, then it would shut, then open again. And again. And again. Peep. Peep. Peep. There were only three of us children who had not already fled the scene in terror--all boys, of course.
I am fairly certain that my kindergarten teacher was completely discombobulated by the atrocity that had just been perpetrated so unexpectedly; that is the only way I can explain what happened next. She shoved the piece of paper, with its mangled occupant, into the hand of the boy standing next to me, and ordered the three of us to take the victim into the bathroom and flush it.
Our kindergarten class was in a shabby little outbuilding separated from the dungeon-like elementary school we attended, so we had our own little unisex bathroom connected to the classroom. Our strange little funeral procession--three six-year old pallbearers carrying a murdered chick on a piece of mimeograph paper (Google it!), no mourners--marched into the bathroom and right up to the toilet. Where we stood, staring, mesmerized, at the still-silently-peeping corpse we were supposed to flush. Peep. Peep. Peep. We still weren't convinced it was actually dead, so flushing it seemed wrong somehow. Peep. Peep. Peep.
I'm not sure how long we stood there before the teacher came in, wordlessly grabbed the paper, flung the whole mess into the toilet and flushed. Peep. The three of us stood, helplessly transfixed, as paper, body, and head all began circling, independently of each other. Peep. That head, that hideous, silent, peeping head continued to convulse, open and shut, open and shut. Peep. Peep. Peep. It just kept circling and peeping, circling and peeping.
This whole memory has a very surreal, dreamlike quality to it, even now. Some might think my traumatized little six-year-old brain imagined it, that disembodied head and its deathly-silent peeping on its circular journey around that watery vortex to the grave. Maybe. But I swear, I remember with absolute perfect clarity, that tiny head, its beak opening and shutting, peeping, peeping, peeping, all the way down, until it disappeared into the sewer.
I'll probably have nightmares about it tonight.
--Incredibill
For the most part, I don't anticipate delving into my childhood for source material, primarily because I don't remember all that much of it. This is probably because there was nothing particularly remarkable about it; however, one event from an otherwise hazy time has always featured prominently in my memory, and I was recently reminded of it by, of all things, my son's trip to the local feed store.
It seems that in this particular feed store, they currently have a clutch of newly-hatched chicks; indeed, seeing these chicks is the reason my wife took the kids there in the first place. These cute little chicks caused quite a stir with the family and, in fact, even prompted some discussion about acquiring some chickens (guess who was the wet blanket in that conversation!). All this talk of chicks, however, took me all the way back to a certain spring day in 1977: disco was in its heyday, Gerald Ford was in the White House, and I was in kindergarten.
It was a rainy, dreary day. But something marvelous was about to occur: one of the little girls in my class (I no longer remember her name, although I can still picture her--dark hair, glasses, freckles) had brought in a chicken egg that was about to hatch. We would be witnessing the miracle of birth! We would actually get to see a baby chicken emerge from its shell and live!
Naturally, I missed it. I was doing arts or crafts or some such crap and the whole damned thing happened without me. No ringside seat to the wonders of new life for me, thank you very much. What I did not miss was the opposite of a miraculous birth, which happened almost immediately.
In the aftermath of life's greatest miracle--hell, right in the middle of it, actually--a heinous crime was committed. As it was related to me by the girl who had brought in the egg/chick (dammit, what was her name?!), one of our classmates, a boy named Jay (his name is indelibly burned into my memory!), had seized the chick, still a-borning, placed it in the doorway of our classroom, and slammed the heavy wooden door on its tiny neck in such a way that its head popped right off.
Its. Head. Popped. Right. Off.
Bear in mind that, as disturbing as this chain of events was, I had still not personally witnessed anything troubling. Yet. My young, fragile psyche was still unscarred. Hoping to remedy this, I quickly rushed to the scene of the crime.
Aside from having its head severed from its body, the chick was not what I had expected. I had pictured a fluffy puff of downy yellow feathers; instead, its still-damp feathers were plastered to its body (which had not yet completely emerged from the egg), giving it a scrawny, alien appearance. The kindergarten teacher had scooped up the mortal remains on a piece of white paper (we didn't have printer paper then, it was probably typewriter paper or mimeograph paper, and if you're too young to know what a mimeograph is, I hate you). The body, still half-in, half-out of the egg, lay a few inches away from the head, which had a little pool of blood around it. I remember being a little surprised at how small that pool of blood was. But mostly I remember how fascinated and horrified I was by the fact that the head was still alive.
Of course, it wasn't really alive, but the little beak was still opening and shutting silently; I could almost hear the ghost of the peeping sound it was trying to make. The beak would open grotesquely wide, then it would shut, then open again. And again. And again. Peep. Peep. Peep. There were only three of us children who had not already fled the scene in terror--all boys, of course.
I am fairly certain that my kindergarten teacher was completely discombobulated by the atrocity that had just been perpetrated so unexpectedly; that is the only way I can explain what happened next. She shoved the piece of paper, with its mangled occupant, into the hand of the boy standing next to me, and ordered the three of us to take the victim into the bathroom and flush it.
Our kindergarten class was in a shabby little outbuilding separated from the dungeon-like elementary school we attended, so we had our own little unisex bathroom connected to the classroom. Our strange little funeral procession--three six-year old pallbearers carrying a murdered chick on a piece of mimeograph paper (Google it!), no mourners--marched into the bathroom and right up to the toilet. Where we stood, staring, mesmerized, at the still-silently-peeping corpse we were supposed to flush. Peep. Peep. Peep. We still weren't convinced it was actually dead, so flushing it seemed wrong somehow. Peep. Peep. Peep.
I'm not sure how long we stood there before the teacher came in, wordlessly grabbed the paper, flung the whole mess into the toilet and flushed. Peep. The three of us stood, helplessly transfixed, as paper, body, and head all began circling, independently of each other. Peep. That head, that hideous, silent, peeping head continued to convulse, open and shut, open and shut. Peep. Peep. Peep. It just kept circling and peeping, circling and peeping.
