The following is a story from the Vault. MLQ's comment about being a in locker room got me to thinking about the locker room at the club on Post. Parin and I would go often, on our own and with our girls. We'd swim with them, hit the hot tub with them, then get dressed and go to lunch, all without stepping outside, which made it the perfect winter morning activity.
But there were always many Korean women at the club, which also made it an interesting morning activity. . .
Here’s how Americans operate: You work out. You go to the locker room. Go into the showers dressed. Deposit your clothes on the chair outside your shower curtain. Shower up. Towel-up. Return to your locker. Get dressed. It’s a 7-minute evolution, carried through with an expedient sense of modesty.
The Korean version: Work out. Go to locker room. Undress. Bandy about, naked, collecting various shower articles. Stop to talk to random woman standing next to you. Mosey into shower. Stop by whirlpool spa and talk to ladies sitting in tub.
Shower up. Towel up hair. Drip the rest dry. Take out lotion and moisturize your entire body in front of a wall of mirrors. Amble to and fro among towel stacks, but do not to take one to cover yourself even though the sign clearly states: Please wear bathing suit or suitable alternative when lounging in locker room and spa.
Ladies, tell me, does the Hongul translation beneath this sign read, "If you got it, flaunt it"?
It’s not that I object to naked. I’ve given birth. If I ever had a problem with naked, I’m over it now. Nothing wrong with naked. It’s just that there is a time and place for naked. And 25-30 minutes of post-work-out naked preening is just. . .too much naked.
Stacks of clean, fluffy towels stand in abundance, waiting for use. These women are all thin enough to fit inside one towel with plenty of room for tucking in. So ladies, come on. I mean, what’s with the naked?
Eventually, they do get dressed. They do their hair quite elaborately. They apply a full swath of make-up. And the whole time, they are speaking in Korean, commenting now and again, I presume, that the Americans in the room with them are slobs, and if they could just spend a bit more time on themselves before getting on with their day. . .
Except when Gemma is in the locker room with them. Then they talk about her. At the end of our swim, I take her suit and diaper off, wrap her in a towel and sit her on the bench while I (expediently) get dressed.
The other day, she was waiting for me when a locker door slammed behind her and she jerked her head to the noise. Immediately, she furrowed her brow, slowly re-cocked her head and then jerked it again. This made her smile a bit. Then she did it again and started laughing. Then again. Each time, she made her wet piggy tales slap her face and spray a bit of water. What fun!
The Korean women crowded around her, as always, gently pinching her soft, juicy limbs, wrapping their fingers in her curly locks, cooing, "She's so keewwwt! So keewwwt!! Laughing at her head-jerking trick.
Gemma finally stopped her trick and looked back at them, relaxed. She wasn’t smiling anymore. She was instead asking, with that look in her eyes, "Why are all of you naked?"
Showing posts with label Sunday Storytime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sunday Storytime. Show all posts
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Sunday Storytime: The Flood
The August before 7th grade, in Elmhurst, IL, it rained. A great deal.
Maybe it rained in surrounding suburbs as well. Or maybe it rained all over but only flooded in our corner of town.
On our corner of our corner of town, on Van Buren and Hawthorne, it became clear that what had always seemed like flat land was actually a slope. This intersection, the one my house sat on, stayed dry. It was an island. The ocean started in the streets in front of houses three doors down from ours in each direction.
I loved that flood!
The first morning of it, we awoke to learn it had rained all night. Leslie had not left for her Dean Whitter office because--lo!--the streets were already partially under water. She, John, Janice and I walked down to the creek about 200 yards from our house and found a lake that began at the last house's yard and yawned out for acres.
The woman who owned that house--a neighbor, I guess, but she was old and I never ever remember seeing her outside of her home--was standing on her porch, looking at the water, looking at us ooh and ahh over it. At the time, I didn't realize that she was probably thinking, "I am so screwed."
And in general, it didn't cross my mind once that there was an enormous amount of property damage afoot and that losing stuff to flood water really sucks. To me, it was just an amazing adventure.
Janice and I went in a row boat with Mike McKiernan and his uncle/our neighbor, Mr. Undine. We sailed swiftly up Jackson street, but found the current far too strong to row against, so we turned onto Spring Road and it was like. . .like a Red Neck Venice or something. There was literally boat traffic, among them was cousin Bill, who was dating "the girl next door" to us, on the her family'ss boat, standing like a gondolier as he rowed.
Both he and Valerie were wearing garbage bags swaddled diaper style. This was because the flood and the Salt Creek were now one. And the salt creek and the water treatment plant were now one. But come on. Gargbage bags?
We were one of the only houses that could get a phone signal. Remember these days? When there were only landlines and, in our house, that also meant a phone with a long twisty cord?
Neighbors and some strangers would come buy to use our phone, even though it could take several minutes to get a dial tone.
By the next morning, the rain had stopped, and the water was tall. Mr. Herline knocked on our door, looking for Dad.
I didn't make the connection that he was looking for Alderman Ferrone.
Mr. Herline said, "We need bags. I can get the sand. But we need bags for it."
Still, no connection.
But above all, hospitality, right? Be helpful, right?
So I walked over to the pantry and pulled out the Dominik's brand box of sandwich baggies-- Not even the zipping kind!--and offered them to him.
They got bags from somewhere else. And I loved making sandbags along with the whole neighborhood.
I spent a lot of time babysitting the Sorce kids while the parents were down on Fairfield helping to bag those houses.
A school bus came by to take people out to get tetanus shots. John ran along side it down Hawthorne with the mission of knocking on doors of elderly and others who weren't out at the sand pile with us, to let them know about their ride out.
Why, I wonder, didn't a nurse bring a case of shots in?
Mr. Sorce rowed a boat up Van Buren to the water's edge at Parkside, or so, to grocery shop for necessities. He came around with a pad of paper to take orders.
And Dad walked to church that Sunday morning. Mrs. Sorce said she thought this was so wonderful. That it made her feel "represented."
So much good will abounded. So much teamwork.
(Except Mrs. So-and-so, who wouldn't let one of our neighbors--I forget who--in to use the telephone, as they were one of the few others to get a dial tone. It was astounding: You mean she wouldn't let you in? Nope. She said she'd just washed her floor. Sorry.
When Leslie heard this, she said, "She had a lover trapped in there!"
And I thought, "Mrs. So-and-so is married with children. Women who are married with children don't have lovers." )
Yes, mostly good will and teamwork.
Though, I got to school a few weeks later, and learned from my classmate Alissa that she and her family had worked very hard on sandbags to. Had, in fact, bagged their house all around with over 300 of them. "And we needed every one!" Alissa said.
I thought, "On our street, we very specifically didn't bag houses individually. We made walls in front of all the houses, otherwise the water would get pushed from the one well-bagged house onto the less-bagged house."
A few weeks into the school year, the topic came up: consideration for the many over preference for the few. And our teacher said, "So, for instance, when a community floods, you can choose to put all your efforts into protecting your own house with an excess of sandbags, which creates more flood water for your neighbors. Or you can consider the many and sandbag along with the community."
This teacher, ahem, lived 3 doors down from Alissa. I thought, when the teacher said this, "Alissa has no idea you are even talking about her family."
But as for the Flood, it was exciting and wonderful to me. Turned out to be a pain in the ass for Dad, of course. Meetings about the Flood lasted the rest of his term. At one point, a woman shouted at him, "Your house didn't flood because you're the Alderman!"
And it was bad for so many who suffered a great deal of damage.
My friends who lived on Spring Road--Jorie Kenny, Larry Reedy--commented every now and again for years afterwards about such and such item that "floated away." I wonder if this flood is a bad memory for them now, or if they, too, look back it and think, "What an amazing thing to live through."
Maybe it rained in surrounding suburbs as well. Or maybe it rained all over but only flooded in our corner of town.
On our corner of our corner of town, on Van Buren and Hawthorne, it became clear that what had always seemed like flat land was actually a slope. This intersection, the one my house sat on, stayed dry. It was an island. The ocean started in the streets in front of houses three doors down from ours in each direction.
I loved that flood!
The first morning of it, we awoke to learn it had rained all night. Leslie had not left for her Dean Whitter office because--lo!--the streets were already partially under water. She, John, Janice and I walked down to the creek about 200 yards from our house and found a lake that began at the last house's yard and yawned out for acres.
The woman who owned that house--a neighbor, I guess, but she was old and I never ever remember seeing her outside of her home--was standing on her porch, looking at the water, looking at us ooh and ahh over it. At the time, I didn't realize that she was probably thinking, "I am so screwed."
And in general, it didn't cross my mind once that there was an enormous amount of property damage afoot and that losing stuff to flood water really sucks. To me, it was just an amazing adventure.
Janice and I went in a row boat with Mike McKiernan and his uncle/our neighbor, Mr. Undine. We sailed swiftly up Jackson street, but found the current far too strong to row against, so we turned onto Spring Road and it was like. . .like a Red Neck Venice or something. There was literally boat traffic, among them was cousin Bill, who was dating "the girl next door" to us, on the her family'ss boat, standing like a gondolier as he rowed.
Both he and Valerie were wearing garbage bags swaddled diaper style. This was because the flood and the Salt Creek were now one. And the salt creek and the water treatment plant were now one. But come on. Gargbage bags?
We were one of the only houses that could get a phone signal. Remember these days? When there were only landlines and, in our house, that also meant a phone with a long twisty cord?
Neighbors and some strangers would come buy to use our phone, even though it could take several minutes to get a dial tone.
By the next morning, the rain had stopped, and the water was tall. Mr. Herline knocked on our door, looking for Dad.
I didn't make the connection that he was looking for Alderman Ferrone.
Mr. Herline said, "We need bags. I can get the sand. But we need bags for it."
Still, no connection.
But above all, hospitality, right? Be helpful, right?
So I walked over to the pantry and pulled out the Dominik's brand box of sandwich baggies-- Not even the zipping kind!--and offered them to him.
They got bags from somewhere else. And I loved making sandbags along with the whole neighborhood.
I spent a lot of time babysitting the Sorce kids while the parents were down on Fairfield helping to bag those houses.
A school bus came by to take people out to get tetanus shots. John ran along side it down Hawthorne with the mission of knocking on doors of elderly and others who weren't out at the sand pile with us, to let them know about their ride out.
Why, I wonder, didn't a nurse bring a case of shots in?
Mr. Sorce rowed a boat up Van Buren to the water's edge at Parkside, or so, to grocery shop for necessities. He came around with a pad of paper to take orders.
And Dad walked to church that Sunday morning. Mrs. Sorce said she thought this was so wonderful. That it made her feel "represented."
So much good will abounded. So much teamwork.
(Except Mrs. So-and-so, who wouldn't let one of our neighbors--I forget who--in to use the telephone, as they were one of the few others to get a dial tone. It was astounding: You mean she wouldn't let you in? Nope. She said she'd just washed her floor. Sorry.
When Leslie heard this, she said, "She had a lover trapped in there!"
And I thought, "Mrs. So-and-so is married with children. Women who are married with children don't have lovers." )
Yes, mostly good will and teamwork.
Though, I got to school a few weeks later, and learned from my classmate Alissa that she and her family had worked very hard on sandbags to. Had, in fact, bagged their house all around with over 300 of them. "And we needed every one!" Alissa said.
I thought, "On our street, we very specifically didn't bag houses individually. We made walls in front of all the houses, otherwise the water would get pushed from the one well-bagged house onto the less-bagged house."
A few weeks into the school year, the topic came up: consideration for the many over preference for the few. And our teacher said, "So, for instance, when a community floods, you can choose to put all your efforts into protecting your own house with an excess of sandbags, which creates more flood water for your neighbors. Or you can consider the many and sandbag along with the community."
This teacher, ahem, lived 3 doors down from Alissa. I thought, when the teacher said this, "Alissa has no idea you are even talking about her family."
But as for the Flood, it was exciting and wonderful to me. Turned out to be a pain in the ass for Dad, of course. Meetings about the Flood lasted the rest of his term. At one point, a woman shouted at him, "Your house didn't flood because you're the Alderman!"
And it was bad for so many who suffered a great deal of damage.
My friends who lived on Spring Road--Jorie Kenny, Larry Reedy--commented every now and again for years afterwards about such and such item that "floated away." I wonder if this flood is a bad memory for them now, or if they, too, look back it and think, "What an amazing thing to live through."
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Sunday Storytime: A Year Ago, Monday
A year ago Monday, it was a Sunday.
Bryan and I took the kids to beautiful Mt. Cutler in Cheyenne Canyon. It's about a 30 minute drive to get there, and the hike is about a mile long with a gradual elevation gain, so the kids could do pretty well with it.
The view along the way are amazing and at the top, as per our usual, because we did this hike a lot, we set out our blanket and ate our picnic as we overlooked the canyon.
Then we headed down. Joshua was too big for the baby backpack, so we took turns carrying him on our backs and making him hoof it. I was carrying him when: Slip. Going Down. OhnomakesureJoshualandssafely. Pop. Joshlandsonhisfeet. I land. . .on. . .my. . .butt. . .what is that horrible, horrible pain?
I screamed. A general, "Owwww! OOOWWWWW!" kind of scream.
Bryan and Gemma heard me and caught up in a hurry.
We took stock. I has slipped at the top of the last switch back of the trail. So. Maybe 2 to 3 city blocks to go. (This is how I picture distance: by how they would be measured off in concrete sidewalk squares.)
Bryan took the kids and hustled down the mountain as I lay there. He was going to lock them into the car and then come back up for me.
I was praying, praying, praying. That everything would turn out OK. Shortly after he left, a tingly numbness set it and my ankle suddenly didn't hurt anymore. It just. . .tingled.
