Orderly?

 Orderly?

We had an orderly at Frick Hospital that one time impressed and was befriended by a wealthy man. The man set up a rather substantial endowment for the hospital and would be continued as long as the orderly worked at the hospital. He was old when I started to work at the hospital. Slowly he developed some bad habits that management finally had to step in to correct.

I’m sure that one habit started innocently enough eating the unclaimed trays of patients who had been sent home before the kitchen could collect them. That progressed to eating untouched food from partially eaten trays. He’d collect untouched items and eat them in the soiled utility room.

Eventually, someone spoke with management and he was to eat his midday meal in the cafeteria for free, if he stopped eating food from patient trays.

Over the years his white uniforms became at best dirty, greasy gray. He’d wear them for several days before he would wash them. Other staff members made jokes about his clothes. “It’s easy for him to put on his uniform in the morning, yellow in the front and brown in the back.” Or “he just leans his clothes in the corner at night, until morning.” Sometimes he would drink too much, return to the hospital, and fall asleep on the hard wooden benches in the men’s locker room. He’d wake with a headache, but he wouldn’t have to change clothes. He was still wearing his “whites.”

Administration finally told him to stop and instead wear fresh operating room greens each day. They “promoted” him to locating missing wheelchairs and carts and returning them to their proper floors.

Each day before starting his rounds, he would laboriously copy the day’s menu on the back of an envelope and share it with staff on all the floors. They had chili on the Thursday, the day they passed out pay checks. He’d call out as he rounded, “Chili and checks.” On lunches of chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy, he’d share, “Chicken hips and smashed potatoes.” 

He called his beer “Polish pop” and his chewing tobacco “West Virginia coleslaw,” and he didn’t like women. He’d walk nearly five miles one way each day, rain or shine, only missing one week of work when he was hospitalized with pneumonia. People would offer him rides. Occasionally he would accept, but he would look into the car first and if it was a woman, he’d shake his head “No” and walk on.

One day a nursing’s secretary was driving home in a tremendous downpour. She saw Him walking with his jacket zipped up, hunched over, trying to protect his face from the pounding rain. She stopped. He looked inside and shook his head. She leaned over rolled down the window a crack and said, “If you don’t get in this car right now, I’m gonna kick your ass.” Between the secretary’s threat and the rainstorm, he climbed inside her car and allowed her to drive him home.

Small Things

 Small Things

Sometimes it’s the small things stored in our brains that create memories that time hasn’t erased that make us the interesting and unique individuals that we are now; small things that once passed us by without a second thought and yet linger. One of my memories was of a camp fire and wiener roast at a family friend’s farm. A skinny, freckle-faced red-haired girl chased me away from the light of the fire to a dark spot behind the milk house and kissed me on the lips. Perhaps that is why many of the women in my books have red or auburn hair. I’m often teased about that fact from fellow writers.

Speaking of fellow writers, I’ll mention one who is also a retired nurse. Much of her career was spent as a hospice nurse in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area. She writes beautifully in vignettes, short poignant descriptions of her clients that have impacted her. Small almost inconsequential slices of their interactions with her but have impacted her life. She preserves them in the written word and often will share them with us. Those worried about HIPPA, don’t. They are all deceased and only their memories live on. She describes those memories as strings of pearls.

I have another friend who writes and has taken on the colossal task of writing an educational series of the different small insects to teach small children and their parents about these little creatures and the role they play in the ecosystems. She writes them in alphabetical order, Amusing and teaching at the same time, she writes in sets of 2 books, a reading book and a coloring book. They present the child and the parent with the facts about that insect.

I have a rabbit trail from the small idea that has caused me to think about this story. My initial thought was of a small drawstring sack that held colored, candy-covered bubble gum. It was sold at many grocery stores when I was a kid. Most of us kids carried them around as an easy way to keep bubble gum at hand and the small pull string pouch made it easy to store marbles, toys, and money after the gum was gone. I used mine to keep coins that I managed to collect, maybe all of $2.50 cents or so. The memory of this tiny bag has haunted me over many years. I hid it so well, that it has never reappeared. My siblings said they knew nothing of its disappearance and to this day its where abouts remains a mystery. 