This whole memory has a very surreal, dreamlike quality to it, even now. Some might think my traumatized little six-year-old brain imagined it, that disembodied head and its deathly-silent peeping on its circular journey around that watery vortex to the grave. Maybe. But I swear, I remember with absolute perfect clarity, that tiny head, its beak opening and shutting, peeping, peeping, peeping, all the way down, until it disappeared into the sewer.
I'll probably have nightmares about it tonight.
--Incredibill
Sunday, March 6, 2011
No Gals in Nogales
I have decided that I need to intersperse my epic-length stories with a few of shorter length so that I might post a bit more frequently. With that in mind, this post will be comparatively brief; a bit of fluff, really, that I am including here primarily because I have a picture to accompany it. I thought this particular piece of damning evidence might be amusing to my good friend, Jeff K.; since he is responsible (or to blame) for
me starting this blog on the first place, I am including it as a reward (or punishment) especially for him. Jeff, no peeking at the picture until you've read the story (which you've probably already heard, anyway).
This is probably one of the few stories I have which occurred through no fault of my own. It was in the spring of 1995; I was a virile, 24-year-old stallion, as you will see in the accompanying photo. I was living in Phoenix at the time, and it happened that my parents and some relatives were converging on the retirement village in Tucson where my grandparents lived. I made the short trip to Tucson to stay for a few days, and since this particular part of my family was scattered across the country and rarely got together, we made the most of it by going on a number of family outings. One of these outings was to Biosphere 2. Biosphere 2, if you recall, was a highly-publicized science experiment that was supposed to simulate a space colony or something by being completely self-contained. The experiment bombed out in front of the whole world when it turned out that the scientists were sneaking out and smuggling food back in, if I recall correctly. Anyway, by the time we got there it was no longer sealed off and was sort of a research station/tourist attraction. It was interesting, but I only mention it here because this is where the picture was taken. Notice how interested I look.
Anyway, we followed up this excursion with a day trip to Nogales, Mexico. Believe it or not, despite living in Arizona for nearly a decade and a half, this is the only time I ever made it to Mexico. If you've ever been to Nogales, you know why. I don't remember much about the city, aside from the fact that it was (with all due respect to our neighbors to the south) an armpit. Nogales is the kind of place where you could easily imagine waking up in a dirty bathtub full of ice with one of your kidneys missing. That's a real thing, I swear. I had heard about it on the news, or something.
Anyway, aside from my dad and myself, all of our party were women, who were there for one thing: shopping. My aunts and cousin were particularly excited about the fact that you could haggle with the vendors; apparently, buying cheap tourist-y crap becomes an exhilarating adventure if you can have an uncomfortably intense semi-polite argument with a stranger first. So, while my parents preferred to stay near the more reputable-seeming shops, my female relatives wandered into a shadier-looking area where vendors were selling junk out of tents. I tagged along with them, figuring they would need me to protect them from kidney thieves and kidnappers who would sell them as sex slaves. This almost definitely saved their lives, as we did indeed encounter a very shady character (cue scary music).
This gentleman had seemed nice enough at first. He and my cousin haggled for several minutes--have I mentioned that I hate haggling? I can't even negotiate the price of a car. I have bought a car at a dealership by myself exactly two times at a dealership; on both occasions, when the salesman told me the price of the car/dungheap, my response was "Great! I'll take it!" I practically tipped them. They love people like me at car dealerships.
Anyway, my point is that I got really, really uncomfortable as the haggling dragged on and on and became less and less polite. Finally, my cousin ended the bargaining with something like "Fine, I really didn't want it anyway," and the three ladies walked away. I was feeling pretty bad for the guy at this point--after all, we were guests in his country, and I thought we had maybe treated him a bit rudely (does anyone else ever worry that people will think they're an "ugly American" when they're traveling internationally? I'm absolutely paranoid about it). So the vendor is standing there with a big fake smile on his face to hide his frustration, and as I walk by, trailing behind the three ladies, I smile politely at him to (hopefully) let him know we're not assholes, just hardcore shoppers; and suddenly, his smile went from fake to sneaky. This guy was a great sneaky smiler: the sneakiness of the smile was accentuated by his awesome 70's-porn-star mustache (standard issue south of the border), and it lit up his whole face with a sort of sneaky joy. He looked like one of those cartoon foxes that starts slobbering when it sees a fat, juicy chicken. Clearly, he had just spotted a "rube", and that rube was me. Those of you who have cheated and peeked at the picture already will know that this was completely unjustified; nevertheless, that was his assessment, and the reason for a slightly different sales pitch than what the ladies had heard from him:
"Psst! Hey, buddy! Wanna buy my sister?"
I know, it sounds like something from a bad 70's cop show, but that's actually what he said. I believe it is the only time in my life that someone has actually said to me, unironically, "Psst! Hey buddy!" However, I'm not really in a position to look down my nose, since I responded with an equally ludicrous "I beg your pardon?!" The whole thing was starting to sound like dialogue from a really cheesy TV movie.
The vendor/pimp was really grinning now: "Come on," he said, nodding toward his tent, "I'll sell you my sister. She's in the back."
Now, as naive as I may seem in this story, I was not completely brainless. I had no doubt that, wherever this gentleman's sister (if he had one) might be, it was far away from his seedy little tent and, if I were foolish enough to accompany him into "the back", one of three things would happen: a) best-case scenario--I would wake up later with a sore head and no wallet, no money, and no ID; b) worse-case scenario--I would wake up in a dirty bathtub full of ice with one of my kidneys missing; c) worst-case scenario--I wouldn't wake up. I was feeling particularly attached to my possessions, my kidneys, and my ability to keep converting oxygen into carbon dioxide that day, so I declined with a polite "No, thank you," (no ugly American here!) tucked my tail between my legs, and hustled my ass out of there, acutely aware of the fact that the would-be pimp was laughing his ass off at me.