A couple of hikers came upon me on their way down and offered help. I sized them up, and while I didn't want to refuse help in a time of great need, I also didn't want what appeared to be a man weighing 120 lbs and a woman weighing about 90 lbs to involve themselves. Particularly when my husband would be along shortly.
But the little man declared, "Let's get you down this mountain." At first we tried one of my arms over each set of their shoulders, but that didn't work. The woman was just too small for the job.
The man's next idea: I should just climb onto his back.
I told him, no need, my husband would be coming for me in just a few minutes, besides
a) that's how I hurt myself in the first place and I was only carrying a baby and
b) If you fall with me like I fell with my baby, it will really hurt. For me. Not just you. and
c) Although the surgeon I will meet tomorrow and the surgeon I will meet months from now after a breast cancer diagnosis will both tell me that I am thin, I am still way too big for you.
He was not deterred. And, God Bless him, he piggybacked me the rest of the way down.
Bryan caught up to us at the very end. I remarked, "I think I only sprained it. If I'd broken it, the pain would be a lot worse, no?" I hadn't realized that the adrenaline was responsible for the tingly feeling.
I got into the car. Then the adrenaline wore off when we hit our first bump and I dropped a very loud f-bomb. Right in front of Gemma and Joshua. It was, however, the only cuss word I used in the whole escapade.
A painful 30 minute drive home ensued. We were in the Volvo, which gets some serious pick-up. Normally, I am the annoying sort of wife who nags her husband about driving too fast and too aggressively.
On this drive, as we barrelled down the road at 70 in a 55, I was gritting out between clenched teeth, "YOU HAD BETTER MAKE THIS LIGHT!!!!"
We got home (which is on the way to the ER). Bryan stayed with kids while my neighbor took me to the ER. Now, at this time, the Presidential election was 5 weeks away and I still had hair. Dark hair. I wore it up on the sides and in front. I wore glasses. I wore lipstick. So it was not too surprising to me when the nurse who wheeled me into triage said, "Look! We have Governor Palin in our hospital tonight!"
To which I said, as I did to the several others who made this remark to me that September and October, "I had this brainy look going a long time before she came along."
I fractured my tibia and fibula right above the ankle, and dislocated a small ankle chip. I got an appointment with the Chief of athletic medicine at the Air Force Academy. This is the kind of surgeon one wants for this operation because this is the guy who fixes tib-fib fractures all day long. But he wasn't supposed to be my doctor.
No. Originally, I was supposed to have my surgical consult with a guy at Ft. Carson. The night of the accident, with the consult scheduled for the next morning, I called my brother-in-law, a bone surgeon, to ask what kind of questions I should be asking the surgeon I'd go to see. You know: to make sure I wasn't dealing with an idiot.
Brent said, "Amy, you're not going to Ft. Carson! You're going to the Air Force Academy where Senators' sons go!!" and he called one of his best friends, Dr. Tokish, whom Brent knew from his own tour at the Academy. Der! I had totally forgotten that Brent had even served as a surgeon at the AFA!
I labor to explain all this because months later, when I was set up with a surgical consult at Ft. Carson, I wanted nothing to do with him. Mayfield. Whatever. The Air Force surgeon wasn't available because he was in Iraq. But Ft. Carson? No way. I had been strongly cautioned against it. So Bryan and I went to that appointment with both guns loaded with reasons why we wanted a referral to some place else.
But. Well. Score one for Ft. Carson.
That Sunday night, after I got home from the ER, Bryan brought the kids to Betsy's house and they stayed there until Thursday, when my mother arrived to help for 2 weeks.
The next day I saw Dr. Tokish and he operated on me at 4:30 Monday in the civilian hospital right up the street from my house. I saw the after x-ray and my ankle now looks like a home improvement project: a 3 inch stainless steel plate held in with 4 screws, plus an additional screw stuck in from the other side for good measure. So I was bionic almost a year before the port installation.
We had a great time with Mom. Then Gayl, Bryan's Mom, came for the next 2 weeks and we had a great time with her. I was able to do a lot more myself by then, so she was free to help him on the basement finishing project, the kind of thing they both love to do, so that was a special blessing for them.
I came to appreciate my children in a fundamentally important way through the experience of being off my feet for 6 weeks. And I could go on about all the great things the Lord did in our lives and my heart through this accident and the recovery.
Just think: At the time, I thought this would be the Big Event of my 30's!
I wrote an e-mail to my family a couple days after surgery, giving all the details of what had happened, and I concluded with this paragraph:
"My neighbors are taking good care of me. Ladies from our church will be bringing meals. The pain is very well controlled with pretty mild stuff. And the JFCC IMD/J35 "family" just sent me flowers. Really, we are very, very blessed and I feel very, very loved. Nothing to complain about, given how bad things could have been and just how great things are."
Funny.
Even though things, in some ways, are now a lot worse, other things are, in some ways, so much better. And I feel like I could write that same paragraph today, a year later, and still mean every word.
Bryan and I took the kids to beautiful Mt. Cutler in Cheyenne Canyon. It's about a 30 minute drive to get there, and the hike is about a mile long with a gradual elevation gain, so the kids could do pretty well with it.
The view along the way are amazing and at the top, as per our usual, because we did this hike a lot, we set out our blanket and ate our picnic as we overlooked the canyon.
Then we headed down. Joshua was too big for the baby backpack, so we took turns carrying him on our backs and making him hoof it. I was carrying him when: Slip. Going Down. OhnomakesureJoshualandssafely. Pop. Joshlandsonhisfeet. I land. . .on. . .my. . .butt. . .what is that horrible, horrible pain?
I screamed. A general, "Owwww! OOOWWWWW!" kind of scream.
Bryan and Gemma heard me and caught up in a hurry.
We took stock. I has slipped at the top of the last switch back of the trail. So. Maybe 2 to 3 city blocks to go. (This is how I picture distance: by how they would be measured off in concrete sidewalk squares.)
Bryan took the kids and hustled down the mountain as I lay there. He was going to lock them into the car and then come back up for me.
I was praying, praying, praying. That everything would turn out OK. Shortly after he left, a tingly numbness set it and my ankle suddenly didn't hurt anymore. It just. . .tingled.
A couple of hikers came upon me on their way down and offered help. I sized them up, and while I didn't want to refuse help in a time of great need, I also didn't want what appeared to be a man weighing 120 lbs and a woman weighing about 90 lbs to involve themselves. Particularly when my husband would be along shortly.
But the little man declared, "Let's get you down this mountain." At first we tried one of my arms over each set of their shoulders, but that didn't work. The woman was just too small for the job.
The man's next idea: I should just climb onto his back.
I told him, no need, my husband would be coming for me in just a few minutes, besides
a) that's how I hurt myself in the first place and I was only carrying a baby and
b) If you fall with me like I fell with my baby, it will really hurt. For me. Not just you. and
c) Although the surgeon I will meet tomorrow and the surgeon I will meet months from now after a breast cancer diagnosis will both tell me that I am thin, I am still way too big for you.
He was not deterred. And, God Bless him, he piggybacked me the rest of the way down.
Bryan caught up to us at the very end. I remarked, "I think I only sprained it. If I'd broken it, the pain would be a lot worse, no?" I hadn't realized that the adrenaline was responsible for the tingly feeling.
I got into the car. Then the adrenaline wore off when we hit our first bump and I dropped a very loud f-bomb. Right in front of Gemma and Joshua. It was, however, the only cuss word I used in the whole escapade.
A painful 30 minute drive home ensued. We were in the Volvo, which gets some serious pick-up. Normally, I am the annoying sort of wife who nags her husband about driving too fast and too aggressively.
On this drive, as we barrelled down the road at 70 in a 55, I was gritting out between clenched teeth, "YOU HAD BETTER MAKE THIS LIGHT!!!!"
We got home (which is on the way to the ER). Bryan stayed with kids while my neighbor took me to the ER. Now, at this time, the Presidential election was 5 weeks away and I still had hair. Dark hair. I wore it up on the sides and in front. I wore glasses. I wore lipstick. So it was not too surprising to me when the nurse who wheeled me into triage said, "Look! We have Governor Palin in our hospital tonight!"
To which I said, as I did to the several others who made this remark to me that September and October, "I had this brainy look going a long time before she came along."
I fractured my tibia and fibula right above the ankle, and dislocated a small ankle chip. I got an appointment with the Chief of athletic medicine at the Air Force Academy. This is the kind of surgeon one wants for this operation because this is the guy who fixes tib-fib fractures all day long. But he wasn't supposed to be my doctor.
No. Originally, I was supposed to have my surgical consult with a guy at Ft. Carson. The night of the accident, with the consult scheduled for the next morning, I called my brother-in-law, a bone surgeon, to ask what kind of questions I should be asking the surgeon I'd go to see. You know: to make sure I wasn't dealing with an idiot.
Brent said, "Amy, you're not going to Ft. Carson! You're going to the Air Force Academy where Senators' sons go!!" and he called one of his best friends, Dr. Tokish, whom Brent knew from his own tour at the Academy. Der! I had totally forgotten that Brent had even served as a surgeon at the AFA!
I labor to explain all this because months later, when I was set up with a surgical consult at Ft. Carson, I wanted nothing to do with him. Mayfield. Whatever. The Air Force surgeon wasn't available because he was in Iraq. But Ft. Carson? No way. I had been strongly cautioned against it. So Bryan and I went to that appointment with both guns loaded with reasons why we wanted a referral to some place else.
But. Well. Score one for Ft. Carson.
That Sunday night, after I got home from the ER, Bryan brought the kids to Betsy's house and they stayed there until Thursday, when my mother arrived to help for 2 weeks.
The next day I saw Dr. Tokish and he operated on me at 4:30 Monday in the civilian hospital right up the street from my house. I saw the after x-ray and my ankle now looks like a home improvement project: a 3 inch stainless steel plate held in with 4 screws, plus an additional screw stuck in from the other side for good measure. So I was bionic almost a year before the port installation.
We had a great time with Mom. Then Gayl, Bryan's Mom, came for the next 2 weeks and we had a great time with her. I was able to do a lot more myself by then, so she was free to help him on the basement finishing project, the kind of thing they both love to do, so that was a special blessing for them.
I came to appreciate my children in a fundamentally important way through the experience of being off my feet for 6 weeks. And I could go on about all the great things the Lord did in our lives and my heart through this accident and the recovery.
Just think: At the time, I thought this would be the Big Event of my 30's!
I wrote an e-mail to my family a couple days after surgery, giving all the details of what had happened, and I concluded with this paragraph:
"My neighbors are taking good care of me. Ladies from our church will be bringing meals. The pain is very well controlled with pretty mild stuff. And the JFCC IMD/J35 "family" just sent me flowers. Really, we are very, very blessed and I feel very, very loved. Nothing to complain about, given how bad things could have been and just how great things are."
Funny.
Even though things, in some ways, are now a lot worse, other things are, in some ways, so much better. And I feel like I could write that same paragraph today, a year later, and still mean every word.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Sunday Storytime: Policy
It's Tuesday, I know. But this is the story that I failed to post on Sunday.
Last week, I told you one story that informed my Fake Breast Policy. This week, I shall present a second.
This story begins a year ago, at our neighbor’s birthday party. She turned 3, and the cul-de-sac as well as her parents’ Easter European friends were invited. What’s that? Their who? Oh. Right. My neighbors are Bosnians. And they hang out with other Bosnian, Croatian and, believe it or not, Serbian people who found their way to Colorado Springs.
Everyone at the party was very cordial. But after the greetings were exchanged, the cul-de-sac people ended up at one table and the Bosnians et al sat at theirs and spoke Bosnian, presumably.
Night fell and I was about to leave when the party hit that moment of critical mass—you know, when enough folks have left that there’s enough room around one table for all who remain and such remainders suddenly feel a little kinship in being Those Who Lasted.
So I sat down at this table and the conversation became interesting: This was July of 08, the Democratic candidate had not yet been decided and these Bosnian men were weighing in on what they thought of the options. None of them are citizens yet, and none of them seemed to care all that much about the outcome. This wasn’t apathy. It seemed more like cynicism—as in, “What’s the difference? Life is how life is.”
I had been very quiet thus far when one guy said Hilary should win it “Because she is a senator in New York.”
I shrugged and said, “So what? She’s a carpet bagger.”
You all know what this means. It’s a term from the Reconstruction, it refers to a politician who moves to a different state in order to claim the power up for grabs there.
This is not how these Bosnian men understood the term. At once, they all burst into laughter, Sasha jumped from his chair and rushed to me, yelling, “High five, you say that! You give high five!”
Wheels churned madly.
Ohhhh.
“No, no, no!” I tried to explain. “It’s a term from the. . .” but they were half drunk and not interested. Sigh.
I was going to leave then. I really was. But then one guy leapt from this political topic to religion in American. And he was not drunk, and he was the one guy who wasn’t laughing about the misunderstood comment. Specifically, he wanted to know why there were so many different Christian churches. And different Bibles. And why did some worship Mary as part of the Trinity?
He had grown up Muslim, and as is often the case among cultures, had learned a lot of disinformation about a different religion. I certainly wasn’t going to walk away from those questions.
While I was talking with him, my neighbor got to talking with Lucci. Ah, Lucci. He was a hip guy. Tall. Handsome to some, probably, with a receding hairline and locks that flowed to his shoulders. Lucci drove a Porche, paid for his house in an expensive development with cash and, when asked what he did for a living, said, “My business is my business.”
He interrupted all other conversation to pose this question: If insurance covers Viagra, then shouldn’t insurance cover cocaine?
He was not half-drunk. He was entirely drunk. Questions like these are not to be answered in general, and not to be answered when it’s a specific drunk man asking. My neighbor missed this lesson in What To Do With Drunk People and said, “Why would you do cocaine in the first place?”
I was thinking: Because a dealer has to sample his product.
