Thursday, December 18, 2014

Get me out of here

I"m not sure how much longer I can take working in this nuthouse. The nerf dart wars are enough to drive a man crazy.

Saturday, November 8, 2014

You've got To Have Friends...

I've never been one of those people who can make batches of new friends easily. I've always admired those people who can go into a new situation and genuinely and with deep affection come away with several new friends. I'm not shy, but I'm quiet and a little guarded and it takes me a bit of time to make friends. The difference has always been that when I do make friends they stay with me, in my heart or in real life, forever.

I was an awkward kid growing up with a very affable dad who was one of those people who could make friends at the drop of a hat; still does. Unfortunately I also had the influence of my my mom who is deeply skeptical of new people and maybe a little paranoid about their intentions. There was also the matter of her being an alcoholic with an erratic and unpredictable personality and I was always embarrassed and a little scared to bring friends over because I didn't know if they'd get the Dr. Jekyll or Dr. Hyde; .As I've grown older I've begun to think that the parents of some of my friends may have been worried about having their kids at my house for those same reasons.

All of this made me guarded and reserved. But what I did have going for me was my dad's genuine interest in getting to know people. I share a bit of his reporter's nature and I love letting people tell me about themselves. But there's also that other side too,  so while I'm really loyal and genuinely interested I also don't reach out to new people quickly. Living in Seattle hasn't helped. It's a reserved place and it's hard to get to know people in the best of circumstances.

I've gotten better over the years. Between meditation and aging and a need to connect I've gotten better at reaching out. I used to have intense "social anxiety" which the meditation and trying to work though it have softened. I think the friendships that I do have are good ones based on a bedrock of genuine affection, respect and loyalty.

As I look back over my life and places like Facebook, or Linked In I see just how many people I haven't had much contact with over the years. There are so many that I've sort of let slip away. The Hersh brothers with whom I spent some of the best years of my life running a summer camp, my high school friend Jack who was by my side for years. My friend Michelle whose hunkered down and started a whole new wonderful family; though I've managed to keep marginally in touch with her via Facebook over the years. And then there's my strange, amazingly talented friend Roger who through Facebook I've learned is an improv comedy and bi-lingual theater actor in Tokyo.

Then there are those I've had no contact with like Julie, my fiercely feminist friend whose couch I spent many a night sleeping on at UC Santa Cruz. I haven't spoken to her in 20 years but I've looked her up over the years and she seems to be happy with a young child and husband.

I don't quite know how I've drifted from those people. It's probably a combination of time and distance not to mention age. When you get up past 50 years go like weeks and you suddenly look at a calendar you realize that it's been 15 years since you said hi to someone rather than 15 days.

I have more recent friends for whom I make an effort keep close. Some have moved on geographically but  with all of them I try to keep in touch either IRL or via Facebook or texts. I don't mind looking at the calendar and seeing a few days have passed without contact but I don't want to see another 15 years having passed me buy.

Friday, October 31, 2014

Sometimes Life is like a Sitcom

My dog decided to give me a small heart attack today. We're temporarily living in a fairly rural area right now. We live in a  neighborhood with cul-de-sacs and lots of houses, but it sits hard against acres and acres of woods. To add to this there are many loopy streets, and virtually no street lights. It can be confusing and dark.

I get up really early and let Harry, our dog, out to do his business. I usually close the door for a minute or two and he comes running in to get his breakfast as soon as I open it. Today is a Friday and I don't work so my wife did this routine before she left this morning. He was acting like he need to pee when I got up so I let him out. When I opened the door a few minutes later he didn't come running. In fact I called him and he didn't come running. A little odd, but not totally strange. I left the door open for a few more minutes and still no Harry.

 Now I start to get a little worried. I'm wearing sweats and I throw on a coat, no shirt, put on some sandals and grab a flashlight. I walk down the driveway and stand on the corner and call him; still no dog. Then I walk to one of the spots I take him for his walk which is a little woody area with a wooden school bus shelter. I stand there and call him and still nothing. Meanwhile I can hear the occasional car on the outer streets and visions of Harry getting hit come to mind. After walking in several directions I still have no sign of him and I'm getting really scared. It's dark, it's foggy, the streets are confusing and there's precedent for Harry wandering off in the past.