Hey, I just realized that two of my three posts are about not having sex! I'm like the poster boy for abstinence education! I bet there's a Republican organization somewhere that would want to fund my blog. I'll research it and get back to you. Anyway, here's the picture of me from the aforementioned trip to Tucson:
PS: I just noticed that I seem to be playing a pretty intense game of pocket-pool in this picture! I assure you, however, that was not the case. Although it would explain my expression.
me starting this blog on the first place, I am including it as a reward (or punishment) especially for him. Jeff, no peeking at the picture until you've read the story (which you've probably already heard, anyway).
This is probably one of the few stories I have which occurred through no fault of my own. It was in the spring of 1995; I was a virile, 24-year-old stallion, as you will see in the accompanying photo. I was living in Phoenix at the time, and it happened that my parents and some relatives were converging on the retirement village in Tucson where my grandparents lived. I made the short trip to Tucson to stay for a few days, and since this particular part of my family was scattered across the country and rarely got together, we made the most of it by going on a number of family outings. One of these outings was to Biosphere 2. Biosphere 2, if you recall, was a highly-publicized science experiment that was supposed to simulate a space colony or something by being completely self-contained. The experiment bombed out in front of the whole world when it turned out that the scientists were sneaking out and smuggling food back in, if I recall correctly. Anyway, by the time we got there it was no longer sealed off and was sort of a research station/tourist attraction. It was interesting, but I only mention it here because this is where the picture was taken. Notice how interested I look.
Anyway, we followed up this excursion with a day trip to Nogales, Mexico. Believe it or not, despite living in Arizona for nearly a decade and a half, this is the only time I ever made it to Mexico. If you've ever been to Nogales, you know why. I don't remember much about the city, aside from the fact that it was (with all due respect to our neighbors to the south) an armpit. Nogales is the kind of place where you could easily imagine waking up in a dirty bathtub full of ice with one of your kidneys missing. That's a real thing, I swear. I had heard about it on the news, or something.
Anyway, aside from my dad and myself, all of our party were women, who were there for one thing: shopping. My aunts and cousin were particularly excited about the fact that you could haggle with the vendors; apparently, buying cheap tourist-y crap becomes an exhilarating adventure if you can have an uncomfortably intense semi-polite argument with a stranger first. So, while my parents preferred to stay near the more reputable-seeming shops, my female relatives wandered into a shadier-looking area where vendors were selling junk out of tents. I tagged along with them, figuring they would need me to protect them from kidney thieves and kidnappers who would sell them as sex slaves. This almost definitely saved their lives, as we did indeed encounter a very shady character (cue scary music).
This gentleman had seemed nice enough at first. He and my cousin haggled for several minutes--have I mentioned that I hate haggling? I can't even negotiate the price of a car. I have bought a car at a dealership by myself exactly two times at a dealership; on both occasions, when the salesman told me the price of the car/dungheap, my response was "Great! I'll take it!" I practically tipped them. They love people like me at car dealerships.
Anyway, my point is that I got really, really uncomfortable as the haggling dragged on and on and became less and less polite. Finally, my cousin ended the bargaining with something like "Fine, I really didn't want it anyway," and the three ladies walked away. I was feeling pretty bad for the guy at this point--after all, we were guests in his country, and I thought we had maybe treated him a bit rudely (does anyone else ever worry that people will think they're an "ugly American" when they're traveling internationally? I'm absolutely paranoid about it). So the vendor is standing there with a big fake smile on his face to hide his frustration, and as I walk by, trailing behind the three ladies, I smile politely at him to (hopefully) let him know we're not assholes, just hardcore shoppers; and suddenly, his smile went from fake to sneaky. This guy was a great sneaky smiler: the sneakiness of the smile was accentuated by his awesome 70's-porn-star mustache (standard issue south of the border), and it lit up his whole face with a sort of sneaky joy. He looked like one of those cartoon foxes that starts slobbering when it sees a fat, juicy chicken. Clearly, he had just spotted a "rube", and that rube was me. Those of you who have cheated and peeked at the picture already will know that this was completely unjustified; nevertheless, that was his assessment, and the reason for a slightly different sales pitch than what the ladies had heard from him:
"Psst! Hey, buddy! Wanna buy my sister?"
I know, it sounds like something from a bad 70's cop show, but that's actually what he said. I believe it is the only time in my life that someone has actually said to me, unironically, "Psst! Hey buddy!" However, I'm not really in a position to look down my nose, since I responded with an equally ludicrous "I beg your pardon?!" The whole thing was starting to sound like dialogue from a really cheesy TV movie.
The vendor/pimp was really grinning now: "Come on," he said, nodding toward his tent, "I'll sell you my sister. She's in the back."
Now, as naive as I may seem in this story, I was not completely brainless. I had no doubt that, wherever this gentleman's sister (if he had one) might be, it was far away from his seedy little tent and, if I were foolish enough to accompany him into "the back", one of three things would happen: a) best-case scenario--I would wake up later with a sore head and no wallet, no money, and no ID; b) worse-case scenario--I would wake up in a dirty bathtub full of ice with one of my kidneys missing; c) worst-case scenario--I wouldn't wake up. I was feeling particularly attached to my possessions, my kidneys, and my ability to keep converting oxygen into carbon dioxide that day, so I declined with a polite "No, thank you," (no ugly American here!) tucked my tail between my legs, and hustled my ass out of there, acutely aware of the fact that the would-be pimp was laughing his ass off at me.
Hey, I just realized that two of my three posts are about not having sex! I'm like the poster boy for abstinence education! I bet there's a Republican organization somewhere that would want to fund my blog. I'll research it and get back to you. Anyway, here's the picture of me from the aforementioned trip to Tucson:
Monday, February 14, 2011
There Will Be Blood
In my late teens, a series of not-so-great decisions had culminated with me not being in school, not having a job, and living in a tiny closet/apartment for which I still had to somehow pay rent. This was in the early 90's (1990 to be precise), and the economy was pretty much in the toilet, which meant that, as someone with a high school diploma and not much working experience, I was looking at a job in the fast food industry. Then someone turned me on to this company that was hiring security guards without any experience, and, well, you can figure out the rest.