Lucci grasped his highball of whisky from the top, swirled it as he leered over its rim and said, “Because I like to give my women pleasure,” he paused to take a sip, then pointed at us, “for three days at a time.”
And so began the litany of a drunk Croatian re: his physical prowess and personal standards as pertains to women. The most memorable: “My last girlfriend was 8 months younger than my mother.”
This conversation de-railed at one point and allowed me to get back to my other conversation with the Muslim guy. Once that wrapped up, it was time to leave.
And then, a year later, just a couple weeks ago, it was time to go back for the little girl’s 4th birthday.
As the Fake Breast Policy not yet well-formed, I had to consider my options. Mostly, I considered Lucci, and what he’d be likely to say if I went without, and whether he’d say it before or once he got drunk, and then what the fight would look like if Bryan were to hear what Lucci would say.
I wore it. Half hour into the party, I asked the host, “Where’s Lucci?”
He gave a little wave and said, “Lucci is away for a little while.”
I think that’s a Bosnian code for prison.
So, no perverts on the prowl. Just more Eastern Europeans who sat at their table while I sat at mine with neighbors who already know about the surgery. The sun was very strong that day and the yard had little shade. I couldn’t believe how hot I felt.
When I got home and de-fake-breasted, I couldn’t believe it. I handed it over to Bryan and said, “Do you notice anything?”
He said, “This is hot!”
Indeed. Turns out silicon microbeads absorb heat. My chest felt cooked.
And I was asking again: to what end?
Last week, I told you one story that informed my Fake Breast Policy. This week, I shall present a second.
This story begins a year ago, at our neighbor’s birthday party. She turned 3, and the cul-de-sac as well as her parents’ Easter European friends were invited. What’s that? Their who? Oh. Right. My neighbors are Bosnians. And they hang out with other Bosnian, Croatian and, believe it or not, Serbian people who found their way to Colorado Springs.
Everyone at the party was very cordial. But after the greetings were exchanged, the cul-de-sac people ended up at one table and the Bosnians et al sat at theirs and spoke Bosnian, presumably.
Night fell and I was about to leave when the party hit that moment of critical mass—you know, when enough folks have left that there’s enough room around one table for all who remain and such remainders suddenly feel a little kinship in being Those Who Lasted.
So I sat down at this table and the conversation became interesting: This was July of 08, the Democratic candidate had not yet been decided and these Bosnian men were weighing in on what they thought of the options. None of them are citizens yet, and none of them seemed to care all that much about the outcome. This wasn’t apathy. It seemed more like cynicism—as in, “What’s the difference? Life is how life is.”
I had been very quiet thus far when one guy said Hilary should win it “Because she is a senator in New York.”
I shrugged and said, “So what? She’s a carpet bagger.”
You all know what this means. It’s a term from the Reconstruction, it refers to a politician who moves to a different state in order to claim the power up for grabs there.
This is not how these Bosnian men understood the term. At once, they all burst into laughter, Sasha jumped from his chair and rushed to me, yelling, “High five, you say that! You give high five!”
Wheels churned madly.
Ohhhh.
“No, no, no!” I tried to explain. “It’s a term from the. . .” but they were half drunk and not interested. Sigh.
I was going to leave then. I really was. But then one guy leapt from this political topic to religion in American. And he was not drunk, and he was the one guy who wasn’t laughing about the misunderstood comment. Specifically, he wanted to know why there were so many different Christian churches. And different Bibles. And why did some worship Mary as part of the Trinity?
He had grown up Muslim, and as is often the case among cultures, had learned a lot of disinformation about a different religion. I certainly wasn’t going to walk away from those questions.
While I was talking with him, my neighbor got to talking with Lucci. Ah, Lucci. He was a hip guy. Tall. Handsome to some, probably, with a receding hairline and locks that flowed to his shoulders. Lucci drove a Porche, paid for his house in an expensive development with cash and, when asked what he did for a living, said, “My business is my business.”
He interrupted all other conversation to pose this question: If insurance covers Viagra, then shouldn’t insurance cover cocaine?
He was not half-drunk. He was entirely drunk. Questions like these are not to be answered in general, and not to be answered when it’s a specific drunk man asking. My neighbor missed this lesson in What To Do With Drunk People and said, “Why would you do cocaine in the first place?”
I was thinking: Because a dealer has to sample his product.
Lucci grasped his highball of whisky from the top, swirled it as he leered over its rim and said, “Because I like to give my women pleasure,” he paused to take a sip, then pointed at us, “for three days at a time.”
And so began the litany of a drunk Croatian re: his physical prowess and personal standards as pertains to women. The most memorable: “My last girlfriend was 8 months younger than my mother.”
This conversation de-railed at one point and allowed me to get back to my other conversation with the Muslim guy. Once that wrapped up, it was time to leave.
And then, a year later, just a couple weeks ago, it was time to go back for the little girl’s 4th birthday.
As the Fake Breast Policy not yet well-formed, I had to consider my options. Mostly, I considered Lucci, and what he’d be likely to say if I went without, and whether he’d say it before or once he got drunk, and then what the fight would look like if Bryan were to hear what Lucci would say.
I wore it. Half hour into the party, I asked the host, “Where’s Lucci?”
He gave a little wave and said, “Lucci is away for a little while.”
I think that’s a Bosnian code for prison.
So, no perverts on the prowl. Just more Eastern Europeans who sat at their table while I sat at mine with neighbors who already know about the surgery. The sun was very strong that day and the yard had little shade. I couldn’t believe how hot I felt.
When I got home and de-fake-breasted, I couldn’t believe it. I handed it over to Bryan and said, “Do you notice anything?”
He said, “This is hot!”
Indeed. Turns out silicon microbeads absorb heat. My chest felt cooked.
And I was asking again: to what end?
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Sunday Storytime: The Tip
It is taking me a while to decide on a fake breast policy. When to wear it. When not to. It's kind of a tricky question, I realize now that I'm in a position to have to sort it out. There's a difference between looking nice, which I can do without it, and which has more to do with unwrinkled clothes, and looking. . .nice.
In theory, we think about looking nice for our spouses. But my spouse knows what the hardware looks like, so speak, so the illusion is kind of wasted on him.
Some days, I wear it just as a means of going incognito. You know, to be out and about in town as someone who's not deformed. But, really, people don't seem to notice that I am when I go out fake-less.
Meh. It's still a policy in the making.
Some things have happened to inform it, though. And the first is the feature of this week's storytime:
It has to do with Kwan, the deaf bagger at the Commissary.
Bear in mind that Gemma was speech-delayed until she was about 4 years old. You find this hard to believe, given that she's my daughter. But to clarify: It's not that she didn't talk a lot. We just had no idea what she was saying. So we all learned a little American Sign Language, and this is what kept us happy and sane before the speech came along.
So, when we met Kwan, the deaf bagger at the Commissary, we had a few things to say to her.
At the Commissary, baggers "work for tips only," but in exchange for the tip, your bagger wheels your groceries out and loads them into your trunk for you. No one asks you if you want a bagger. You're going to get one. Period. This is OK with me because it makes my life so much easier--I load the kids while the bagger loads the food. And you get whatever bagger is next in line at your check-out counter and, perhaps true to form on a military installation, there is a lady at the front of the line who tells you which counter you have to go to.
I never minded this system. But Gemma does. Since meeting Kwan a year a half ago, and signing, "Hi, friend" to her, and seeing Kwan's whole face light up upon seeing her, and the two of them hugging and then Kwan putting Gemma on the back of her cart and giving her a ride all the way out to our car--ever since then, Gemma insists on getting Kwan as our bagger. Either by ignoring the lady and picking Kwan's line, or getting up to the cashier and requesting Kwan by name.
Fast forward to the end of this summer, when I returned to the Commissary for the first time in 2 months to reclaim the grocery shopping chore from Bryan. It was just a few days after my port installation, so the left shoulder was sore. I still had my hair because chemo hadn't begun. And I was wearing my fake breast because going to my grocery store felt like the kind of event I wanted to get dressed up for.
As we headed out to the car, Kwan asked me where I had been all summer. I didn't know the sign for cancer. I could sign that I was "sick," but that didn't seem like enough of an explanation. Plus, in a few short weeks, I'd be bald and I hadn't decided at that point what my wig policy was going to be. Plus, and this was really the thing, if Kwan were a hearing person, I would have told her straight out what was going on. You can't hold back just because a person happens to be deaf.
We had gotten to my car by then. I used letters to spell out "cancer." Then I pointed to my fake breast. Her face was all horror and confusion. She knew I didn't have enough signs for her to ask where I was in the process. If I hadn't been wearing my fake breast, it would have been pretty obvious to her. But I was. In fact, I was looking very nice altogether and there was only one method I could use to explain the situation to her. I let out a sigh, held open my shirt collar and gestured for her to look down.
Oh.
She said she was sorry and that she would pray for me and the children. We finished packing up the kids and food, and we hugged and then she started back to the store.
I was just about to climb into the driver's seat when I realized: I hadn't given Kwan her tip! Doh!
She was all the way across the parking lot by then. I had no choice but to run after her. But the garment that holds my fake breast does not provide any sort of. . . athletic support for my real breast. And there was a newly installed port right above this real breast such that running made it all hurt a lot.
I was jogging down the aisle of cars, holding my real breast with my hand, calling, "Kwan!"--hoping that the customers walking right behind her would hear me, get my point, and stop her. Another bagger, an older black guy who has helped us before and who I knew to be a chatty fellow, called to me, "Oh, that girl ain't gonna' hear you! You got to go get her!"
Get, I did.
Just before she reached the store's doors. I handed her the tip and she told me I didn't have to do that. We hugged again. Then I trudged back to the car, my left shoulder screaming. Yes. Sure. I looked very nice, I told myself. And to what end?
In theory, we think about looking nice for our spouses. But my spouse knows what the hardware looks like, so speak, so the illusion is kind of wasted on him.
Some days, I wear it just as a means of going incognito. You know, to be out and about in town as someone who's not deformed. But, really, people don't seem to notice that I am when I go out fake-less.
Meh. It's still a policy in the making.
Some things have happened to inform it, though. And the first is the feature of this week's storytime:
It has to do with Kwan, the deaf bagger at the Commissary.
Bear in mind that Gemma was speech-delayed until she was about 4 years old. You find this hard to believe, given that she's my daughter. But to clarify: It's not that she didn't talk a lot. We just had no idea what she was saying. So we all learned a little American Sign Language, and this is what kept us happy and sane before the speech came along.
So, when we met Kwan, the deaf bagger at the Commissary, we had a few things to say to her.
At the Commissary, baggers "work for tips only," but in exchange for the tip, your bagger wheels your groceries out and loads them into your trunk for you. No one asks you if you want a bagger. You're going to get one. Period. This is OK with me because it makes my life so much easier--I load the kids while the bagger loads the food. And you get whatever bagger is next in line at your check-out counter and, perhaps true to form on a military installation, there is a lady at the front of the line who tells you which counter you have to go to.
I never minded this system. But Gemma does. Since meeting Kwan a year a half ago, and signing, "Hi, friend" to her, and seeing Kwan's whole face light up upon seeing her, and the two of them hugging and then Kwan putting Gemma on the back of her cart and giving her a ride all the way out to our car--ever since then, Gemma insists on getting Kwan as our bagger. Either by ignoring the lady and picking Kwan's line, or getting up to the cashier and requesting Kwan by name.
Fast forward to the end of this summer, when I returned to the Commissary for the first time in 2 months to reclaim the grocery shopping chore from Bryan. It was just a few days after my port installation, so the left shoulder was sore. I still had my hair because chemo hadn't begun. And I was wearing my fake breast because going to my grocery store felt like the kind of event I wanted to get dressed up for.
As we headed out to the car, Kwan asked me where I had been all summer. I didn't know the sign for cancer. I could sign that I was "sick," but that didn't seem like enough of an explanation. Plus, in a few short weeks, I'd be bald and I hadn't decided at that point what my wig policy was going to be. Plus, and this was really the thing, if Kwan were a hearing person, I would have told her straight out what was going on. You can't hold back just because a person happens to be deaf.
We had gotten to my car by then. I used letters to spell out "cancer." Then I pointed to my fake breast. Her face was all horror and confusion. She knew I didn't have enough signs for her to ask where I was in the process. If I hadn't been wearing my fake breast, it would have been pretty obvious to her. But I was. In fact, I was looking very nice altogether and there was only one method I could use to explain the situation to her. I let out a sigh, held open my shirt collar and gestured for her to look down.
Oh.
She said she was sorry and that she would pray for me and the children. We finished packing up the kids and food, and we hugged and then she started back to the store.
I was just about to climb into the driver's seat when I realized: I hadn't given Kwan her tip! Doh!
She was all the way across the parking lot by then. I had no choice but to run after her. But the garment that holds my fake breast does not provide any sort of. . . athletic support for my real breast. And there was a newly installed port right above this real breast such that running made it all hurt a lot.
I was jogging down the aisle of cars, holding my real breast with my hand, calling, "Kwan!"--hoping that the customers walking right behind her would hear me, get my point, and stop her. Another bagger, an older black guy who has helped us before and who I knew to be a chatty fellow, called to me, "Oh, that girl ain't gonna' hear you! You got to go get her!"
Get, I did.
Just before she reached the store's doors. I handed her the tip and she told me I didn't have to do that. We hugged again. Then I trudged back to the car, my left shoulder screaming. Yes. Sure. I looked very nice, I told myself. And to what end?
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Sunday Storytime: Bad Hair Days
This week's close shave reminded me of our time in Leavenworth.
In our first year there, I finally convinced Bryan to let me by electric clippers so that I could give him his haircuts. There's nothing complicated about a high and tight, after all. And at $8 a haircut, the $32 paid for themselves in just 2 months. This was a no-brainer. Besides, Bryan was a student at the Command General Staff College. He spent most of his time with 20 peers in a classroom. There were no high-stakes briefs to be spit-shined for. Surely I could give him a haircut that would be a little better than 'good enough' if not 'as good' as he'd get on Post.