Baring It All

Baring It All

I just had a CAT scan as a follow up to a kidney lesion that was discovered accidentally. The lesion was found by an x-ray that was done as I was being physically evaluated to participate in a study for gout. Because the medication that I was to take they had to make sure that I had good kidney function before they would allow me to start the program. It was a blessing that the lesion was discovered and now I could keep an eye on it. That lesion alone would have disqualified me for participating in the study. The uric acid level in my blood work wasn’t elevated enough to be admitted into the study either.

Finding the lesion on my kidney alerted my primary care physician and she order a consultation with an urologist. My urologist was the one who ordered the first and the recent follow up CAT scan to monitor the progress or lack of progress of the lesion. I had the second CAT scan prior to my last visit to her office. At that visit I mentioned that I had a spermatocele for many years, but on a recent self-examination, it disappeared and my left testicle seems to be surrounded in mush-like substance. After the examination, she ordered an ultrasound of my testicles. I had it done yesterday.

Because I worked at Frick Hospital in Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania as a nurse for 34 years before I retired, I prayed that the sonogram technician wouldn’t be someone that I knew. I wasn’t embarrassed to be undressed to have the test done; I just didn’t want to expose my private parts to a friendly face.

The technician was a lovely blonde who did her job quickly and did it well. When she was finished I thanked her. Then I told her that from what I have heard, I was glad that the test wasn’t as painful as mammograms. Although my testicles were tender, she didn’t cause any pain.

Now all I have to do is wait for the results.

Shopping Etiquette

 Shopping Etiquette

My mom, Sybil Miner Beck was a fun-loving but firm mother in many ways.  I was reminded of a Facebook incident that was posted about shoppers. A video of a boy who looked about five or six years old continued to ram a mini-shopping cart into the person in front of the boy and his mom. The man was assaulted several times. He tried to push the cart and the child away with gentle shoves and redirections, but the child returned and continued to use his cart battering ram. Meanwhile the mother was seemingly unconcerned and repeatedly allowed the kid to push the cart into the man.

Finally the man had reached his limit. He reached into the child’s cart and removed a small carton of milk, then opened and dumped the contents onto the boy’s upturned face. The smile disappeared and so did the child. The mother apparently insulted by the male shopper’s lack of decorum grabbed her child’s hand and left the area.

My mother would never have permitted it to go that far. The incident that I was reminded of was shopping at a local grocery store. My brother Ken was pushing the cart. It was something that he liked to do and mom allowed it. I think he got bored because it was a larger store and Mom had a long list. He began to drive the cart from side to side in the aisle instead of driving in a straight line.

Soon that wasn’t enough and he looked for other ways to amuse himself. He settled on lagging behind, then charging ahead. At the last moment, he would leap into the air and slam his both of his feet onto the buggy’s back two wheels laying long black rubber wheel tracks on the floor. Mom didn’t notice what was happening until she turned to put something into the cart and caught him in the act. When she looked behind, she saw that the entire aisle had a trail of black streaks where Ken and the cart had been.

She took control of the cart and warned Ken, “If you ever do that again, I will march you up to the manager and you will clean the floors for him. Someone has to clean the floors at night and you are making his job harder.”

That put a stop to the grocery cart drag racer. Although when Ken grew older, he did drag race a souped up 1972 Dodge Demon. It was black with two white racing stripes from the air scooped hood across the top and back down the trunk. I teased him saying it looked like a skunk to me.

Scrambled

 Scrambled

Because of a fall in 2015, and I am only assuming that I fell, I have no recollection of what actually happened. I have been thinking about how fragile the brain actually is. A single knock on the back of my head created such confusion and chaos where coordinated thoughts and memories once resided. The thoughts, or should I say the lack of thoughts about the fall, how it happened, and how long memory loss lasted got me compare my brain and skull to an egg and the shell that protects it.

A sharp rap will crack open an egg shell and expose the delicate contents that is stored inside. The delicate shell keeps the fragile insides protected and safe. It allows for the secure storage of its vital parts in a natural way, in a receptacle created especially for it.

The brain and the skull are designed in much the same manner, although it is much more complicated. The hard calcium shell protects the fragile internal organ that is the chamber where all activity of the entire body is kept. It is the control center for every thought and all movements. It is the regulatory center for the life of the being; heartbeat, respirations, and all other bodily functions.