Flash forward to later in the year. It was just weeks before my 20th birthday. I was a "security officer" (not a guard, thank you very much) for possibly the most half-assed security company in history. I was between regular gigs, and had gotten an assignment to fill in at a small hospital in Portland for a week while they found a replacement for the regular guard, whom the client had fired for sleeping on the job. This was particularly awkward, because it turned out nobody had told this guy that he had been fired for sleeping on the job. You can imagine how surprised he was when I showed up to do his job and, thinking that there had been a mix-up at the office and they had assigned two of us to fill in, I told him that I was there to fill in for the guy who had just been fired for sleeping on the job. I then got to stand around awkwardly while he called in and confirmed that, yes, he had been fired by the client for sleeping on the job. Since he had only been fired by the client, not the security company, he was still technically getting a paycheck, so he got the extra-humiliating task of training me on how to do the job he had just been fired from. It was an extremely awkward ten minutes.
Fortunately for me, this was a tiny little hospital where they practiced osteopathic medicine. I had no idea what that meant; apparently, I was not alone, because nobody seemed to go there. This made my job pretty easy. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that it was located in such a shitty neighborhood, I don't think they would have needed a guard at all. As it was, a couple of nurses on the night shift had been assaulted while walking to their cars after work, so my primary duty was just to walk nurses safely to their vehicles in the wee hours of the morning. Aside from this, I really only had two other things to occupy my time. One was setting up the salad bar in the hospital cafeteria for the night crew. I have no idea why the security guard was in charge of this, aside from the obvious fact that no one else wanted to do it, and I had plenty of time on my hands. The rest of my time was spent "patrolling," which, for the most part, meant just wandering around the hospital all night. This was about as exciting as you would imagine, but I was determined to do a good job. I wanted to get another assignment after the week was up and, after seeing how the last guy had been fired, I was too paranoid to even sit down for a minute.
It was a long week, but I made it through without incident. Until, of course, the very last night. Now, as anyone who has had this job will probably tell you, being a security guard is one of the most boring jobs imaginable. My own career as a "security officer" (such as it was) consisted of loooong periods of boredom, during which I wished for something--anything--to happen, punctuated by crazy incidents that made me wish more than anything for nothing to happen so I could just be bored again. All week, I had been waiting for something to happen at my tiny hospital; after all, I had heard crazy stories from other guards who had worked at some of the bigger hospitals. One of these guys had confided in me that he always brought an extra shirt to work with him because he always got so much blood on him during his shift. So I was a little disappointed, but mostly relieved, when nothing happened.
So the last night arrived, and I was training the guy who would be taking over from me. Since I hadn't been fired for sleeping on the job, he was getting the luxury of a full night of training. Shortly after 2 o'clock in the morning--not coincidentally, around the time the bars were closing--we were on patrol, checking the outlying doctors' offices to make sure nobody had broken into them looking for drugs. (I mentioned this was a really bad neighborhood, right?) My trainee and I had split up, for no reason I can think of that makes any sense, when my pager went off. This was a voice pager, so the beeping was followed by the sound of the receptionist's voice telling me what they needed. Unfortunately, the doctor's office I was checking out was situated right next to a 7-11, where a mammoth semi truck was backing up, so between the incredibly loud diesel engine and the piercing beeping of his I'm-backing-up-so-get-the-hell-out-of-my-way signal, I couldn't hear a damn thing she was saying. Since a page usually meant that a nurse was getting off duty and needed an escort to her car, I wasted a precious minute looking around for my trainee.
The beeper went off again. This time, there was no mistaking a frantic note in the receptionist's voice. That, and the fact that she was yelling, lit a fire under my ass and I took off running back to the emergency room. Despite the small size of the hospital, the doctors' offices were a pretty fair distance away, so I was running full tilt for a couple of minutes before I arrived, huffing and puffing, at the ER.
It was covered in blood. Well, okay, it was liberally splattered with blood, but in my anxious state it looked like the inside of a slaughterhouse. There were two guys facing off in the middle of the room. One of them, the nursing supervisor, who was sort of my on-site boss, was covered head-to-toe in blood. The other guy was a big, beefy dude with a greasy black mullet and matching mustache. He was wearing a dirty wife beater that showed off his meaty, tattoo-covered arms, one of which appeared to be the source of the blood that had turned the ER into a Jackson Pollack painting. A large chunk of meat was protruding from one of his forearms, no doubt completely ruining an otherwise perfectly good tattoo. He was in the process of swinging this arm around in such a way as to distribute the blood as evenly as possible over the various surfaces in the ER, possibly unaware that in doing so he was making them completely un-sterile.
When I walked in the room, everything stopped. Everyone looked at me expectantly. I could almost hear them thinking, Oh, good, the security guard's here. He'll make everything all right again. I'm sad to say I disappointed them almost immediately. I did not take charge. I did not wrestle the large, profusely bleeding man-bear to the ground and subdue him. I just froze.
I should mention here that it was not entirely my fault that I was completely unprepared for this situation. I was not an armed guard. I had no gun, no nightstick, no taser, no pepper spray. I had been assured, when I took a job with the aforementioned half-assed security company, that I would never, ever, have to subdue anyone, under any circumstances and, moreover, I was under the impression that I would get in trouble for doing so. During that interminable moment when I was standing there in the entrance to the ER, desperately wishing I were somewhere else, I flashed back to something I had been told during orientation.
"Orientation," such as it was, had lasted for one whole day, during which I was shown, along with the other trainees, two videos--one was on the importance of being courteous in the course of our duties, and the other was on the importance of properly filling out the appropriate paperwork (daily activity reports, incident reports, etc.) on a daily basis. During the part where we were being reassured that we would never be expected to engage in the kind of physical combat I was now anticipating, one of the trainees asked Al, our elderly trainer, what the hell we were supposed to do if we were attacked by an armed maniac. I have never forgotten Al's response.