And besides, these clippers have different sized combs that are numbered, the lower the number, the closer the clip. There was no worry about getting the length "even"--these things are designed for idiots! I'd be fine.
All of this didn't quite convince him. But it mounted in such a way that he aquiessed. Every other week, I clipped his hair in our bathroom. With each haircut, his faith in this plan grew.
Then, one week, and I like to think that it happened on a Sunday night, late, when he told me, late, that he needed a haircut and so I was under a bit of duress, I clipped it too short. Was on a "tight" mode on the side and went up too "high" such that I had to make the top of his head a little "tighter" in order to avoid the creation of a mohawkish sort of look.
The next day, he went to class and his peers asked him, "Did you go to the Prison to get your hair cut?"
Oh, hah hah hah, guys and gals.
"It'll grow back," I told Bryan, when he reported this to me.
2 weeks later, guess what. No. You're wrong. Bryan did let me clip his hair again. "I learned my lesson!" I told him. And he's such a sweet, sweet man that he gave me another chance.
I didn't let him down. Over the next 2 haircuts.
On the third, I--was distracted? was too tired? was hungry? was in a hurry?--clipped the top of his head.
Without a comb over the razor.
DOH!
Well. There's only one way to fix a mistake like that. I shaved his whole head without a comb over the razor.
And apologized profusely.
The next day in class, his peers handed him a wad of cash and said, "We took up a collection to send you to a real barber."
I'm pretty sure the real reason Bryan held a garage sale that spring was to sell off those clippers.
At the end of the year, each class submitted their own photos and captions for their page in the CGSC yearbook. Their page included a picture of Bryan reading the paper (which he was also famous for--while others spent their downtime chatting, he spent his behind the pages of the Kansas City Star).
Below this photo was the caption, there for all posterity to read as this yearbook is not only on his peers' bookshelves, but that of the Eisenhower Library as well:
"Today's Horoscope: You will have a bad hair day."
In our first year there, I finally convinced Bryan to let me by electric clippers so that I could give him his haircuts. There's nothing complicated about a high and tight, after all. And at $8 a haircut, the $32 paid for themselves in just 2 months. This was a no-brainer. Besides, Bryan was a student at the Command General Staff College. He spent most of his time with 20 peers in a classroom. There were no high-stakes briefs to be spit-shined for. Surely I could give him a haircut that would be a little better than 'good enough' if not 'as good' as he'd get on Post.
And besides, these clippers have different sized combs that are numbered, the lower the number, the closer the clip. There was no worry about getting the length "even"--these things are designed for idiots! I'd be fine.
All of this didn't quite convince him. But it mounted in such a way that he aquiessed. Every other week, I clipped his hair in our bathroom. With each haircut, his faith in this plan grew.
Then, one week, and I like to think that it happened on a Sunday night, late, when he told me, late, that he needed a haircut and so I was under a bit of duress, I clipped it too short. Was on a "tight" mode on the side and went up too "high" such that I had to make the top of his head a little "tighter" in order to avoid the creation of a mohawkish sort of look.
The next day, he went to class and his peers asked him, "Did you go to the Prison to get your hair cut?"
Oh, hah hah hah, guys and gals.
"It'll grow back," I told Bryan, when he reported this to me.
2 weeks later, guess what. No. You're wrong. Bryan did let me clip his hair again. "I learned my lesson!" I told him. And he's such a sweet, sweet man that he gave me another chance.
I didn't let him down. Over the next 2 haircuts.
On the third, I--was distracted? was too tired? was hungry? was in a hurry?--clipped the top of his head.
Without a comb over the razor.
DOH!
Well. There's only one way to fix a mistake like that. I shaved his whole head without a comb over the razor.
And apologized profusely.
The next day in class, his peers handed him a wad of cash and said, "We took up a collection to send you to a real barber."
I'm pretty sure the real reason Bryan held a garage sale that spring was to sell off those clippers.
At the end of the year, each class submitted their own photos and captions for their page in the CGSC yearbook. Their page included a picture of Bryan reading the paper (which he was also famous for--while others spent their downtime chatting, he spent his behind the pages of the Kansas City Star).
Below this photo was the caption, there for all posterity to read as this yearbook is not only on his peers' bookshelves, but that of the Eisenhower Library as well:
"Today's Horoscope: You will have a bad hair day."
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Land of Call Signs
I've been thinking of our time in Korea since last Sunday Storytime. Here's one that you haven't read yet, even if you did get my letters from Seoul.
18 June 2005
We’ve been married for 6 years now and I was thinking the other day about what I like most about doing the military thing. I’m pretty sure it’s the language of it. The military has one of its own, full of acronyms and shortened, unexpected names for things.
On Bryan’s ships, for instance, officers had to get qualified for different positions or duty stations and part of the process was sitting for an oral board with the senior officers. The custom is to bring an edible gift that will be eaten by the board as the examination proceeds. The gift is called, “Smack.” As in, “I have to bring some smack in for the board tomorrow.” Why do they call it “smack”? Because you’re kissing up.
When we have two of something that we only need one of, we call the second one a “battle spare.” When someone gets stuck talking to the motor mouth in the room and absorbs all the excessive chatter while the rest of us are freed up to enjoy the party, the guy who is stuck is called “canon fodder.”
It’s all so clever. I just love it.
And of course, there are the call signs. Pilots all have one because they need one. And they don’t get to choose them, either, so they are never cool like “Maverick” or “Ice Man.” Those are names that a twenty-two year old would pick for himself, not the name the guys you fly with want to use when talking to you at 30 thousand feet. No, real call signs finely blend an apt description with a fair amount of insensitivity.
One of our unaccompanied friends here is Charles, call sign “Hawk” because he’s bald, black and cut out of granite, much like the guy on Spencer for Hire.
One guy here is called “Panda” because he’s as overweight as the Air Force allows and pandas are the one creature on Earth that would rather eat than mate. (To this, Panda himself explains, “But I’ve got 3 kids, so don’t think it’s accurate.“)
Brad, a redhead on our cul-de-sac, is call signed “Archie.” Neil earned himself the call sign “Rude Boy” because of some bad gas he once passed in a two-man cockpit.
A pilot’s call sign travels with him, even when he’s not on a flying tour. I generally use an officer’s real name because using their special language feels too contrived, like a goody-two-shoes girl deciding to cuss. But sometimes a call sign suits a guy so well, I cannot resist it.
For instance, I started out calling one of our unaccompanied friends, “Todd,” as in “Todd Flesh,” but then I got to know him. He is big, out-going, blunt, and lovably crass. So I call him “Meat,” just as everyone else does. After all, this is the guy who declared at our dinner table that he and his wife had four children, but no more because he was “a fixed animal.”
Meat is an Airforce pilot, but this tour, he’s out of the cockpit and planning in Bryan’s office. He does two things almost every weekend: the first is hanging out with Lt. Col. Kim, who, after the Americans stopped going to the soju weekly parties, seized upon Meat as the fun-loving guy who couldn’t be a sucker for his wife like the other Americans. Kim routinely shows up at Meat’s place every Saturday morning to take him out on the town--hiking up mountains, trolling through the fish mart, hanging out at the major league ballpark to cheer on the Seoul All-Stars. Meat complains about this because Kim calls him “Fleshie” and because the camaraderie has made Kim feel so comfortable that he’ll show up drunk at Meat’s house at odd hours and crash somewhere inside, once even in Meat’s own bed.
When Meat is not with Kim, he is shopping. I’ve never known a man to shop as much as Meat does. His favorite excursion is taking the bus down to Ossan, the Air Force base about an hour and a half South of here if there’s no traffic. Most people on Post go down now and then, as the shopping is cheaper there, especially the tailoring of new uniforms. We knew we wanted to get there at least once, so one Saturday, Bryan and I packed up Gemma and drove down with Meat as our guide.
The highway down, like all the roads we’ve driven here, was in terrific shape. Not too much traffic, either. The landmark for our exit is the YKK factory. “They made your zipper, Amy,” Meat said.
I was un-nerved.
“Seriously. Look at your zipper.” I scooched down in the back seat, pulled my shirt up, my waist band down. Sonofagun. YKK.
“That’s a good trick for a party,” he said. “Bet anyone there that you know the letters on their zipper--it’s gonna be YKK. You show me 3 pairs of pants and I’ll bet you my left nut that at least one pair has a YKK zipper.”
“That’s pretty confident,” I said.
“Damn right I’m confident. I hear it’s something like 65% of zippers in the western hemisphere are YKK.”
“But you only bet on 33% odds.”
He shrugged. “It’s my left nut we’re talking about.”
So go ahead, people. Right now. Check your zippers. How about that, huh?
[UPDATE: In the comments section, people have begun checking in on their zippers. I put up a new poll so we can streamline this baby. Tell what's on your zipper!]
Our first stop on Base was their PX. It was at least 3 times bigger than ours and I was gushing with envy. It is one thing to be on Yongsan, thinking of everything that is back in the States that I cannot enjoy right now. It is another to see what the military families here get to enjoy. Their housing looked a lot better than hours. Their playgrounds were new. Sheesh. Air Force. Among the branches, there are rivalries and on-going jokes. What we say about the Air Force is that they build their houses and golf courses first, and then ask Congress for more money to build the airstrips. We ate lunch at Checkers, a restaurant the likes of which we don’t have either.
Then we left the Base to shop and I retracted every last drop of envy. There was basically just one street, several blocks long, with a few side streets connecting, all packed full of the stores Americans would want to shop at. Purse shops. Tailors. Trophy stores that custom make coins. It was just like our Itaewon district, only smaller and with no trace of the Russians. And aside from Itaewon, what was here? Nothing. No subway system sprawling throughout a cosmopolitan metropolis. Just a zipper factory a couple miles up the road.
Meat brought us to his favorite shop where they did a duo business of selling luggage and embroidering luggage tags. “I’ve gotten just about everyone at home some of these tags. They keep placing their orders like I’m the QVC or something.” He said this over his shoulder as he opened the door and stepped in.
All the girls behind the counter looked over and shouted, “Meatie!” at him and giggled.
“Hey ladies,” he said with a big grin. “These are my friends, Bryan and Amy and the baby. What’s the baby’s name again?”
We smiled, said “Anyang” and waited for the ensuing chorus of “She so cyuute!” No chorus. They hardly even noticed us. All eyes were on Meat. He is tall, broad shouldered, blonde, blue-eyed. Everything the typical Korean man is not.
Meat came along side me and said out the side of his mouth, “I want you to know I always wear my ring when I come down here.” Then he ordered more luggage tags. I ordered two for myself, and chose a Snoopy Fly Ace to go on it. Ordered a pink one for Gemma with a Hello Kitty. Bryan picked a boring Navy Blue one with an oak leaf, his rank.
They’d be done in an hour. Before we left, Meat and I took a look at full-sized roller bags, both intending to buy one. My approach to this kind of shopping is to pick out what I want, ask for a price, pose a counter-offer and gauge from the vendor’s reaction whether bargaining was welcome. I didn’t get a chance to pursue my approach because we figured that buying two together would get a better price and Meat told me he’d handle the negotiations.
Meat’s approach was to say, first, “These got YKK zippers? Because if it ain’t YKK, we’re out of here.”
The lady giggled and whined, kitty like, “I don’t know. . .”
“Got to be YKK! Got to stick with the home team, right?” He smiled at her and didn’t bother checking the zipper.
Meat followed his wind-up with, “Tell you what: If you can climb into this suitcase, and let me zip you up, I’ll buy it.”
She blushed and laughed and shook her head and said, “No, no!”
“Come on, come on. I bet you’d fit. Look how small you are.” He turned to me and said, “Look how small she is!” She kept laughing.
We left with a price quote that sounded standard to me, with no discount if we both bought one. Maybe the lady was just starting out hard with the intention of coming down once we came back to buy them.
We poked around the district for an hour. Ran into a guy the work with, Tom Timmerman, call sign “T2.” So I guess not all call signs are insensitive.
We returned to the luggage shop, the name of which I don’t know because we Americans don’t use the names of shops in this kind of district. We have, well, call signs for them. Like, “That luggage shop in Ossan, the second one on the right, across from the MacDonald’s,” or, “The purse guy in Itaewon who’s down the block from the money exchange before you hit the light at that antique place.” It occurs to me that being in a foreign country causes you to give nearly everything your own call sign. It’s either that or learn the language.
Meat and I picked out the bags we were interested in. The lady wouldn’t come down in price. But the price was the same out in the district. $35 for a full-sized roller bag was a better buy than I’d get in the States. Plus, I really did need a piece of luggage to get back there in the first place.
We bought them and paid for our tags. Mine said, “Ponce.”
“Not ‘Babyduck’?” Bryan asked, as we strolled out, rolling our bags behind us.
“Only you call me ’Babyduck.’” I said.
Meat’s tags said, “Meat.”
“Not ‘Meatie’?” I asked.
He grinned. Then he shrugged and said, “You get a better price if you flirt with them a little.”
“We paid full price!” I said.
He blushed. “Yeah. Might as well call me ‘Sucker.’”
18 June 2005
We’ve been married for 6 years now and I was thinking the other day about what I like most about doing the military thing. I’m pretty sure it’s the language of it. The military has one of its own, full of acronyms and shortened, unexpected names for things.
On Bryan’s ships, for instance, officers had to get qualified for different positions or duty stations and part of the process was sitting for an oral board with the senior officers. The custom is to bring an edible gift that will be eaten by the board as the examination proceeds. The gift is called, “Smack.” As in, “I have to bring some smack in for the board tomorrow.” Why do they call it “smack”? Because you’re kissing up.