Several years ago, in the neighborhood we usually live in we left the front door open and Harry wandered off. Once we realized this, I went out looking for him. And just like one of those old Benji movies I met a string of people who had "just seen him going that direction." There was the gardening guy, the older couple, the meter reader and finally, 6 blocks later, a mom who smiled at me and told me that her kids had found him and were trying to find his home. Sure enough a block or two later I saw two little kids walking Harry with a makeshift rope leash. They walked up like out of a movie and said "hey mister. Is Harry your dog". They handed him over and cooed over him just like the last seen of a Disney movie . Byyyeee Harrrry!

So now I get into a car and just like an old episode of the Brady Bunch, I'm driving around at 5 miles an hour and yelling his name. After doing that for 10 minutes I finally give up and decide I'm going to call my wife. I'm standing on the porch and I give one last call which I'm sure won't lead to anything but I hear a distant jingle like maybe a dog collar and I yell again, the jingle gets louder and on my third call I see a blur of activity from the bushes down the street. It's Harry!!!!! He comes running in the house  and I'm so relieved I give him a second breakfast. I'm standing there with tears in my eyes telling him I'm glad he's okay and in his usually calm detached manner he stares at me like I'm nuts.



Friday, September 26, 2014

Yikes. I broke my kidneys

I've joked a bunch of times since I had my grand hospital drama 3 years ago that I broke myself by not seeing a doctor for so many years.  Having to have 7 teeth removed was a sign of that. But I've been very good with my health for the last 3 years and I hadn't thought much about being broken in a specific way until this week.

When I was in the hospital they saw signs of reduced kidney function which they've had me keeping an eye on for a while. My doctor hasn't really talked much about it so I haven't worried too much. My GFR(Glomular Filtration Rate) has been on the low side for several tests, but generally within the acceptable range. GFR is a test of how well the kidneys filter the blood. The normal range is 60-100. This last one was 56. So what that means is that my score is about half of the best score in the range

My last blood test 3 months ago was a little lower than that so I took another one last week. This one was also low which made the the lab automatically flag it.
I got a note from my doctor's PA basically saying don't freak out. This is NOT kidney failure and you can live a long time with this condition.The official diagnosis is Chronic Kidney Disease(CKD) I actually was initially not too worried, after all I've been in this range for at least 3 years. Since I hadn't seen a doctor for so many years I don't know how long my kidneys have been functioning like this. I don't really feel any symptoms with the exception of a little fatigue which I've been attributing to age until this point. But I don't have any kidney pain, issues with having to pee a lot at night(which I actually did have before my hospital visit)

But there's this thing called the Internet and it has a way of scaring a guy. Mostly what I read is encouraging. It's generally considered a chronic condition at this point. It's not kidney failure until the GFR reaches 30. Men in their 60's often have some level of CKD etc. But on the the other side  there's a heightened risk of Heart disease and diabetes.  I'm supposed to watch my diet and Blood Pressure which I've been doing for several years and they are fine. It didn't really hit me until one of the websites pointed out that a GFR under 60 shows about half of normal kidney function. That does freak me a little. That makes it very concrete. I had good kidneys once and now they're not; not by half.

I'm going to talk to my doctor in a couple of weeks about what to do and expect.  But for now I continue to exercise, watch my diet, take my BP meds, be careful and not freak out. I look at someone like my mom who is on oxygen 24/7 and I'm not even near that ballpark yet. I think if I'm careful I won't be there any time soon.

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Attack of the Killer Squirrels

My wife Lisa's family lives in a very rural area of New Hampshire. The nearest big town is Keene, most famous for the location of the Robin Williams movie Jumanji. Her brother, aunt and mother all live on family property about a mile from each other and the nearest neighbors are about that far as well. The aunt and brother in-law live in fairly new houses that they built, but my mother in-law, Nancy, lives in a couple hundred year old farm that is mostly wood with a stone foundation. It's a huge rambler house with rickety old wooden stairs and several fireplaces and a wood stove that heat the place. There are a million little cracks and holes in the walls; in some cases you can actually see through to the outside.