"I probably shouldn't tell you this," he said, gravely, "but this--" he held up his cheap, ballpoint pen, "--can be a deadly weapon." I had a feeling, right then, that I was--if you'll pardon the expression--screwed. But I really needed the job. And that, my friends, represented the full extent of my preparation for my present predicament.
The situation, as I understand it, was that the tattooed side of beef in question had come into the ER with his unpleasant boo-boo and had subsequently spotted a girl that he knew sitting in one of those little curtained off sections that ERs have, where a doctor was stitching up her hands. Apparently, there was some bad blood between them, because he decided that his next course of action should be to kill her. Naturally, the ER staff objected, and had (so far) prevented him from killing anyone. Their strategy, it seemed, had been to have the nursing supervisor (who was a pretty big guy himself) stay between the would-be killer and his objective. I actually thought that this staying-between-the-psycho-and-the-girl strategy sounded way better than a fight-with-a-large-scary-man-and-get-killed maneuver, so I took up a position next to the nursing supervisor that also put me between the girl and our bloody friend, in the hopes that the real police would soon show up and save my ass.
It quickly became clear to me that our friend was on something. He was raving nonsensically about why he needed to kill the girl (he mentioned that he couldn't go home because she had stolen his home), and he was paranoid, refusing to let anyone patch up the hunk of meat that was hanging out of his arm because they were "trying to trick" him. Most telling of all, my presence seemed to intimidate him. Let me repeat that: the terrifying killer who outweighed me by at least 50 pounds and who could have probably pulled my arms and legs off and beaten me with them (hey, is that becoming a theme for me? I think I said that about a guy in my last post, too!) was intimidated by the skinny nineteen-year-old who was desperately trying not to piss himself. Fortunately for me, all he saw was a shiny badge (at least they gave me one of those), which his addled mind interpreted to mean I was, at least on some level, sort of a cop. He even, at one point, actually pointed at me and said to the nursing supervisor, "He's in charge." This probably would have made everyone laugh if things hadn't been so tense. Unfortunately, his respect for my authority did not keep him from taking a few more swipes at the nursing supervisor's outstretched arm, which said gentleman was using to keep him back, further soaking him with blood.
I'm pretty sure the cops were there in less than ten minutes, but of course it felt like hours to me. During this whole time, my trainee was still wandering around somewhere among the doctor's offices, unaware of what was transpiring in our blood-soaked emergency room. I was really wishing he would show up because, unlike me, he had a flashlight. I should mention that a lot of the guards that worked for our company got around the prohibition against weapons by carrying flashlights--the really long, heavy, Mag flashlights that are made of metal and could probably crush someone's skull if you tagged them with one. I was really kicking myself right then for not having one.
Of course, eventually, after everyone had acquired a few more layers of blood, the real police showed up, made our suddenly not-so-scary friend let someone patch up his arm, and took him off to jail. My trainee showed up at this point, far too late to render any kind of assistance, and I filled him in. The nursing supervisor, who by this time looked like Carrie after the prom, turned to me and said, "Why didn't you take him down?" To my credit, I did not laugh in his face and remind him that I was making only slightly more than minimum wage (about $4.75 an hour, if I recall correctly), and what the hell was I supposed to do, take him out with a ballpoint pen (I can imagine the confused look on his face after that one!). Instead, I just shrugged him off. I got a fair amount of snide comments from other nurses and doctors that were present, confirming the one useful thing I had actually learned from old Al: when things go wrong, the security guard will get the blame, so you'd better cover your ass.
I finished my shift, and left that little hospital for almost the last time. I would return for one night almost exactly one year to the date after this little incident...but that's another story.
PS - I looked it up on the internet, it looks like this hospital went bankrupt around 2000, was bought by Reed College in 2004, and torn down. See ya!
Flash forward to later in the year. It was just weeks before my 20th birthday. I was a "security officer" (not a guard, thank you very much) for possibly the most half-assed security company in history. I was between regular gigs, and had gotten an assignment to fill in at a small hospital in Portland for a week while they found a replacement for the regular guard, whom the client had fired for sleeping on the job. This was particularly awkward, because it turned out nobody had told this guy that he had been fired for sleeping on the job. You can imagine how surprised he was when I showed up to do his job and, thinking that there had been a mix-up at the office and they had assigned two of us to fill in, I told him that I was there to fill in for the guy who had just been fired for sleeping on the job. I then got to stand around awkwardly while he called in and confirmed that, yes, he had been fired by the client for sleeping on the job. Since he had only been fired by the client, not the security company, he was still technically getting a paycheck, so he got the extra-humiliating task of training me on how to do the job he had just been fired from. It was an extremely awkward ten minutes.
Fortunately for me, this was a tiny little hospital where they practiced osteopathic medicine. I had no idea what that meant; apparently, I was not alone, because nobody seemed to go there. This made my job pretty easy. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that it was located in such a shitty neighborhood, I don't think they would have needed a guard at all. As it was, a couple of nurses on the night shift had been assaulted while walking to their cars after work, so my primary duty was just to walk nurses safely to their vehicles in the wee hours of the morning. Aside from this, I really only had two other things to occupy my time. One was setting up the salad bar in the hospital cafeteria for the night crew. I have no idea why the security guard was in charge of this, aside from the obvious fact that no one else wanted to do it, and I had plenty of time on my hands. The rest of my time was spent "patrolling," which, for the most part, meant just wandering around the hospital all night. This was about as exciting as you would imagine, but I was determined to do a good job. I wanted to get another assignment after the week was up and, after seeing how the last guy had been fired, I was too paranoid to even sit down for a minute.