The hard shell of the skull protects memories, thoughts, and our very identity. Even though the skull doesn’t have to be split open to cause things to be scrambled, for thoughts to be lost, or for things to be confused. It reacts much the same way as an egg shell and when the contents are disturbed, it scrambles. It becomes mixed up. The brain and the yolk/ albumin become unable to complete the job it was intended to do. It scrambled The egg is still good for consumption, but the brain scrambled can be nearly worthless. Until it unscrambles, it will function at a very limited level. It still keeps the body alive, but it doesn’t permit the higher thoughts of creativity or complicated idea development that it was designed to do.

Scrambled brain or scrambled egg. They can be very similar. 

That Does Not Compute

That Does Not Compute

I’ve had a computer for more years than I like to count and just yesterday I found out that for all those years, I’ve been doing somethings incorrectly. I was ignorant of the proper use of the computer and its workings. I am a completely at a loss other than to use it as a typewriter, which I must have for the writing for my Blogspot and my daughter-in-law had to set that site up for me. Thank you Renee Largent Beck. The blog has given me something to do in my retirement time. Sometimes it feels more like a burden when I must think of something to share.

It was easy at first sharing family stories. I started sharing a story every day. That soon became too much and I now share posts Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. There are times that I struggle to write something that I feel might interest those readers who take the time to visit my blog. Thank you to those who do. I don’t do the writing for money, but rather to share the thoughts that leak from my memory.

In the past when I wrote and saved my remembrances, I’ve always saved my writing directly onto a flash drive, or shoud I say flash drives. I have stories stored on several flash drives, scattered willy-nilly. Many times I have struggled when I needed to retrieve a certain post. It has been a nightmare.

When my computer man Tom came yesterday to deal with another problem that I was having and as we were talking, he got this look of surprise and almost terror on his face. The last time he was here he advised me to pull all of the items from the scattered stories and put them on a single flash drive, then to make a back-up flash drive. I would have them there for safe keeping. He advised me how to keep things on the computer and not just a flash drive.

His horror was because he found out that I have been saving my stories on a flash drive, bypassing the hard drive of the computer altogether. Like I said, I am ignorant of what a computer can do and have only learned the little bits that I do know on my own.

So after another grueling time of transferring each of the nearly 2,500 poems and stories the task is done.

Are We Ever Satisfied

 Are We Ever Satisfied

Too dry, too wet, too hot, too cold; are we ever satisfied? Not enough money, too busy, bored; do we ever have enough? Worse than that, are we ever just thankful? When our needs are met, do we want more? It’s like when we’re eating and there is one slice of pot roast or a few small potatoes left, even though we’re feeling full, do we sit there wondering, “That was so tasty, maybe…” Then we decide, “I can’t let that go to waste” and it goes to our waist instead. We push away from the table, waddle over to the sofa, and collapse in a stupor, wondering why we’re so tired.

In America, too many of us have so much and yet we are so ungrateful, unthankful for what we have. In many places, food, water, and adequate housing are just a dream. They don’t want equality; they want a chance to earn what we Americans have so abundantly available. I know that there are children that go to bed hungry, according to government statistics, but with food kitchens, food pantries, and welfare, much of that should already be addressed. I don’t understand the reasons for the problem.

There was a time when churches handled these needs, but more and more the government has stepped in with so many rules and regulations, it nearly impossible for anyone but the government to function. Churches kept tabs on the people. They knew who really had a need eliminating those who choose not to work and refused to try and lift themselves out of poverty. They knew the destitute from the lazy. The churches meted out charity to meet the needs of the needy.

The government stepped in, always thinking that it could do better. There is so much waste and inefficiency in the bureaucracy that much of the resources are being lost and either fed back to the federal system or into bureaucratic pockets. The government has taken the place of the “bread winners” and “fathers” in single parent homes. Often the money distributed to feed the children goes to pay for alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. The local communities had a better handle on these situations and wouldn’t have allowed the abuse that is rampant today.

I am thankful that I’ve had enough to feed our children, but not appreciative of waste. My kids call me cheap, but I prefer to use the term frugal.