When we have two of something that we only need one of, we call the second one a “battle spare.” When someone gets stuck talking to the motor mouth in the room and absorbs all the excessive chatter while the rest of us are freed up to enjoy the party, the guy who is stuck is called “canon fodder.”
It’s all so clever. I just love it.
And of course, there are the call signs. Pilots all have one because they need one. And they don’t get to choose them, either, so they are never cool like “Maverick” or “Ice Man.” Those are names that a twenty-two year old would pick for himself, not the name the guys you fly with want to use when talking to you at 30 thousand feet. No, real call signs finely blend an apt description with a fair amount of insensitivity.
One of our unaccompanied friends here is Charles, call sign “Hawk” because he’s bald, black and cut out of granite, much like the guy on Spencer for Hire.
One guy here is called “Panda” because he’s as overweight as the Air Force allows and pandas are the one creature on Earth that would rather eat than mate. (To this, Panda himself explains, “But I’ve got 3 kids, so don’t think it’s accurate.“)
Brad, a redhead on our cul-de-sac, is call signed “Archie.” Neil earned himself the call sign “Rude Boy” because of some bad gas he once passed in a two-man cockpit.
A pilot’s call sign travels with him, even when he’s not on a flying tour. I generally use an officer’s real name because using their special language feels too contrived, like a goody-two-shoes girl deciding to cuss. But sometimes a call sign suits a guy so well, I cannot resist it.
For instance, I started out calling one of our unaccompanied friends, “Todd,” as in “Todd Flesh,” but then I got to know him. He is big, out-going, blunt, and lovably crass. So I call him “Meat,” just as everyone else does. After all, this is the guy who declared at our dinner table that he and his wife had four children, but no more because he was “a fixed animal.”
Meat is an Airforce pilot, but this tour, he’s out of the cockpit and planning in Bryan’s office. He does two things almost every weekend: the first is hanging out with Lt. Col. Kim, who, after the Americans stopped going to the soju weekly parties, seized upon Meat as the fun-loving guy who couldn’t be a sucker for his wife like the other Americans. Kim routinely shows up at Meat’s place every Saturday morning to take him out on the town--hiking up mountains, trolling through the fish mart, hanging out at the major league ballpark to cheer on the Seoul All-Stars. Meat complains about this because Kim calls him “Fleshie” and because the camaraderie has made Kim feel so comfortable that he’ll show up drunk at Meat’s house at odd hours and crash somewhere inside, once even in Meat’s own bed.
When Meat is not with Kim, he is shopping. I’ve never known a man to shop as much as Meat does. His favorite excursion is taking the bus down to Ossan, the Air Force base about an hour and a half South of here if there’s no traffic. Most people on Post go down now and then, as the shopping is cheaper there, especially the tailoring of new uniforms. We knew we wanted to get there at least once, so one Saturday, Bryan and I packed up Gemma and drove down with Meat as our guide.
The highway down, like all the roads we’ve driven here, was in terrific shape. Not too much traffic, either. The landmark for our exit is the YKK factory. “They made your zipper, Amy,” Meat said.
I was un-nerved.
“Seriously. Look at your zipper.” I scooched down in the back seat, pulled my shirt up, my waist band down. Sonofagun. YKK.
“That’s a good trick for a party,” he said. “Bet anyone there that you know the letters on their zipper--it’s gonna be YKK. You show me 3 pairs of pants and I’ll bet you my left nut that at least one pair has a YKK zipper.”
“That’s pretty confident,” I said.
“Damn right I’m confident. I hear it’s something like 65% of zippers in the western hemisphere are YKK.”
“But you only bet on 33% odds.”
He shrugged. “It’s my left nut we’re talking about.”
So go ahead, people. Right now. Check your zippers. How about that, huh?
[UPDATE: In the comments section, people have begun checking in on their zippers. I put up a new poll so we can streamline this baby. Tell what's on your zipper!]
Our first stop on Base was their PX. It was at least 3 times bigger than ours and I was gushing with envy. It is one thing to be on Yongsan, thinking of everything that is back in the States that I cannot enjoy right now. It is another to see what the military families here get to enjoy. Their housing looked a lot better than hours. Their playgrounds were new. Sheesh. Air Force. Among the branches, there are rivalries and on-going jokes. What we say about the Air Force is that they build their houses and golf courses first, and then ask Congress for more money to build the airstrips. We ate lunch at Checkers, a restaurant the likes of which we don’t have either.
Then we left the Base to shop and I retracted every last drop of envy. There was basically just one street, several blocks long, with a few side streets connecting, all packed full of the stores Americans would want to shop at. Purse shops. Tailors. Trophy stores that custom make coins. It was just like our Itaewon district, only smaller and with no trace of the Russians. And aside from Itaewon, what was here? Nothing. No subway system sprawling throughout a cosmopolitan metropolis. Just a zipper factory a couple miles up the road.
Meat brought us to his favorite shop where they did a duo business of selling luggage and embroidering luggage tags. “I’ve gotten just about everyone at home some of these tags. They keep placing their orders like I’m the QVC or something.” He said this over his shoulder as he opened the door and stepped in.
All the girls behind the counter looked over and shouted, “Meatie!” at him and giggled.
“Hey ladies,” he said with a big grin. “These are my friends, Bryan and Amy and the baby. What’s the baby’s name again?”
We smiled, said “Anyang” and waited for the ensuing chorus of “She so cyuute!” No chorus. They hardly even noticed us. All eyes were on Meat. He is tall, broad shouldered, blonde, blue-eyed. Everything the typical Korean man is not.
Meat came along side me and said out the side of his mouth, “I want you to know I always wear my ring when I come down here.” Then he ordered more luggage tags. I ordered two for myself, and chose a Snoopy Fly Ace to go on it. Ordered a pink one for Gemma with a Hello Kitty. Bryan picked a boring Navy Blue one with an oak leaf, his rank.
They’d be done in an hour. Before we left, Meat and I took a look at full-sized roller bags, both intending to buy one. My approach to this kind of shopping is to pick out what I want, ask for a price, pose a counter-offer and gauge from the vendor’s reaction whether bargaining was welcome. I didn’t get a chance to pursue my approach because we figured that buying two together would get a better price and Meat told me he’d handle the negotiations.
Meat’s approach was to say, first, “These got YKK zippers? Because if it ain’t YKK, we’re out of here.”
The lady giggled and whined, kitty like, “I don’t know. . .”
“Got to be YKK! Got to stick with the home team, right?” He smiled at her and didn’t bother checking the zipper.
Meat followed his wind-up with, “Tell you what: If you can climb into this suitcase, and let me zip you up, I’ll buy it.”
She blushed and laughed and shook her head and said, “No, no!”
“Come on, come on. I bet you’d fit. Look how small you are.” He turned to me and said, “Look how small she is!” She kept laughing.
We left with a price quote that sounded standard to me, with no discount if we both bought one. Maybe the lady was just starting out hard with the intention of coming down once we came back to buy them.
We poked around the district for an hour. Ran into a guy the work with, Tom Timmerman, call sign “T2.” So I guess not all call signs are insensitive.
We returned to the luggage shop, the name of which I don’t know because we Americans don’t use the names of shops in this kind of district. We have, well, call signs for them. Like, “That luggage shop in Ossan, the second one on the right, across from the MacDonald’s,” or, “The purse guy in Itaewon who’s down the block from the money exchange before you hit the light at that antique place.” It occurs to me that being in a foreign country causes you to give nearly everything your own call sign. It’s either that or learn the language.
Meat and I picked out the bags we were interested in. The lady wouldn’t come down in price. But the price was the same out in the district. $35 for a full-sized roller bag was a better buy than I’d get in the States. Plus, I really did need a piece of luggage to get back there in the first place.
We bought them and paid for our tags. Mine said, “Ponce.”
“Not ‘Babyduck’?” Bryan asked, as we strolled out, rolling our bags behind us.
“Only you call me ’Babyduck.’” I said.
Meat’s tags said, “Meat.”
“Not ‘Meatie’?” I asked.
He grinned. Then he shrugged and said, “You get a better price if you flirt with them a little.”
“We paid full price!” I said.
He blushed. “Yeah. Might as well call me ‘Sucker.’”
Sunday, August 9, 2009
The Wrestler
For today's Sunday Storytime, I'm opening the vault and pulling out a tale told a few years ago, while we were in Korea. A friend from that Post e-mailed recently and commented that my egg toss story reminded her of Oktoberfest in the Fall of '04. This made me a bit nastalgic.
And so I present to you an excerpt from a letter I wrote back then, when Gemma was not quite 1 year old and our situation actually felt like a somewhat tough one to endure.
On Saturday, we attended the October Fest, thrown at the Dragon Hill hotel here on Post. The food was really good, served by Korean women dressed in St. Pauly Girl outfits. And this is how it is in Korea: I see something that looks mostly right, but there is some visual cue about some scenes that rings in the back of my mind. And after a few seconds, I snap my fingers and say, “That’s what’s different!” Like, for instance, women who are all of 100 pounds with no curves wearing dresses that hung like drapes on them.
And to see a Korean man in lederhosen? Good stuff. Good stuff, I tell you.
After we ate, the fun began with a women’s arm-wrestling contest. Why not, right? I hoist 23 pounds of curly-haired love all day long, surely I could hold my own.
In the first round, I wrestled a woman in her late 40’s who was very small. My victory was a matter of seconds. I happened to have known her from my Bible study on Wednesdays, and when I saw her there later in the week, I pointed at her and shouted, “I owned you, Sally!”
In the second round, the semi-finals, I wrestled a woman who was at least 5’10” with proportionately long arms. She was also strong, as in, I could see some serious buffitude on her arms. My odds were not so good.
But then I thought back to my basketball days, when our coach used to caution us, “Get your brain in the game and if don’t, you STINK!” and I thought, “Where is the strategy in this game?”
As with so many things in life, it’s in the wrist. And when we matched up, and heard the official say “1 2 3,” I went for her wrist and bent it back immediately. From there, it was easy to get her to the 10 o’clock position.
And from there, nothing was easy. She was so strong. After a minute of standstill at 10 o’clock, the other match had ended, and a small circle of people had gathered closer to watch us. After the second minute of this standstill, the crowd had grown and I sensed an immense Mommy-power-contingent rooting for me. Come to find out, they had asked Bryan my name and organized a loud chant for me.
After the third minute, I considered throwing up. I was squeezing out energy from every single muscle in my body, which seems unlikely since it looks like only the arms are working. Believe me, it’s a full-body work-out.
I decided not to throw up. I decided to breath a little more and, with the huge advantage of her bent wrist and my current lead, decided that I just needed to wait her out.
At which point, people started yelling crazy things such as, “Just DOOOO it!!” And Bryan was piping in a somewhat familiar charge, “Push, Amy!! PUUUUSH!!”
After the 4th minute, I began to consider whether the wait-it-out strategy would work. Maybe “Just Do It” and “Push” would be better. So I tried, friends. I tried to “do” it. I tried to push. But the funny thing about arm wrestling is that there is another person resisting your best efforts. And resist she did. Until this slight fraction of a second, I felt her let up to, what? Re-grip? I wasn’t sure. But I seized upon the moment and launched an offensive and soon enough, I had her to 9 o’clock, just centimeters from defeat.
She somehow held me off. We looked across the table, into each others eyes. I was trying to send her a message, “Just end this. Are you crazy? Do you see what a spectacle we’ve become? Do you really think you’re going to make a comeback?”
And her eyes were saying back to me, “I’m surprised at how much I hate you.”
The 5th minute loomed ahead. The official stated, matter-of-fact, “OK, ladies, you have to end this now,” and with one final exertion I did.
The crowd went wild.
I had conquered tall, long-armed, buff-lady, and though she shook my hand soon after, she did not smile and I knew she suffered mightily to have been bested by one so small, short-armed and un-buff.
The glory was short-lived. The mommies in the audience were still cheering madly, Parin was holding Gemma up so she could “see how cool her mommy is!” and as I reveled in it and stumbled towards the finalists’ table, the fresh-faced, really buff, other finalist sat down with a huge smile. She’d won her two matches in seconds, and now she sat to wrestle me.
But there was no more fight in this dog, friend. I shook my arm a lot, and I sat down, hoping that my opponent did not know about the wrist thing.
She did.
And she beat me in under 3 seconds.
I did win a $15 gift certificate to any of the hotel’s restaurants. Bryan later participated in the nailing contest. The winner of that one was done pounding his 8 nails while every other guy was still holding at least 4 to go. Bryan was the runner-up, and got a $10 certificate. So this wasn’t a bad haul.
Then we strolled to the balcony and watched the Post fireworks display. Gemma was impressed by the sounds and colors. I was a celebrity that evening as people kept congratulating me for my efforts, saying they should have given me time to “rest-up” before the finals.
October Fest in Korea. Who would have guessed?
And so I present to you an excerpt from a letter I wrote back then, when Gemma was not quite 1 year old and our situation actually felt like a somewhat tough one to endure.
On Saturday, we attended the October Fest, thrown at the Dragon Hill hotel here on Post. The food was really good, served by Korean women dressed in St. Pauly Girl outfits. And this is how it is in Korea: I see something that looks mostly right, but there is some visual cue about some scenes that rings in the back of my mind. And after a few seconds, I snap my fingers and say, “That’s what’s different!” Like, for instance, women who are all of 100 pounds with no curves wearing dresses that hung like drapes on them.
And to see a Korean man in lederhosen? Good stuff. Good stuff, I tell you.
After we ate, the fun began with a women’s arm-wrestling contest. Why not, right? I hoist 23 pounds of curly-haired love all day long, surely I could hold my own.