It was a long week, but I made it through without incident. Until, of course, the very last night. Now, as anyone who has had this job will probably tell you, being a security guard is one of the most boring jobs imaginable. My own career as a "security officer" (such as it was) consisted of loooong periods of boredom, during which I wished for something--anything--to happen, punctuated by crazy incidents that made me wish more than anything for nothing to happen so I could just be bored again. All week, I had been waiting for something to happen at my tiny hospital; after all, I had heard crazy stories from other guards who had worked at some of the bigger hospitals. One of these guys had confided in me that he always brought an extra shirt to work with him because he always got so much blood on him during his shift. So I was a little disappointed, but mostly relieved, when nothing happened.
So the last night arrived, and I was training the guy who would be taking over from me. Since I hadn't been fired for sleeping on the job, he was getting the luxury of a full night of training. Shortly after 2 o'clock in the morning--not coincidentally, around the time the bars were closing--we were on patrol, checking the outlying doctors' offices to make sure nobody had broken into them looking for drugs. (I mentioned this was a really bad neighborhood, right?) My trainee and I had split up, for no reason I can think of that makes any sense, when my pager went off. This was a voice pager, so the beeping was followed by the sound of the receptionist's voice telling me what they needed. Unfortunately, the doctor's office I was checking out was situated right next to a 7-11, where a mammoth semi truck was backing up, so between the incredibly loud diesel engine and the piercing beeping of his I'm-backing-up-so-get-the-hell-out-of-my-way signal, I couldn't hear a damn thing she was saying. Since a page usually meant that a nurse was getting off duty and needed an escort to her car, I wasted a precious minute looking around for my trainee.
The beeper went off again. This time, there was no mistaking a frantic note in the receptionist's voice. That, and the fact that she was yelling, lit a fire under my ass and I took off running back to the emergency room. Despite the small size of the hospital, the doctors' offices were a pretty fair distance away, so I was running full tilt for a couple of minutes before I arrived, huffing and puffing, at the ER.
It was covered in blood. Well, okay, it was liberally splattered with blood, but in my anxious state it looked like the inside of a slaughterhouse. There were two guys facing off in the middle of the room. One of them, the nursing supervisor, who was sort of my on-site boss, was covered head-to-toe in blood. The other guy was a big, beefy dude with a greasy black mullet and matching mustache. He was wearing a dirty wife beater that showed off his meaty, tattoo-covered arms, one of which appeared to be the source of the blood that had turned the ER into a Jackson Pollack painting. A large chunk of meat was protruding from one of his forearms, no doubt completely ruining an otherwise perfectly good tattoo. He was in the process of swinging this arm around in such a way as to distribute the blood as evenly as possible over the various surfaces in the ER, possibly unaware that in doing so he was making them completely un-sterile.
When I walked in the room, everything stopped. Everyone looked at me expectantly. I could almost hear them thinking, Oh, good, the security guard's here. He'll make everything all right again. I'm sad to say I disappointed them almost immediately. I did not take charge. I did not wrestle the large, profusely bleeding man-bear to the ground and subdue him. I just froze.
I should mention here that it was not entirely my fault that I was completely unprepared for this situation. I was not an armed guard. I had no gun, no nightstick, no taser, no pepper spray. I had been assured, when I took a job with the aforementioned half-assed security company, that I would never, ever, have to subdue anyone, under any circumstances and, moreover, I was under the impression that I would get in trouble for doing so. During that interminable moment when I was standing there in the entrance to the ER, desperately wishing I were somewhere else, I flashed back to something I had been told during orientation.
"Orientation," such as it was, had lasted for one whole day, during which I was shown, along with the other trainees, two videos--one was on the importance of being courteous in the course of our duties, and the other was on the importance of properly filling out the appropriate paperwork (daily activity reports, incident reports, etc.) on a daily basis. During the part where we were being reassured that we would never be expected to engage in the kind of physical combat I was now anticipating, one of the trainees asked Al, our elderly trainer, what the hell we were supposed to do if we were attacked by an armed maniac. I have never forgotten Al's response.
"I probably shouldn't tell you this," he said, gravely, "but this--" he held up his cheap, ballpoint pen, "--can be a deadly weapon." I had a feeling, right then, that I was--if you'll pardon the expression--screwed. But I really needed the job. And that, my friends, represented the full extent of my preparation for my present predicament.
The situation, as I understand it, was that the tattooed side of beef in question had come into the ER with his unpleasant boo-boo and had subsequently spotted a girl that he knew sitting in one of those little curtained off sections that ERs have, where a doctor was stitching up her hands. Apparently, there was some bad blood between them, because he decided that his next course of action should be to kill her. Naturally, the ER staff objected, and had (so far) prevented him from killing anyone. Their strategy, it seemed, had been to have the nursing supervisor (who was a pretty big guy himself) stay between the would-be killer and his objective. I actually thought that this staying-between-the-psycho-and-the-girl strategy sounded way better than a fight-with-a-large-scary-man-and-get-killed maneuver, so I took up a position next to the nursing supervisor that also put me between the girl and our bloody friend, in the hopes that the real police would soon show up and save my ass.
It quickly became clear to me that our friend was on something. He was raving nonsensically about why he needed to kill the girl (he mentioned that he couldn't go home because she had stolen his home), and he was paranoid, refusing to let anyone patch up the hunk of meat that was hanging out of his arm because they were "trying to trick" him. Most telling of all, my presence seemed to intimidate him. Let me repeat that: the terrifying killer who outweighed me by at least 50 pounds and who could have probably pulled my arms and legs off and beaten me with them (hey, is that becoming a theme for me? I think I said that about a guy in my last post, too!) was intimidated by the skinny nineteen-year-old who was desperately trying not to piss himself. Fortunately for me, all he saw was a shiny badge (at least they gave me one of those), which his addled mind interpreted to mean I was, at least on some level, sort of a cop. He even, at one point, actually pointed at me and said to the nursing supervisor, "He's in charge." This probably would have made everyone laugh if things hadn't been so tense. Unfortunately, his respect for my authority did not keep him from taking a few more swipes at the nursing supervisor's outstretched arm, which said gentleman was using to keep him back, further soaking him with blood.