We were there visiting for Christmas. We stayed at Nancy's(she goes by Pook) and then going up the hill for Christmas. Like I said the house is large and rustic. My mother in-law had some health problems a few years earlier and she isn't the tidiest person in the world. So there are usually books everywhere, dishes in the sink and writing projects on the table. This year there was a huge cage like thing on the kitchen table. It was a Have A Heart animal trap. When I asked what it was for I was told squirrels. I laughed because I assumed it was really for rats or mice. But Pook assured me it was for squirrels.

We had a really nice Christmas Eve up at my brother in-laws house. A winter storm was dumping a lot of snow and when got home we all rushed into the house. I heard the clawing and clicking before I even went to the dining table and saw a huge squirrel trapped in the cage. I assumed we were going to take it out and let it go but Pook wanted to wait until the next day to drive to another town. She said that they had to be relased more than a mile away or they'd come back. I didn't know if that was true, but I'm from California where we don't often trap squirrels so I kept my mouth shut.

I went into the living room and tried to  read but I kept hearing the squirrel trying to break out of it's cage. I went to bed but even up there I could hear Steve(I nicknamed the squirrel Steve McQueen who played a POW in the Great Escape). I also was certain I heard scratching in our room, so I slept with the covers up to my chin for protection;like I said I grew up in the suburbs in California.

The next day the roads were impassable and we were more or less snowed in. We ate breakfast in the drawing room with the squirrel scratching away. I went upstairs to the guestroom to read. When I opened the door I saw a bag of coffee that someone had given us as a gift laying on the floor with a huge hole in it and coffee all over the floor. Before I had time to do any detective work I heard a noise and looked up and saw another squirrel careening around the wooden ceiling beams, leaping from beam to beam, jumping to the wall and then coming toward me. It was hopped up on Caffeine and heading for me. In terror I  slammed the door and ran to get Lisa; I'm not equipped for fighting off deadly squirrels.

Lisa went around the outside and slid up one of the windows that could be reached from the side of the hill. After an hour we went in and the squirrel. was gone, presumably through the window. We shut the window and made sure there was no more food in our room.

After eating both lunch and dinner with Steve scratching away at his cage, Pook finally decided it was time to let Steve go. She went to her secret squirrel disembarkation place and came back resetting the trap. 

The next morning I woke up and didn't hear any noise from the trap. But as I went to get coffee I noticed something laying in the trap. There on the bottom of the cage was a dead squirrel. According to my brother in-law this was very unusual. We decided that this was the squirrel from the bedroom and the cause of death was caffeine overdose. 

I'm told that someone has finally squirrel proofed that house. Maybe I won't have to stay in a hotel the next time I visit.




Sunday, September 7, 2014

Earl's Monster

When my brother used to live in LA and I still lived in the Bay Area, I would usually take a road trip a couple of times a year to see him. It was about a 6 hour drive and generally a boring one so I occasionally I would get ride shares. This was before Craigslist so I'd either use San Francisco State's ride share board or the SF Bay Guardian(I tried the SF weekly once but I only got replies from people who wanted to know if they could pay for gas with drugs or sex).

It was a little harder to get to know someone back then without email,  maybe a phone call or two so it was always a crap shoot. There was the woman who refused to talk and winced any time I brought up any topic. There was the jolly stoner who would spend 20 minutes in the bathroom at rest stops and then got us lost in Compton trying to find his girlfriends apartment.

One trip I got a young woman in her early twenties. She seemed nice enough on the phone, but about an hour before the trip she called me and asked if she could bring her 3 year old son along. She had some story about her babysitter cancelling at the last minute, but I had the feeling this had been plan all along. The kid seemed okay, if a little hyper.

We were in a Honda Civic which had a nice big back seat. The boy, Earl, was strapped in in back, If there were any car seat rules at that time I was unaware of them, We'd been driving along for about an hour when Earl screamed. It was a loud, sort of jarring yell. The mom, Shelly, turned around to ask what was wrong. Earl was huddled in the corner, he wouldn't say what was wrong. She gave him a cookie and he calmed down.