In the first round, I wrestled a woman in her late 40’s who was very small. My victory was a matter of seconds. I happened to have known her from my Bible study on Wednesdays, and when I saw her there later in the week, I pointed at her and shouted, “I owned you, Sally!”
In the second round, the semi-finals, I wrestled a woman who was at least 5’10” with proportionately long arms. She was also strong, as in, I could see some serious buffitude on her arms. My odds were not so good.
But then I thought back to my basketball days, when our coach used to caution us, “Get your brain in the game and if don’t, you STINK!” and I thought, “Where is the strategy in this game?”
As with so many things in life, it’s in the wrist. And when we matched up, and heard the official say “1 2 3,” I went for her wrist and bent it back immediately. From there, it was easy to get her to the 10 o’clock position.
And from there, nothing was easy. She was so strong. After a minute of standstill at 10 o’clock, the other match had ended, and a small circle of people had gathered closer to watch us. After the second minute of this standstill, the crowd had grown and I sensed an immense Mommy-power-contingent rooting for me. Come to find out, they had asked Bryan my name and organized a loud chant for me.
After the third minute, I considered throwing up. I was squeezing out energy from every single muscle in my body, which seems unlikely since it looks like only the arms are working. Believe me, it’s a full-body work-out.
I decided not to throw up. I decided to breath a little more and, with the huge advantage of her bent wrist and my current lead, decided that I just needed to wait her out.
At which point, people started yelling crazy things such as, “Just DOOOO it!!” And Bryan was piping in a somewhat familiar charge, “Push, Amy!! PUUUUSH!!”
After the 4th minute, I began to consider whether the wait-it-out strategy would work. Maybe “Just Do It” and “Push” would be better. So I tried, friends. I tried to “do” it. I tried to push. But the funny thing about arm wrestling is that there is another person resisting your best efforts. And resist she did. Until this slight fraction of a second, I felt her let up to, what? Re-grip? I wasn’t sure. But I seized upon the moment and launched an offensive and soon enough, I had her to 9 o’clock, just centimeters from defeat.
She somehow held me off. We looked across the table, into each others eyes. I was trying to send her a message, “Just end this. Are you crazy? Do you see what a spectacle we’ve become? Do you really think you’re going to make a comeback?”
And her eyes were saying back to me, “I’m surprised at how much I hate you.”
The 5th minute loomed ahead. The official stated, matter-of-fact, “OK, ladies, you have to end this now,” and with one final exertion I did.
The crowd went wild.
I had conquered tall, long-armed, buff-lady, and though she shook my hand soon after, she did not smile and I knew she suffered mightily to have been bested by one so small, short-armed and un-buff.
The glory was short-lived. The mommies in the audience were still cheering madly, Parin was holding Gemma up so she could “see how cool her mommy is!” and as I reveled in it and stumbled towards the finalists’ table, the fresh-faced, really buff, other finalist sat down with a huge smile. She’d won her two matches in seconds, and now she sat to wrestle me.
But there was no more fight in this dog, friend. I shook my arm a lot, and I sat down, hoping that my opponent did not know about the wrist thing.
She did.
And she beat me in under 3 seconds.
I did win a $15 gift certificate to any of the hotel’s restaurants. Bryan later participated in the nailing contest. The winner of that one was done pounding his 8 nails while every other guy was still holding at least 4 to go. Bryan was the runner-up, and got a $10 certificate. So this wasn’t a bad haul.
Then we strolled to the balcony and watched the Post fireworks display. Gemma was impressed by the sounds and colors. I was a celebrity that evening as people kept congratulating me for my efforts, saying they should have given me time to “rest-up” before the finals.
October Fest in Korea. Who would have guessed?
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Kiss and Tell
Try to guess: Who is my favorite person in all the Armed Forces?
No, not Bryan. Too obvious. Plus, I don't think of him as an Armed Forces guy.
No, not Mayfield. He's a contender, to be sure. Easily Top 5.
No, not Mitchell, a name only family friends would recognize as he is a long-time friend through one of my sisters. He was the first military person in my life, and I'll never forget how he picked me up after school one day in his black Camero to the astonishment of my 7th grade peers. I felt very cool that day.
Sorry, Suzanne, not you, either, though if you were still active duty, you would be.
Not Don, though his wife Carlynn is my favorite spouse of an Armed Forces guy. This was the couple that first taught me the use of the word "heifer" in reference to rude people who offend us. Thanks, guys!
All very, very worthy nominees. There are many more I could honorably mention, but this is Sunday Storytime, and I must get down to business.
My favorite person in the Armed Forces is Colonel Putko, Bryan's boss. He's reading this blog, and so he gets the title. Kidding! Kidding! He is most assuredly not reading my blog, and though I am a lot of things, I am not the kind of wife who would so shamelessly kiss up.
He is my favorite because the day Bryan shared the news with him and the other people at work who needed to know, Putko called Bryan into his office and told him, commanding officer to subordinate, that he was under orders to make his family the very top priority. Whatever Bryan needed to do for me and the kids, whatever time away that required, he should do.
And as Bryan took off lots and lots of time over the last 2 months, he felt nothing but support from all the people at work. Putko even went out of his way to tell Bryan last week that though he had been gone a lot of hours, he hadn't "missed a beat" in terms of his productivity and duties and that Putko really appreciated the effort.
Bryan is the kind of guy who needed to hear this from his CO in explicit terms. If he hadn't, he would have felt very torn between two duties. This is just the way he's built, and so this is why I love Colonel Putko. He freed Bryan up to be the husband he wanted to be.
We went to the "company" picnic on Friday. (No, it's not really a company. But my other option was to tell you we went to the JFCC-IMD picnic on Friday. Why be haphazard with the acronyms?) We walked up to him and I asked, "Colonel Putko?" and he stuck his hand out and said, "Chris" (because all these guys are all about first-named-basis with the spouses--no rank here!) and I said, "But you are Colonel Putko, right?"
He nodded and smiled, and I said, "I have to hug you! Thank you so much!" and he hugged me back and said, "Of course, what are you kidding me? Come on!"
Then we took a picture with him.
I'll tell you more about the picnic later this week. But let's go, Amy, get to storytime already!
Today's story is about the first time I met Colonel Putko. It was mid-November. Bryan and I went to the retirement party of the guy Putko replaced. They had all just finished one of their long exercises. These are very elaborate war games, played out through computer simulations, executed all the way to the top as though it were the real deal and, short of a real missile crisis and/or war involving inter-continental missiles, these exercises are as big a deal as it gets.
I submit to you, quite humbly, that Bryan is a very key player in this command come exercise time.
The stage is set then. All the people working at this command have just come off one of these things. It went very, very well. This was the first time the new Colonel in town had seen his new team function.
At this party, Putko came towards our table, and told me, "Turn away! Don't look at this."
So, of course, I looked as he bent down and kissed Bryan. A big one. Right on the neck. Then he shouted, "I can't help it! I love this kid!" And then he walked away.
This was the first time I'd ever seen Bryan blush.
Then it was time for the toasts and talks. After everyone else offered their parting remarks to the honoree, the departing Colonel stood to offer his own. At this kind of thing, the guy who's leaving makes a point of thanking people by name, in public, and so on. . . The retiring Colonel got to Bryan and said, "And Bryan, I just can't say enough about this kid and his work. I just love him--"
At which point Putko shouted out, from the front of the room, "So do I!"
All heads swiveled towards his voice. Then he shouted, "I even kissed him!"
All heads swiveled towards Bryan.
Bryan blushed again.
And since then, it's been our little joke in the house. When Bryan had to go to DC with Putko for some conference, I said, "I think I should go just to chaperon." Or Bryan will mention how he happened to ride the shuttle to the parking lot with Putko and I'll ask, "Did you two make out in the back of the bus?"
It's all good. What can I say? Colonel Putko? I love that kid! I even hugged him!
No, not Bryan. Too obvious. Plus, I don't think of him as an Armed Forces guy.
No, not Mayfield. He's a contender, to be sure. Easily Top 5.
No, not Mitchell, a name only family friends would recognize as he is a long-time friend through one of my sisters. He was the first military person in my life, and I'll never forget how he picked me up after school one day in his black Camero to the astonishment of my 7th grade peers. I felt very cool that day.
Sorry, Suzanne, not you, either, though if you were still active duty, you would be.
Not Don, though his wife Carlynn is my favorite spouse of an Armed Forces guy. This was the couple that first taught me the use of the word "heifer" in reference to rude people who offend us. Thanks, guys!
All very, very worthy nominees. There are many more I could honorably mention, but this is Sunday Storytime, and I must get down to business.
My favorite person in the Armed Forces is Colonel Putko, Bryan's boss. He's reading this blog, and so he gets the title. Kidding! Kidding! He is most assuredly not reading my blog, and though I am a lot of things, I am not the kind of wife who would so shamelessly kiss up.
He is my favorite because the day Bryan shared the news with him and the other people at work who needed to know, Putko called Bryan into his office and told him, commanding officer to subordinate, that he was under orders to make his family the very top priority. Whatever Bryan needed to do for me and the kids, whatever time away that required, he should do.
And as Bryan took off lots and lots of time over the last 2 months, he felt nothing but support from all the people at work. Putko even went out of his way to tell Bryan last week that though he had been gone a lot of hours, he hadn't "missed a beat" in terms of his productivity and duties and that Putko really appreciated the effort.
Bryan is the kind of guy who needed to hear this from his CO in explicit terms. If he hadn't, he would have felt very torn between two duties. This is just the way he's built, and so this is why I love Colonel Putko. He freed Bryan up to be the husband he wanted to be.
We went to the "company" picnic on Friday. (No, it's not really a company. But my other option was to tell you we went to the JFCC-IMD picnic on Friday. Why be haphazard with the acronyms?) We walked up to him and I asked, "Colonel Putko?" and he stuck his hand out and said, "Chris" (because all these guys are all about first-named-basis with the spouses--no rank here!) and I said, "But you are Colonel Putko, right?"
He nodded and smiled, and I said, "I have to hug you! Thank you so much!" and he hugged me back and said, "Of course, what are you kidding me? Come on!"
Then we took a picture with him.
I'll tell you more about the picnic later this week. But let's go, Amy, get to storytime already!
Today's story is about the first time I met Colonel Putko. It was mid-November. Bryan and I went to the retirement party of the guy Putko replaced. They had all just finished one of their long exercises. These are very elaborate war games, played out through computer simulations, executed all the way to the top as though it were the real deal and, short of a real missile crisis and/or war involving inter-continental missiles, these exercises are as big a deal as it gets.
I submit to you, quite humbly, that Bryan is a very key player in this command come exercise time.
The stage is set then. All the people working at this command have just come off one of these things. It went very, very well. This was the first time the new Colonel in town had seen his new team function.
At this party, Putko came towards our table, and told me, "Turn away! Don't look at this."
So, of course, I looked as he bent down and kissed Bryan. A big one. Right on the neck. Then he shouted, "I can't help it! I love this kid!" And then he walked away.
This was the first time I'd ever seen Bryan blush.
Then it was time for the toasts and talks. After everyone else offered their parting remarks to the honoree, the departing Colonel stood to offer his own. At this kind of thing, the guy who's leaving makes a point of thanking people by name, in public, and so on. . . The retiring Colonel got to Bryan and said, "And Bryan, I just can't say enough about this kid and his work. I just love him--"
At which point Putko shouted out, from the front of the room, "So do I!"
All heads swiveled towards his voice. Then he shouted, "I even kissed him!"
All heads swiveled towards Bryan.
Bryan blushed again.
And since then, it's been our little joke in the house. When Bryan had to go to DC with Putko for some conference, I said, "I think I should go just to chaperon." Or Bryan will mention how he happened to ride the shuttle to the parking lot with Putko and I'll ask, "Did you two make out in the back of the bus?"
It's all good. What can I say? Colonel Putko? I love that kid! I even hugged him!
Sunday, July 26, 2009
The Homewrecker
Summer of '95. I was working at the same summer job I held throughout college: parkway restoration for the Elmhurst Forestry Department.
I loved that job. I was outside all day, got to talk with my co-workers as we worked, got to drive dump trucks and tractors around town. Mostly, we fixed the damage from the water main breaks that had happened all winter long, or fixed damage to lawns caused by a city crew having removed a tree. I pulled up with my crew, scooped out all the bad stuff, threw down good dirt, planted seed and moved on.
Two things made the job extra fun for me. The first is that special tasks came up often--like maybe a resident had been particularly onerous and demanding, or the job was something other than parkway restoration, but not big enough to be worthy of the attention of the full-timers--and I was the boss's go-to girl for these special missions. The second is that I was surrounded by characters. Funny, somewhat peculiar men worked in that department and I have 5 summers of experience with them that is stranger than fiction.
These two circumstances converged one morning when Harold, the boss, sent me and Critter out to an address on Park Avenue to remove a load of woodchips.
"Critter" is the name of a part-timer who was my age. He was married with no children--got "hitched" at age 18 because "there's a lot of VD out there"--and in addition to working his two part-time jobs, he avidly pursued his other interest, a radio shock-jock called ManCow.
"Avid pursuit" because he'd take days off work to go down to ManCow's studio to snap photos of him and turn them into ManCow trading cards. "Avid" because he mowed the word "ManCow" into his grandmother's back lawn, took a picture of it from the attic, and then framed it as a gift for ManCow.
So Critter had his quirks. Next to these, he had some good qualities, too. He was a kind person, pretty funny, interesting to talk to. And--not sure if this is a quirk or a quality--he deeply believed that it was immoral for a man to allow a woman to work harder than he does. So if I used a square nose to thrown down dirt, Critter would use a giant coal shovel. Our boss didn't know this. All he knew was that the male crew leaders always complained about what a slacker Critter was. And that when Critter was on my crew, we got a lot done.