I'm pretty sure the cops were there in less than ten minutes, but of course it felt like hours to me. During this whole time, my trainee was still wandering around somewhere among the doctor's offices, unaware of what was transpiring in our blood-soaked emergency room. I was really wishing he would show up because, unlike me, he had a flashlight. I should mention that a lot of the guards that worked for our company got around the prohibition against weapons by carrying flashlights--the really long, heavy, Mag flashlights that are made of metal and could probably crush someone's skull if you tagged them with one. I was really kicking myself right then for not having one.
Of course, eventually, after everyone had acquired a few more layers of blood, the real police showed up, made our suddenly not-so-scary friend let someone patch up his arm, and took him off to jail. My trainee showed up at this point, far too late to render any kind of assistance, and I filled him in. The nursing supervisor, who by this time looked like Carrie after the prom, turned to me and said, "Why didn't you take him down?" To my credit, I did not laugh in his face and remind him that I was making only slightly more than minimum wage (about $4.75 an hour, if I recall correctly), and what the hell was I supposed to do, take him out with a ballpoint pen (I can imagine the confused look on his face after that one!). Instead, I just shrugged him off. I got a fair amount of snide comments from other nurses and doctors that were present, confirming the one useful thing I had actually learned from old Al: when things go wrong, the security guard will get the blame, so you'd better cover your ass.
I finished my shift, and left that little hospital for almost the last time. I would return for one night almost exactly one year to the date after this little incident...but that's another story.
PS - I looked it up on the internet, it looks like this hospital went bankrupt around 2000, was bought by Reed College in 2004, and torn down. See ya!
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Near Misses
Awhile back, it occurred to me to wonder why I seem to have so many stories to tell about myself and the things that have happened to me. It dawned on me that what most of these tales have in common is at least one really bad decision on my part. This has led me to the conclusion that poor decision-making leads to good stories. And from my own experience and observations, I would say that nothing gets those bad decisions rolling like alcohol. Booze. Hooch. Demon rum. Which brings me to my first story:
On one particular night in the fall of 1996, having elevated my blood alcohol level with liberal amounts of crappy domestic beer at a mediocre sports-themed bar in downtown Phoenix, I got the ball rolling by making my move on a young lady. Now, this was not in itself a bad idea; after all, the young lady had been casting what definitely appeared to me to be a serious bedroom gaze in my direction. These inviting glances came up on my radar while my friend/wingman and I were playing pool at the next table over from the young lady in question, waiting for the rest of our usual weekend sausage party to show up. Upon receiving confirmation from my wingman that I was, in fact, getting signals from the target, we moved into formation and swooped in on the young lady and her female companion with one common goal--getting me laid.
Several hours later, it became clear that I would not, in fact be getting laid, and would instead have to settle for a phone number. My wingman had disappeared sometime between the arrival of the female companion's boyfriend and the arrival of the rest of our crew. In fact, it occurred to me as the young lady prepared to depart with her friends and I bid her goodnight, that I had no idea where my friends--and, consequently, my ride--had gone.
Those of you who are familiar with the Arizona Center in downtown Phoenix probably know it as an office complex with shops and restaurants on the first floor and offices on the second floor; however, in the 90's the second floor consisted mainly of a maze of nightclubs. The sports-themed bar I was in was connected to a godawful piano bar and an extremely crowded club that played whatever kind of alternative music hipsters danced to when they were trying to get laid. I made several circuits of this maze before coming to the conclusion that my buddies had ditched me.
This, of course, was the first in a series of bad decisions I would soon be making. My beer-soaked brain reasoned that my boys were so supremely confident that I would be going home with the blond that they had left me to sink or swim while they went looking for greener pastures. Clearly, this was laughable on a number of levels. Nevertheless, in my impaired state I quickly reasoned that my next logical move was to walk back to my car. Which I had left at my buddy's house. In a different part of town.
This was bad news for a couple of reasons. One, this was about a six-mile hike due east of the Arizona Center. Two, the Arizona Center is located on Van Buren. Bear in mind that this was the Van Buren of the mid-90's, before Sheriff Joe's campaign (or maybe between campaigns) to clean up that particular avenue. At that time, the Arizona Center was located in a very small window of respectability on a street that was otherwise infested with prostitutes and other sketchy characters, drawn by its rows of skeezy little hotels that rented rooms (and diseases) literally by the hour. You could drive down Van Buren on a Sunday afternoon and see a dozen hookers out working the after-church crowd. I had recently been in the market for a car and, while visiting a sleazy used-car lot on Van Buren, I had to push past a hooker hanging out by the front door. Like Mos Eisley spaceport in Star Wars, it was "an evil hive of scum and villainy." I got walking.
At first, things were going great. It was a beautiful evening in late autumn; warm, with a hint of a cool breeze--great walking weather. Presumably because I was on foot, the prostitutes and pimps that I passed let my walk by unmolested. For some reason, despite having gotten no further with the young lady at the bar than a phone number written on a napkin, I was feeling good about how things had gone that evening and was in high spirits. As time passed, however, and my buzz faded, it began to dawn on me just how far I had to walk. Also, as a result of a car accident I had been in a few months earlier that had shattered my ankle, I had a fair amount of hardware (bolts, screws, and a plate) in my left leg and still walked with a bit of a limp. It was starting to give me little twinges; not painful, just letting me know it was prepared to start giving me trouble.
About this time, a rather scruffy looking gentleman sidled up next to me and began walking alongside me. This didn't worry me as much as you might expect; at that stage in my life, I spent a great deal of my spare time working out, and was in good enough shape that I was confident, to the point of cockiness, in my ability to take care of myself in any situation. This, despite the fact that I hadn't been in a fight since junior high school, and I am reasonably certain I had never actually won a fight when I did.