Two hours later, I'd just bought them some hamburgers at a rest stop and Earl was sleeping away in the back seat. Earl suddenly woke up screaming again. This time he said, "There's a monster. There's a monster." He wouldn't stop so I pulled over somewhere on I5 in the middle of nowhere and Shelly and I made a big show out of looking at the back seat. Finally Shelly convinced him he'd been dreaming and he calmed down.

Five minutes before reaching Shelly's destination in West Wood Earl started screaming again. This time he wouldn't stop and they  arrived at their stop with Earl crying and Shelly feeling kind of embarrassed.

After a nice week of visiting my brother I left LA around Midnight and headed up I5. By 4 AM I was getting White Line Fever and decided to pull over at a rest stop and take a nap. The back seat was fairly big so I laid down and took a nap. I was in a deep sleep, but I suddenly started dreaming about something crawling on me. I startled awake and had the feeling that something had really been crawling on me. But then I convinced myself that I was just imagining that. I'd been reading Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas and probably had Hunter S Thompson's desert hallucinations in my mind.

3 days later I was washing and cleaning out the car. I'd pulled everything out, and was vacuuming the back seat, when I suddenly noticed something wedged in the seat. I thought it was one of Earl's toys, As I reached toward it, it suddenly moved. There, running across the seat was small green lizard. There were plenty of Lizards where I lived and this one must have burrowed in the car at some point; Earl Monster.

Friday, August 15, 2014

Quentin's Big Adventure

After a year of waiting I'm finally at the oral surgeon's office. I've battled 15 years of a dental and medical phobia, undergone two sinus surgeries advised by a previous oral surgeon, waited 7 weeks for this appointment and then an additonal 5 days because the doctor was sick for the first time in 13years on the originally scheduled day. We've scrambled through early morning rush hour traffic only to be told that there's a back up and I need to wait.

I'm here to get 6  teeth pulled because of the crippling phobia that I had previously had. I'm much better now and have seen many doctors and dentists in the last two years, but I still get very nervous, particularly before surgery. We're sitting in the empty waiting room. I'm holding it together but I'm nervous; my doctor calls it White Coat Syndrome. I get a burst of adrenaline in medical offices that jacks up my heart rate and blood pressure.

I'm sitting there trying to relax and we hear sobbing coming from down the hall. My first thought is it's like one of those old time comedy sketches where the patient hears screaming from down the hall but it's something like a cat's tail being squished. My second thought is that this is intense crying and something bad has happened to someone. Like maybe someone just found out they have oral cancer or something.

The receptionist turns to me and Lisa and says "Sorry. We've had a very dramatic morning here." She turns to the inner reception window as though she's about to try to head off the crying person coming down the hall, but the waiting room door bursts open and there's a sobbing woman.

This woman in her late 30's has a handful of tissue, her eyes are red and she's half sobbing half talking. "That's hard to watch." In my head I'm thinking what's hard to watch did someone just die or something?"He's only 10. This is awful."

I'm trying not to engage her. I'm the kind of person people just talk to and I'm really trying to put up my "The Doctor is Out" sign. I really don't want to hear any drama before I'm about to go under the knife myself. But she plunders on."They couldn't find a vein, they stabbed him 4 times and my son Quentin started screaming," more sobbing.

Lisa says "That's hard to watch. I'm sorry."

And the woman is off. She starts telling us the details of his surgery, how her 10 year old has an extra tooth in his palate and how they had already tried to take out the tooth but they took the wrong one...My brain latches onto that. At first I think she's talking about another doctor, but no, it's this one. My brain is about to overload here. I'm about to have 7 teeth pulled by a surgeon whose pulled out wrong teeth before and can't find deep veins, which I have. This must be some kind of demented cosmic joke. Put the hysterical lady in the same room with the recovering medical phobic.

She goes on and on. She starts to tell us how she has shallow roots and her dentist told her that her teeth could fall out at any moment. I think to myself please don't let that happen now because I'll never be able to come back to a dentist again.

She goes on and on until, mercifully, the nurse brings me in back. They're giving me gas and the doctor comes in and I'm pretty loose. I ask "How'd that kid Quentin do?" In my haze I think he gives me a strange look but he says "Aah he did good." Then I tell him about how hard it is for doctors to get a line in my arm and he seems  a little nervous. As I'm fading with the gas I count 3 tries before he gets a line in and says "Phew. I'm glad we got that in." My mind fades thinking of sore arms and screaming kids.