The lady on Park Avenue had ordered a load of wood chips. The city delivered these for free to residents. When a full-timer's truck was filled with chips after a tree removal or a lot of trimming, instead of dumping it onto the city's pile, he'd dump it on the resident's driveway apron. The particular Park Avenue resident insisted that Roy back his truck up her driveway and dump the chips in her backyard. He explained that this was a bad idea--risk to property, etc--but she'd have none of it and after a series of angry calls to city hall, Roy was ordered to comply.
He dumped them. She looked at the chips and said, "I don't want these."
They didn't look like the crisp, winter chips she had seen her neighbor get. They were summer chips, with foliage chopped up and spread throughout. Roy tried to explain that the city doesn't pick up chips once they are dumped. But after a series of angry phone calls to city hall, Critter and I were ordered to go pick them up the next morning.
We were there by 7:20 AM. Truck and front-loading tractor parked at the curb. The eight cubic yards of chips loomed up the driveway that was shared by the two brick houses. I rang the doorbell and the resident told me to go ahead and get the chips, but first, ask her neighbor who shared the driveway whether she wanted them for herself.
This annoyed me. What was with this lady? Then I figured I would enjoy ringing someone's doorbell at 7:20 AM and blaming it on the neighbor, so I did.
This other lady didn't want the woodchips. But she did have a question. The tree on her front lawn was dead. What should she do?
I explained that because it was on her private property and not the parkway, it was solely her responsibility, that she could call such and such number to ask for a tree removal service recommendation, or just look in her phone book, and then I briefly explained the different kinds of price quotes she could ask for, depending on how much she wanted done. I said it all with a smile on my face, and I enjoyed feeling like such a know-it-all.
Then I heard Critter say, "Or. . ."
The lady and I turned to look at him. He was leaning against her porch railing, smoking. "Or, you could plant moss on it and then it would be a dead tree that's green."
I rolled my eyes but then noticed the lady's interest was peaked. He carried on, telling her that it was a popular option nowadays, that she could buy the moss at any nursery, that it made a wonderful new habitat for "suburban micro-wildlife."
After she thanked us and shut the door, I said, "Critter?!"
He shrugged and said, "I think it'd look cool." This guy. His BS was going to get us into trouble one day.
ManCow was broadcasting at this hour, so Critter wanted me to operate the tractor while he wore his earphones and used the coal shovel to scoop chips into the front bucket. Fine. No problem.
This tractor was old. And lurchy. But if you were careful with the clutch, you could get a smooth enough ride. I navigated up the driveway, very wary of the houses on the sides, noting that I didn't have much space to play with. I filled the bucket, Critter topped me off, I backed down very slowly, very carefully, dumped the chips into our truck.
Then back up the driveway, carefully, but realizing that, actually, there was more room on each side that I'd thought. Fill the bucket, back down, carefully, but not as slowly because there was actually plenty of room to work with.
Dumped the chips. Back up to the top. Critter stuck his cigarette in his mouth to use two hands to top me off. Into reverse, headed back down and then CLUNK.
The bucket slammed into the corner of the first lady's house.
I froze. The tractor stopped moving. I peered around the post of the cab and saw that three of the bricks were gouged, their clay shards lay on the driveway.
I didn't know what to do. What was I going to do? I can't believe I'd just done that. What was I going to do?
I continued backwards, slowly now, though I was panicked, and I hadn't noticed that the whole load had shifted in the bucket, that now there was a big stick poking out of the left side. I didn't see this until I saw it stabbing at the window screen as I passed by it, stabbing so hard it poked the screen into what turned out to be the bathroom where, I could see, the man of the house was showering.
Insert f-bomb here.
My escape plan crystallized: We were just one load of chips from having a full truck and we'd have to go dump it before getting the rest. I would hurry up and get the last bucket, and by the time we got back from dumping, these people will have been off to work. I hoped.
I emptied the bucket, headed back up the driveway for just one more and Critter jogged over to meet me as I pulled up. He stepped up to the cab, blew smoke out the side of his mouth and then turned to me to say, "The window will be easy to fix."
"Just fill the bucket, and let's get out of here!"
He smiled at me and then made of point of sauntering back to the pile. Critter had a plan that seemed more fun to him than making a quick get-away.
The bucket was filled just as the guy came out in his robe and black dress socks. I didn't let him catch my eye and instead, backed out with the utmost care.
From the street, I watched Critter talk to him. The resident was pointing at the corner of his house, waving frantically. Critter was nodding, leaning with one arm on his shovel, taking drags off his cigarette with great calm. Then Critter used the cigarette hand to point to the house and gesture with authority about something and nod knowingly. Then he stuck the butt into his mouth and shook the guy's hand with great manly aplomb. The guy went inside. Critter came down the driveway.
He climbed into the cab and we were off. I didn't want to ask, but I had to ask. I listened to the truck slide through its gears, wondering how long I could make myself wait. And then, several blocks away, I said, "What'd you tell him?"
Critter turned to me with a half-smile, amused not that I wanted to know but that I finally had a vested interest in what he'd come up with.
"Well," Critter began, "I told him this would not be a problem. That we would color match the brick to our supply back at the shop and that a couple building maintenance guys would come back out with a house jack. This is a hydraulic tool that you insert into support beams or corners. It puts the pressure up and down so that we can cut out the middle, damaged bricks and then insert the new ones. Piece of cake. Told him we'd put the order in right away."
Silence in the cab. Just the loud hum of the truck engine.
"Critter," I made myself ask, "Is there any such thing as a house jack?"
"Oh, hell no!" he said.
I was expecting that incident to end my time at Forestry. I told Harold what had happened. But Rich, a full-timer who is still a good friend of mine today, interceded. This was not my fault, Rich argued. This was the City Manager's fault. He's the one who caved into a whining resident and forced the workers to violate city policy and this was the very reason we even had the policy: to avoid damage to residential property.
Yeah! That's right!
The residents were gone by the time we were back to get the rest of the chips. Building Maintenance guys did go up there, but all they could do was paint the gouge with a sealant. Critter never had to explain about the house jack. And word spread around the shop very quickly about how Amy Ferrone had screwed up so badly.
But I kept my job, and was around the whole rest of the summer whence I bore a new nickname: The Homewrecker.
I loved that job. I was outside all day, got to talk with my co-workers as we worked, got to drive dump trucks and tractors around town. Mostly, we fixed the damage from the water main breaks that had happened all winter long, or fixed damage to lawns caused by a city crew having removed a tree. I pulled up with my crew, scooped out all the bad stuff, threw down good dirt, planted seed and moved on.
Two things made the job extra fun for me. The first is that special tasks came up often--like maybe a resident had been particularly onerous and demanding, or the job was something other than parkway restoration, but not big enough to be worthy of the attention of the full-timers--and I was the boss's go-to girl for these special missions. The second is that I was surrounded by characters. Funny, somewhat peculiar men worked in that department and I have 5 summers of experience with them that is stranger than fiction.
These two circumstances converged one morning when Harold, the boss, sent me and Critter out to an address on Park Avenue to remove a load of woodchips.
"Critter" is the name of a part-timer who was my age. He was married with no children--got "hitched" at age 18 because "there's a lot of VD out there"--and in addition to working his two part-time jobs, he avidly pursued his other interest, a radio shock-jock called ManCow.
"Avid pursuit" because he'd take days off work to go down to ManCow's studio to snap photos of him and turn them into ManCow trading cards. "Avid" because he mowed the word "ManCow" into his grandmother's back lawn, took a picture of it from the attic, and then framed it as a gift for ManCow.
So Critter had his quirks. Next to these, he had some good qualities, too. He was a kind person, pretty funny, interesting to talk to. And--not sure if this is a quirk or a quality--he deeply believed that it was immoral for a man to allow a woman to work harder than he does. So if I used a square nose to thrown down dirt, Critter would use a giant coal shovel. Our boss didn't know this. All he knew was that the male crew leaders always complained about what a slacker Critter was. And that when Critter was on my crew, we got a lot done.
The lady on Park Avenue had ordered a load of wood chips. The city delivered these for free to residents. When a full-timer's truck was filled with chips after a tree removal or a lot of trimming, instead of dumping it onto the city's pile, he'd dump it on the resident's driveway apron. The particular Park Avenue resident insisted that Roy back his truck up her driveway and dump the chips in her backyard. He explained that this was a bad idea--risk to property, etc--but she'd have none of it and after a series of angry calls to city hall, Roy was ordered to comply.
He dumped them. She looked at the chips and said, "I don't want these."
They didn't look like the crisp, winter chips she had seen her neighbor get. They were summer chips, with foliage chopped up and spread throughout. Roy tried to explain that the city doesn't pick up chips once they are dumped. But after a series of angry phone calls to city hall, Critter and I were ordered to go pick them up the next morning.
We were there by 7:20 AM. Truck and front-loading tractor parked at the curb. The eight cubic yards of chips loomed up the driveway that was shared by the two brick houses. I rang the doorbell and the resident told me to go ahead and get the chips, but first, ask her neighbor who shared the driveway whether she wanted them for herself.
This annoyed me. What was with this lady? Then I figured I would enjoy ringing someone's doorbell at 7:20 AM and blaming it on the neighbor, so I did.
This other lady didn't want the woodchips. But she did have a question. The tree on her front lawn was dead. What should she do?
I explained that because it was on her private property and not the parkway, it was solely her responsibility, that she could call such and such number to ask for a tree removal service recommendation, or just look in her phone book, and then I briefly explained the different kinds of price quotes she could ask for, depending on how much she wanted done. I said it all with a smile on my face, and I enjoyed feeling like such a know-it-all.
Then I heard Critter say, "Or. . ."
The lady and I turned to look at him. He was leaning against her porch railing, smoking. "Or, you could plant moss on it and then it would be a dead tree that's green."
I rolled my eyes but then noticed the lady's interest was peaked. He carried on, telling her that it was a popular option nowadays, that she could buy the moss at any nursery, that it made a wonderful new habitat for "suburban micro-wildlife."
After she thanked us and shut the door, I said, "Critter?!"
He shrugged and said, "I think it'd look cool." This guy. His BS was going to get us into trouble one day.
ManCow was broadcasting at this hour, so Critter wanted me to operate the tractor while he wore his earphones and used the coal shovel to scoop chips into the front bucket. Fine. No problem.
This tractor was old. And lurchy. But if you were careful with the clutch, you could get a smooth enough ride. I navigated up the driveway, very wary of the houses on the sides, noting that I didn't have much space to play with. I filled the bucket, Critter topped me off, I backed down very slowly, very carefully, dumped the chips into our truck.
Then back up the driveway, carefully, but realizing that, actually, there was more room on each side that I'd thought. Fill the bucket, back down, carefully, but not as slowly because there was actually plenty of room to work with.
Dumped the chips. Back up to the top. Critter stuck his cigarette in his mouth to use two hands to top me off. Into reverse, headed back down and then CLUNK.
The bucket slammed into the corner of the first lady's house.
I froze. The tractor stopped moving. I peered around the post of the cab and saw that three of the bricks were gouged, their clay shards lay on the driveway.
I didn't know what to do. What was I going to do? I can't believe I'd just done that. What was I going to do?
I continued backwards, slowly now, though I was panicked, and I hadn't noticed that the whole load had shifted in the bucket, that now there was a big stick poking out of the left side. I didn't see this until I saw it stabbing at the window screen as I passed by it, stabbing so hard it poked the screen into what turned out to be the bathroom where, I could see, the man of the house was showering.
Insert f-bomb here.
My escape plan crystallized: We were just one load of chips from having a full truck and we'd have to go dump it before getting the rest. I would hurry up and get the last bucket, and by the time we got back from dumping, these people will have been off to work. I hoped.
I emptied the bucket, headed back up the driveway for just one more and Critter jogged over to meet me as I pulled up. He stepped up to the cab, blew smoke out the side of his mouth and then turned to me to say, "The window will be easy to fix."
"Just fill the bucket, and let's get out of here!"
He smiled at me and then made of point of sauntering back to the pile. Critter had a plan that seemed more fun to him than making a quick get-away.
The bucket was filled just as the guy came out in his robe and black dress socks. I didn't let him catch my eye and instead, backed out with the utmost care.
From the street, I watched Critter talk to him. The resident was pointing at the corner of his house, waving frantically. Critter was nodding, leaning with one arm on his shovel, taking drags off his cigarette with great calm. Then Critter used the cigarette hand to point to the house and gesture with authority about something and nod knowingly. Then he stuck the butt into his mouth and shook the guy's hand with great manly aplomb. The guy went inside. Critter came down the driveway.
He climbed into the cab and we were off. I didn't want to ask, but I had to ask. I listened to the truck slide through its gears, wondering how long I could make myself wait. And then, several blocks away, I said, "What'd you tell him?"
Critter turned to me with a half-smile, amused not that I wanted to know but that I finally had a vested interest in what he'd come up with.
"Well," Critter began, "I told him this would not be a problem. That we would color match the brick to our supply back at the shop and that a couple building maintenance guys would come back out with a house jack. This is a hydraulic tool that you insert into support beams or corners. It puts the pressure up and down so that we can cut out the middle, damaged bricks and then insert the new ones. Piece of cake. Told him we'd put the order in right away."
Silence in the cab. Just the loud hum of the truck engine.
"Critter," I made myself ask, "Is there any such thing as a house jack?"
"Oh, hell no!" he said.
I was expecting that incident to end my time at Forestry. I told Harold what had happened. But Rich, a full-timer who is still a good friend of mine today, interceded. This was not my fault, Rich argued. This was the City Manager's fault. He's the one who caved into a whining resident and forced the workers to violate city policy and this was the very reason we even had the policy: to avoid damage to residential property.
Yeah! That's right!
The residents were gone by the time we were back to get the rest of the chips. Building Maintenance guys did go up there, but all they could do was paint the gouge with a sealant. Critter never had to explain about the house jack. And word spread around the shop very quickly about how Amy Ferrone had screwed up so badly.