After walking together for a bit in what seemed to be a companionable silence, my new friend introduced himself, sticking out his hand and saying, "Hi, I'm Mike."
"Hi, Mike," I replied, shaking his hand, "I'm Bill."
We walked on for a few moments in silence again. I was feeling pretty good about my new friend when he turned to me again and said, "So, Bill, do you like letting off steam?"
I didn't know what to make of this question. Was it some sort of sexual come-on? Was he about to proposition me? I tried to respond positively, while staying non-committal. "Well, everybody likes letting off steam once in awhile," I said.
He seemed pleased with my response. "Are you up for a little scrap?"
I was about 70% sure now that this wasn't a sexual thing, but it caught me off guard and my brain was still a bit pickled. "Excuse me?"
He hastily explained, "I'm just talking about a little fair, one-on-one."
Had the movie been out yet, I would have had a name for what he was talking about: fight club. As it was, despite my confidence in my physique, I was not quite deluded enough to think of myself as a "scrapper." I hated to disappoint my buddy Mike, but I politely declined with a casual, "Oh, you know, I would, but I have to work in the morning."
Mike seemed worried that he may have given offense. "Oh, hey, I didn't mean anything by it. I hope I didn't offend you." For a guy who invited strangers to brawl with him, he was extremely courteous and considerate. I assured him that no offense was taken, we shook hands again, and he departed on the best of terms. I kept walking.
And walking.
And walking.
I was starting to worry just a teeny bit. The leg was hurting, my limp was getting worse and slowing me down even more, and while I was still confident in my ability to walk back to my car, I was beginning to think it would literally take me all night.
A car passed me, signaled, and pulled over to the curb a few car lengths ahead. The driver, a man, leaned over and opened the passenger door: a clear invitation to get in. I stopped. There was only one reason a guy would stop at 2 o'clock in the morning on Van Buren to pick up another guy. This man thought that I was a male prostitute.
My first instinct was to decline the ride and keep walking. No sane person would get into a car with a stranger who thought they were a prostitute and would be expecting gay sex--a kind of sex which, while beautiful and natural, is not a type of sex I have ever participated in, nor am I likely to ever do so. But wait a minute, my still-lubricated decision-making center urged me, we still have so far to walk. Maybe we could knock a mile or two off of the distance before this guy kicks us out of his car. Then my vanity kicked in, reminding me that my muscular physique was sufficient to empower me to handle myself in any situation. I got in the car.
Now, it is unlikely that I was ever the sculpted Adonis that I remember in my middle years, or that I thought I was at the time. Never was this brought home to me as clearly as the moment I got into that car, shutting the door behind me, and turned to greet the driver.
This man was a mountain of muscle. He was, quite possibly, the most muscular man I had met up to that point in my life. It occurred to me immediately that this man could do whatever he wanted to me, up to and including pulling my arms and legs off with his bare hands.
I really, really, wanted a ride.
I really, really, wanted a ride.
My brilliant, improvised strategy was to thank him for the ride and begin telling him my story as quickly as I could without stopping for breath: how my friends had ditched me when I met this girl and I had to walk home after I met this girl and I had so far to walk after I met this girl and I really appreciated the ride because I had just met a girl.
When I finally had to stop talking to take a breath, he introduced himself as Jerry and asked where I was headed. I told him and he obligingly continued in that direction. He mentioned that he, too, had just come from a club. When I asked him which one, he looked at me slyly and said, "Oh, you wouldn't know which clubs I go to, dude, I'm gay." I responded by telling him all about the girl I had just met at the bar.
Jerry was a good sport; in retrospect, he was unbelievably gracious considering the bait-and-switch I had just pulled on him. He made one or two more half-hearted attempts to gauge my interest in gay sex, and I stuck to my strategy of playing dumb and pretending I didn't know he wanted to bone me. Eventually, he gave up, pulled over in a grocery store parking lot, and said, "Well, this is as far as I go." I thanked him profusely, jumped out, and started walking with renewed vigor. Jerry had generously knocked several miles off of my walk, and I was able to make it back to my car in half an hour or so. It did not occur to me until much later that, as hard as I had been trying to get laid that night, I had quickly passed up my one real opportunity to get any action at all. Nevertheless, I had made it home in one piece, surviving to try again with the young lady at a later date, unsullied by the taint of male prostitution.
I would have told her all about it, too, if she had given me her real phone number.
--Incredibill
Friday, January 21, 2011
Welcome...
I am Incredibill, and these are my tales. Tales of me; hence, Tales of the Incredibill. Pretentious? Self-indulgent? Yes, much.
What manner of tales are these, you ask? Well, they are tales that cannot truly be called incredible (no dragons or unicorns, no alien abductions or probings, no spectacular threesomes in broken-down elevators--alas, my one elevator story is depressingly chaste). No, you will find no such incredible tales recounted in these electronic entries; instead, I shall regale you with stories that are merely...Incredibill.
What makes these tales incredibill, you ask? An excellent question! Incredibill tales are true stories about me. Now, "true" is a pretty subjective word--memory has a way of clouding details, and our egos have a way of editing events in such a way as to make us feel a little less like the dipshits we probably were in any given situation. Bearing this in mind, I will attempt to present these Tales of the Incredibill with as little ego-salving editing as possible. In general, this will probably have the effect of making me appear to be, in fact, a total dipshit. If that is your judgment, dear reader, I invite you to excoriate me with your comments. I also encourage you to respond with stories of your own, even if they are more interesting than mine. You see, to me, the real enjoyment of storytelling comes from swapping stories. I give you a yarn, and you give me one in return, which reminds me of another story, and so on. This works particularly well when alcohol is involved; so pour yourself a few fingers of scotch, gather 'round the keyboard, and join me for...Tales of the Incredibill!
(Didn't get around to telling an actual story this time, did I? Never fear, I've got a doozy for my next post; a bawdy tale of debauchery that keeps almost-but-not-quite happening!)
--Incredibill
--Incredibill
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