When I wake up in recovery the very first thing I remember seeing is a little old man in a wheel chair.  Wheeling out backwards in front of me. But a I focus I see it's not a little old man it's a kid; it's Quentin. I try to say something but my mouth is completely numb and my brain for words hasn't come back online yet. I'm thinking "Good job little buddy. You made it." Groggily I put my thumb up and smile. It was probably a pretty ghastly, bloody smile. At first the groggy kid looks confused. Who is the old guy smiling at him with bloody gauze pointing a thumb in the air. But as he gets wheeled out he perks up, smiles his bloody smile back at me and gives me a thumb up; brothers in arms(literally).

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Kids are hard.

Between being brand new with kids and having to work with the very wild Russian immigrants my first summer as camp counselor was wild. But nothing compared to some people. I noticed that there was one counselor, Tom, whose entire schedule seemed to consist of tree climbing. I thought this was just general laziness but during our first staff meeting he was called out on it by the assistant director, Flora who never got ruffled about anything.

"Hey man." He said sounding stoned, he always sounded stoned. "Trees are life and they're getting they're sharing life energy by climbing on trees."

Flora who was always patient replied "Well I get that but maybe you can limit the tree climbing to a few minutes when you have free time."

Tom closed his eyes "Hey man. I have to go where the energy tells me. I can't be a slave to schedules and rules." Flora's eyes went wide but she didn't say anything. I don't think it was a surprise to anyone when the Tom didn't show up the next Monday and there was a brand new counselor in charge of his group.

As exasperated as I was my group of Wild Russians, I didn't lose my composure. I can't say that of everyone. I was in the kitchen, taking a short break from my group to bake some cookies we'd mixed. There was a multi purpose room next to the kitchen and there was a little serving counter that let you look into the. I saw the group led by a guy named Dan whose co-counselor was Shelly. Like me she'd never worked with kids before, but she always seemed angry and intense. Their group was sitting in a small circle and being a little rowdy. Dan was off to the side helping tie a girl's shoes. Shelly was serving snack time. She'd given out crackers and cheese and was having the kids pass cups and she started to pour milk from carton. One of the kids kept taking the cups and throwing them around the circle.

. One of the crackers hit another kid in the forehead and she started to cry. I could see Shelly was visibly upset. I was about to help her but the timer went off on my cookies and I grabbed them out of the oven. I could hear Shelling telling this kid to stop and the kid just laughing. I put the cookies down and rounded the corner to help out. As I was doing this I heard a combination of gasps and laughter from the group. When I got into the room I saw the noisy kid covered with dripping white milk and Shelly holding an upside down carton; nobody was surprised when she didn't come back the next day.

Thursday, July 31, 2014

The Russians Have come

I've written before about my camp directing days and working with the Soviet Jews who had recently arrived. I mentioned Ruslan who threw a rock through the temple window.  and Alex who stole the keys from the piano during a recital. But the all time godfather of the boisterous Russian kids was Gregory.

I first met Gregory on my first day as a counselor; a very green counselor who had never worked with kids. We were thrown into the deep end and not given a lot of instruction what to do with the kids. I'm one of those people who come off as very competent and self sufficient and I guess I have some strong leadership qualities so despitet my lack of experience I was given a group the assistant director jokingly called the dirty dozen.  I barely knew where to pick up the milk crate for lunch let alone how to deal with 12 boisterous kids, half of whom didn't speak English. I was supposed to have a Russian speaking co-counselor but somethign happened to his funding and he never showed up on the first day of camp.

The first day of camp is always a confusing blur of misplaced kids, crying parents and short tempers. My very first activity was swimming which meant taking this group of kids I didn't know into the changing room. Almost as soon as we got into the locker room this terrified looking kid named Dmitry started crying. I tried asking him what was wrong but he just kept screaming the word "polotense" over and over. This was long before the internet so I had no way of figuring out what he meant. 

Finally, this large, muscular kid, turned to me and in a thick russian accent said "He cries because he has no towel." I asked him his name and he said Gregory. I asked him tell Dmitry that it was okay and I would get him a towel. He said something in Russian and instead of Dmitry calming down he started to scream louder. By this point another one of the Russian speaking counselors had come in and gave Gregory a stern look. Gregory started laughing hysterically. He said something to Dmitry and he calmed down instantly.