But I kept my job, and was around the whole rest of the summer whence I bore a new nickname: The Homewrecker.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Larry's E-mail About "Ventricular" Cancer
Below is an e-mail my old buddy, Larry, sent. You can read the post "Cancer of the Heart" to learn more about his story. I'm posting it because it won that day's "Make Me Laugh" contest, and because I thought it was very insightful. I don't think any two patients have the same experiences, but surely they can be similar, and I definitely appreciate his sharing his version with me. Maybe it will win your day's Laugh contest, too.
This is probably rated PG-13, so don't read it if you offend easily. And don't write to me about how you're offended if you go ahead and read it anyway.
Amy,
So sorry to hear your news. I'm guessing you were aware of your situation at the reunion. [AP: We had our 20th reunion of our 8th grade class in April. Who has 8th grade reunions? The Visitation Vikings, that's who!!! And, no, I didn't know about the cancer at the time.]
It does seem like you have the right attitude and with that I say, "Welcome to the fraternity, or I guess sorority." Holy shit, Amy Ferrone is in a sorority!?!??.
I can tell you that humor, honesty and sincerity is what got me through my bout with cancer...I know you'll be able to summon those traits when you need them.
Now, I've always considered testicular cancer the "pussy of all cancers" b/c it's so treatable (I should interject here and let you know this won't be a most mature, G-rated email you'll receive). A little snip, snip and summer full of drugs and I was off on my way, drinking my weight at UW. But it's still my proudest moment. I beat it...I rose to the challenge, put a smile on my face and took it head on.
That's the interesting thing about cancer survivors...we don't pick our challenges it picks us. Some people can say, "Hmmm, I like to run so I'll do a marathon, or I like the outdoors so I'm going to climb the Himalayas, or I like to write so I'll write a novel"...but no one says, "I love needles and hospitals so i'm gonna go get me some cancer." One day you feel something weird, and there you have it...your challenge.
I go back to the mindset of it all. I remember I felt obligated to keep everyone's spirits up. I'm sure your noticing that sometimes it's harder for the family and friends of a cancer patient then the patient himself. I could handle it all, I knew my threshhold and to a certain extent: What are my options but to roll up my sleeve and let the nurse load me up? But my parents and family struggled.
Don't get me wrong, they were amazing but they had to deal with the guilt and uncertainty. So my smile and jokes("one ball, no strikes," "ol' oney," "twice the man but have the genitalia") were my way of picking up everyone around me.
I love this blog...It's incredible...I wish this were at my disposal when I was going through it...I have forgotten so much of my battle(which is a good thing)...I'm sure it's very cathartic for you so keep it up and I'll try and keep up with you...you will be in our prayers(gwen is thinking of you too) and please feel free to use me as a resourse and bitching soundboard.
And one more thing....if you're going through chemo and you want to feel normal, and you convince yourself that a meal deal at taco bell of a beef meximelt will fill that void...don't do it...you're just not ready....I wasn't and I barfed all over the parking lot at Butterfield and York.
Thinking of you,
your old buddy,
Larry
This is probably rated PG-13, so don't read it if you offend easily. And don't write to me about how you're offended if you go ahead and read it anyway.
Amy,
So sorry to hear your news. I'm guessing you were aware of your situation at the reunion. [AP: We had our 20th reunion of our 8th grade class in April. Who has 8th grade reunions? The Visitation Vikings, that's who!!! And, no, I didn't know about the cancer at the time.]
It does seem like you have the right attitude and with that I say, "Welcome to the fraternity, or I guess sorority." Holy shit, Amy Ferrone is in a sorority!?!??.
I can tell you that humor, honesty and sincerity is what got me through my bout with cancer...I know you'll be able to summon those traits when you need them.
Now, I've always considered testicular cancer the "pussy of all cancers" b/c it's so treatable (I should interject here and let you know this won't be a most mature, G-rated email you'll receive). A little snip, snip and summer full of drugs and I was off on my way, drinking my weight at UW. But it's still my proudest moment. I beat it...I rose to the challenge, put a smile on my face and took it head on.
That's the interesting thing about cancer survivors...we don't pick our challenges it picks us. Some people can say, "Hmmm, I like to run so I'll do a marathon, or I like the outdoors so I'm going to climb the Himalayas, or I like to write so I'll write a novel"...but no one says, "I love needles and hospitals so i'm gonna go get me some cancer." One day you feel something weird, and there you have it...your challenge.
I go back to the mindset of it all. I remember I felt obligated to keep everyone's spirits up. I'm sure your noticing that sometimes it's harder for the family and friends of a cancer patient then the patient himself. I could handle it all, I knew my threshhold and to a certain extent: What are my options but to roll up my sleeve and let the nurse load me up? But my parents and family struggled.
Don't get me wrong, they were amazing but they had to deal with the guilt and uncertainty. So my smile and jokes("one ball, no strikes," "ol' oney," "twice the man but have the genitalia") were my way of picking up everyone around me.
I love this blog...It's incredible...I wish this were at my disposal when I was going through it...I have forgotten so much of my battle(which is a good thing)...I'm sure it's very cathartic for you so keep it up and I'll try and keep up with you...you will be in our prayers(gwen is thinking of you too) and please feel free to use me as a resourse and bitching soundboard.
And one more thing....if you're going through chemo and you want to feel normal, and you convince yourself that a meal deal at taco bell of a beef meximelt will fill that void...don't do it...you're just not ready....I wasn't and I barfed all over the parking lot at Butterfield and York.
Thinking of you,
your old buddy,
Larry
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Cancer of the Heart
It's Sunday Storytime.
I don't know that I have enough stories to tell one for every Sunday of The Big "C"'s life span, but I know I have one for today.
It involves my old school buddy, Larry. I met him in sixth grade, when I transferred into the Catholic school in town. We lived in the same neighborhood, so for three years, every day after school, we walked home with a group of about 8 kids. Larry was one of the stars of that show, had us laughing all the way home. Those walks constitute one of my favorite sets of memories. I hear people bemoan Junior High as a wretched time. I've only ever thought of my Junior High days as a great time.
Of course, high school sucked. But Larry was there, too.
(Necessary aside: We went to IC high school. This stands for Immaculate Conception. Everyone who went there was from the area, obviously. So we'd all grown up knowing about IC high school. We never thought twice about the name. My 4 older sisters went there, so the name "IC" had been in my venacular since I was born. Then I went to college.
Help me out here, fellow IC grads. Did anyone else give a moment's pause to telling someone the name of your high school? I'd be talking to people--OK, it was really just when I was talking with guys--and the subject would come up, and I'd say, "Yeah, my high school was called Immaculate Conception."
I couldn't say it with a straight face.
Are you kidding me? Who names a high school--by definition, a place chock full of teenagers--something like Immaculate Conception?)
So, yes, Larry and I went to high school together, too. He was one of the good guys. He treated people well. Wasn't beholden to one particular group. Larry had a knack for really appreciating the unique thing about each person and somehow communicating that value. I don't know anyone else in high school who did that or does that as well as he did, and that certainly includes myself.
The summer after our first year of college, his Dad came into the shop where I was working. He asked if I'd talked with Larry yet. I hadn't. Then Mr. Reedy told me that Larry had come home from school early. That he'd had "some problems."
"What's wrong?" I asked.
His face was so grief-stricken. All he said was, "Give your buddy a call."
What could this mean? I quickly narrowed it down to 2 plausible options:
1) Larry was on drugs or
2) Larry had been drinking too much.
I was betting on #2. And before I called, I mentally rehearsed all the supportive things I would say--like, good for him for seeking treatment.
I called. We made very small talk. Then he told me, "Ferrone, I have ventricular cancer."
Oh my gosh. Ventricular cancer? Mental wheels race. I quickly figure out that this must be cancer of the heart, of the ventricles.
Larry filled the silence. "But it's very treatable. They say if you're going to get cancer, this is the kind to get."
What I said was, "Wow. Well. . .I mean, I guess that's a good thing."
But what I thought was, Dude. They are lying to you. Cancer of the heart??? That must be a really horrible thing and they've told you it's treatable just to give you hope in a hopeless situation. Fricking cancer of the heart, Larry! How is this "the kind you want"?
I must have mumbled through the rest of the conversation. We eventually hung up.
A few weeks later, Sarah and I went to visit him the day after his operation. I didn't know what they had done. Where he was in his treatment. What we would find. And I didn't ask Sarah either, because I remember feeling, at the time, that cancer was "The Thng that shall not be discussed."
We got to his room, and he looked pretty good for someone who'd just, presumably, had his heart operated on. There were a few other friends already there. No one had anything to say.
And you know me. Even in a situation like that, I was compelled to fill the silence.
I asked the one burning question I'd had since that first phone call with Larry:
"How did you know you had this cancer?"
And he said, "I was playing with myself."
Silence. Mental wheels churning. And not coming up with anything. Still silence. Heads swivel to me. I register this look in their eyes that there's something they get that I am not getting. Smoke is coming off my brain, it's working so hard. And still: nothing.
"Ferrone," Larry said, "I have testiticular cancer. They just cut my ball off."
OH! Riiight.
I burst into a huge grin, and clapped my hands once and shouted, "You don't have cancer of the heart!!"
I would have started up a round of high fives, but the others were not in the same state of relief and euphoria that I was. So then I had to explain why I was talking about heart cancer.
Turns out Larry's cancer was very treatable. He's now 15 years down the road, and he and Gwen have a beautiful baby girl named Lily. Tomorrow I'll post an e-mail he wrote me that has some pretty great insight from someone on the other side of the cancer walk.
God bless Larry and Gwen, and their pursuit of Baby #2. :)
I don't know that I have enough stories to tell one for every Sunday of The Big "C"'s life span, but I know I have one for today.
It involves my old school buddy, Larry. I met him in sixth grade, when I transferred into the Catholic school in town. We lived in the same neighborhood, so for three years, every day after school, we walked home with a group of about 8 kids. Larry was one of the stars of that show, had us laughing all the way home. Those walks constitute one of my favorite sets of memories. I hear people bemoan Junior High as a wretched time. I've only ever thought of my Junior High days as a great time.
Of course, high school sucked. But Larry was there, too.
(Necessary aside: We went to IC high school. This stands for Immaculate Conception. Everyone who went there was from the area, obviously. So we'd all grown up knowing about IC high school. We never thought twice about the name. My 4 older sisters went there, so the name "IC" had been in my venacular since I was born. Then I went to college.
Help me out here, fellow IC grads. Did anyone else give a moment's pause to telling someone the name of your high school? I'd be talking to people--OK, it was really just when I was talking with guys--and the subject would come up, and I'd say, "Yeah, my high school was called Immaculate Conception."
I couldn't say it with a straight face.
Are you kidding me? Who names a high school--by definition, a place chock full of teenagers--something like Immaculate Conception?)
So, yes, Larry and I went to high school together, too. He was one of the good guys. He treated people well. Wasn't beholden to one particular group. Larry had a knack for really appreciating the unique thing about each person and somehow communicating that value. I don't know anyone else in high school who did that or does that as well as he did, and that certainly includes myself.
The summer after our first year of college, his Dad came into the shop where I was working. He asked if I'd talked with Larry yet. I hadn't. Then Mr. Reedy told me that Larry had come home from school early. That he'd had "some problems."
"What's wrong?" I asked.
His face was so grief-stricken. All he said was, "Give your buddy a call."
What could this mean? I quickly narrowed it down to 2 plausible options:
1) Larry was on drugs or
2) Larry had been drinking too much.
I was betting on #2. And before I called, I mentally rehearsed all the supportive things I would say--like, good for him for seeking treatment.
I called. We made very small talk. Then he told me, "Ferrone, I have ventricular cancer."
Oh my gosh. Ventricular cancer? Mental wheels race. I quickly figure out that this must be cancer of the heart, of the ventricles.
Larry filled the silence. "But it's very treatable. They say if you're going to get cancer, this is the kind to get."
What I said was, "Wow. Well. . .I mean, I guess that's a good thing."
But what I thought was, Dude. They are lying to you. Cancer of the heart??? That must be a really horrible thing and they've told you it's treatable just to give you hope in a hopeless situation. Fricking cancer of the heart, Larry! How is this "the kind you want"?
I must have mumbled through the rest of the conversation. We eventually hung up.
A few weeks later, Sarah and I went to visit him the day after his operation. I didn't know what they had done. Where he was in his treatment. What we would find. And I didn't ask Sarah either, because I remember feeling, at the time, that cancer was "The Thng that shall not be discussed."
We got to his room, and he looked pretty good for someone who'd just, presumably, had his heart operated on. There were a few other friends already there. No one had anything to say.
And you know me. Even in a situation like that, I was compelled to fill the silence.
I asked the one burning question I'd had since that first phone call with Larry:
"How did you know you had this cancer?"
And he said, "I was playing with myself."
Silence. Mental wheels churning. And not coming up with anything. Still silence. Heads swivel to me. I register this look in their eyes that there's something they get that I am not getting. Smoke is coming off my brain, it's working so hard. And still: nothing.
"Ferrone," Larry said, "I have testiticular cancer. They just cut my ball off."
OH! Riiight.
I burst into a huge grin, and clapped my hands once and shouted, "You don't have cancer of the heart!!"
I would have started up a round of high fives, but the others were not in the same state of relief and euphoria that I was. So then I had to explain why I was talking about heart cancer.
Turns out Larry's cancer was very treatable. He's now 15 years down the road, and he and Gwen have a beautiful baby girl named Lily. Tomorrow I'll post an e-mail he wrote me that has some pretty great insight from someone on the other side of the cancer walk.
God bless Larry and Gwen, and their pursuit of Baby #2. :)
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