 The counselor said to me exasperatedly "Gregory has quite an odd sense of humor. I asked what he had said and the counselor said "Ehhm. he told Dmitry that you were very mad at him for not having a towel and you were going to spank him." Gregory was on the floor laughing hysterically. 

(To be continued)

Monday, July 21, 2014

The Martian Chronicles

Anyone whose either met my dad or heard me talk about him knows that he has a very funny, but odd sense of humor. He's never met a pun he didn't like or a one liner he wouldn't tell. He'll tell a joke and then say "These are the Jokes. These are the jokes" which I think is something that an old vaudeville comic used to say when he was bombing.

My sense of humor, for good or bad, is the product of years of watching Marx Brothers and Three Stooges Movies with him. My mom would cringe when we'd spend a whole Sunday watching Ma and Pa Kettle, Francis The Talking Mule and Abott and Costello. You never knew when he'd break into the old Three Stooges routine Niagra Falls.

But more than anything he loved playing practical jokes on me and my brother...Somehow my sister managed to avoid the frivolity. For years my dad had my brother convinced that he wasn't really our dad but an alien from mars named Klatu who had taken over my dad's body to observe humans. My brother was maybe 6 or 7 and was pretty convinced it was true. If somone touched my dad on the back of the head he'd wince and say "ouch those are where my Martian eyes are." He'd launch into Martian talk for a minute or two.  He'd often run stick pipe cleaners in the back of his hair and say they were antennae. It finally bugged my brother so much that my dad made up a story that he'd managed to come back from mars and take over his own body again.

One time I was in the living room and I heard my brother run down the hall screaming "I shot dad. I shot dad. he's bleeding." I took my brother by the hand and led him back to his room where they'd been playing. My dad was laying on the floor with his eyes barely closed trying not to laugh. There was red stuff on his chest but it smelled familiar,Ketchup. When my brother "shot" my dad with his finger my dad had grabbed his chest with Ketchup I guess he had on his hand already, said "you got me" and fell to the ground. Freaked my brother out.

We used to watch a show called Creature Features which was one of those shows where a local TV host would show old horror movies, mostly Monster movies like Frankenstein and Dracula.It was on late on Saturdays and my parents let me stay up to watch it. This particular night The Mummy was on, not the newish one with the Rock, but the creepy old black and white one with the guy withe disfigured face running around in bandages choking people.

We were in the dark watching and my dad got up and left the room. This wasn't unusual since he'd often go to his little office to make notes or go to the bathroom. There weren't any DVRs back then so you couldn't stop a show. The movie got to a really scary part where the monster was killing everyone and moaning.  Suddenly I thought I was hearing moaning from the back of the room. I looked around and didn't see anything and it stopped. But then it started again and got louder. Finally it was louder than the movie. But then it became a tortured voice saying "I'm coming to get you." I started to think that maybe it was someone outside trying to get in. I ran down the hall to my dad's office to tell him  I was hearing something scary. When I went in he was on one of our toy walkie Talkies laughing; the other one was in the TV room.

These are the jokes. These are the jokes.

Here are some of the comedy sketches that my dad introduced me to.

Three Stooges - Niagra Falls(Slowly I turn)




Abbot And Costello -Whos's on First





The Marx Brothers - A night at the Opera Cabin Scene




Marx Brothers- Coconuts Hooray for Captain Spaulding


Duck Soup Groucho and Harpo Mirror scene and Hail Hail Freedonia


Monty Python - Crunchy Dead Frog

Monty Python - I'm a LumberJack
Monty Python - Dead Parrot



Friday, June 27, 2014

Up From Rock Bottom

In case I haven't said it before, hospitals are strange places. They're sort of like airports, or casinos in that they don't have any fixed way of telling the time. You can be in an airport at 3 in the morning and even though the stores and restaurants are all closed there's some buzz of activity. Hospitals are like that too. Sure there are less staff at 2 in the morning but it's a guarantee that someone is going to wake you up at some point.

I had finally fallen asleep around 3:00 after finally getting my record blood pressure down around 170, but exactly at five AM someone came in to get my blood and shortly thereafter the day nurse came in to introduce herself and get my vitals. The word was that maybe I'd get to go home after they ran more tests and I proved I could walk without fainting. This was 6 AM and I had to pee but I was still tethered to the bed and using that bottle so I begged her to let me off my leash. As it turned out the nurse the night before hadn't passed on her comments about letting me off my leash after three attempts at walking with an escort, but Deena my nurse told me that if I promised not to pass out and get a concussion she' let me off. I ran to the bathroom; never has a morning pee felt so good.

Around 9:30 I heard a commotion in the hallway which sounded like Lisa's voice. But it was quickly interrupted by another voice. After a few minutes of whispering Lisa came in looking exhausted and amped up all at the same time. She had a coffee in her hand which drank in her first five minutes and then she asked the nurse for more. 

She was scared and amped up and practically buzzing and it wasn't helping my BP at all. I felt guilty, stupid, tired and feeble and her buzzing was just making me more agitated. It was all very understandable but I think the nurse could sense it and when Lisa went out to get another latte the nurse came back in and said "I know your wife is really upset but I'm here for you. If you feel like you need a break just let me know and I'll take care of it." When Lisa came back Deena, didn't say anything but she did offer me some tips on guided relaxation and suggested Lisa join in.

The wheelie people came in 3 more times for 3 more tests. This time in addition to another CT scan and a chest X Ray I  met with the head of the radiology department who re-did my kidney sonogram. There was a lot of contorting of my body and hmmmming at my pictures and at one point he left to consult someone. He came back smiling and said that it was hard to tell, but it looked like my kidneys were probably okay and it probably looked odd from dehydration.

Around 2 I was told I'd be able to leave once the doctor signed off. I sat there hour after hour in my sweaty little bed, feeling sweaty and disgusting; I hadn't showered the night before this all started and I was really feeling disgusting now. It was apparently a busy day of new patients and I was doing okay enough to drop down the list of urgent need. The one productive thing that happened that day was that Lisa was so jacked up on coffee she knitted my nurse Deena snow hat. 

Finally at 7:00 PM Dr Halpern came in to release me. He did the scary looking behind my eye thing, made me squeeze his hands and then said I was doing okay. The diagnosis was an Extreme Hypertension Emergency. He sent me off with a handful of prescriptions for blood pressure and a recommendation of a low sodium diet and an admonition to see my personal Doctor;  A doctor I had stupidly never seen.

The ride home was almost as intense as the ride home from the street fair. I was very tired and scared, Lisa was scared and still angry. We stopped at Safeway to get some low sodium food. Fortunately I don't like processed meals and food very much anyway, but my big shock was that cheese is loaded with sodium. Well most cheese, for some reason Swiss Cheese is very low. So I loaded up with Swiss Cheese, Tofu, veggies and low sodium tortillas. It would be another month or two before I found a low sodium Soy Sauce that really was low in sodium at an Asian market. To this day I'm still pretty careful about my sodium.

I was terrified those first few days. I was certain that if I sneezed I'd have an aneurism. I pretty much ate nothing and didn't leave the house except to go see my new Dr. I was supposed to be seeing a Dr who had been described as very tough and I wasn't looking forward to it. Both Lisa and I were afraid that that would not help my phobia. But at the last minute I got a call that he was sick and an offer to see another Dr.. Dr B as I call her. She's great. She didn't have any more room on her panel but my case was so extreme that she took me on and I'm very glad about that.

So there I was someone who was certain that I'd completely broken myself. Someone who had developed a horrible Dr. phobia and had record high blood pressure. But that was then. Just like an alcoholic, this was my rock bottom. I have an awesome doctgor. t and I go regularly for physicals and tests. I've been seeing a dentist regularly as well and I even had two sinus surgeries last year to fix a sinus problem discovered by an oral surgeon in an X Ray.  My blood pressure is normal, as is my cholesterol. I even meditate every day which also has a profound effect on my blood pressure and general well being. Even broken things can be fixed with a Little TLC.


Friday, June 20, 2014

You Break it You Buy it

I knew the Telemetry floor well; it was where Lisa spent a week when she had her heart trouble 12 years earlier. Or more correctly it's where I spent a week reminding Lisa, whose memory only existed in 5 minute increments, where she was and why.

So I knew this was some serious stuff. It was serious enough that I was NPO which meant no food, and I was a fall risk because I had passed out so I was confined to my bed. The food wasn't a big deal since I wasn't very hungry. But not getting out of bed was. This meant that I had to do all my peeing in a weired little flat plastic bottle. Between all he fluid they'd been pumping into me and my messed up kidneys I needed to pee a lot. This involved having to figure out how to get the pee into the bottle while flat on my back without making a mess. Even with a full bladder it's hard to get yourself flowing in that position and to negotiate the top of the bottle. But the worst part was I had to leave it on my side table so the tech could measure. I was told by my nurse that if I could walk 3 separate times with someone watching I could be listed as free to walk. Though she forgot to tell anyone else, so I only got one walk before night time and was trapped in bed through the night.

During this time I had yet another Dr.- the hospitalist. At one point he took one of those lights and stared into my eyes making worrying noises. I asked what he was looking for and he said you can actually see brain swelling behind the eyes. He was having a hard time telling if I was having something like that. So I got wheeled for another CT scan and while I was already on the road they also gave me an ultrasound for my kidneys. The only thing the ultrasound lady said to me was that my bladder was really full and I should try peeing when I got back to my room.

That night was one of the scariest nights I've ever had. They'd finally given me some hypertension medicine and the goal was to get my pressure under 180. I'd told Lisa I'd text her when that happened. But the first check at 9:00 PM showed I was still in the high 200's. Robbie, my awesome nurse, came back in around 10:00 with an injection of this medicine and gave me more. An hour later it was still over 200. He called the on-call and she ordered yet another higher dose. Still no change 90 minutes later.

By now I was upset and scared. This idea that I'd broken myself kept playing over my mind. Was anything going to get this pressure down? Was my heart going to get back to normal? Would my kidneys get better so I could stop needing to pee?

 By now it was 12:30 and there was a little drop but still over 200.  Robbie, who is still the nicest nurse I've ever encountered, gave me another dose of meds and came in every few minutes to encourage me. I think he could tell how scared I was. 1:30 still no change and another dose. I wasn't being able to sleep because I was scared and because I knew Robbie would have to wake me up to check my BP. Finally around 3:00 AM Robbie did a check and it was 175. This is a completely terrible blood pressure but I guess half of 300 is an accomplishment. Robbie gave me a high five and I drifted off to sleep.

(Next time the conclusion)

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Not Quite OZ

When I was a kid I was fascinated by ambulances; I'd peek in the window and look at the person inside, wondering what they were thinking and what was wrong with them. Now here I was in the back of one feeling very self conscious but also strangely calm. If I hadn't had a million electrodes on my chest, and tubes in my nose and an IV in my arm I might have enjoyed the ride and the view of Mt Rainier. There was something in the IV that was making me a little mellow and feeling like I was sort of watching everything from a distance so the first couple of hours were a blur.

The ER was a swirl of activity and people giving me that odd smile reserved for people that might fade away at any minute. My biggest memory of that part of it is virtually everyone commenting on my record high blood pressure. Most everyone was pretty polite about my stupidity in not having been to a doctor in 10 years except for one intern who didn't quite call me a moron but rolled her eyes every time she came into the room.

You spend a lot of time in the hospital on your little wheelie bed being rolled from place to place. I rolled from the CT Scan, to X Ray back to the ER and finally to my home for the night in the ICU. The ICU is kind of nice in some ways. You get a private room with a comfy bed and a dedicated nurse and tech who dote over you. There was a lot of adjusting of IVs and shaving of body hair to add electrodes. My advice is if you're going to go to the hospital and you're a hairy guy, shave in advance because they're not exactly doing manscaping and you wind up with big bare strips in your chest hair.

My night on-call doctor was a tall lanky guy in his early forties who had a southern drawl that sounded like honey. He managed to tell me that my heart was enlarged, my kidneys were messed up and he was afraid I was about to have a stroke while making it sound like he was offering me a Mint Julep.

There's just no way to fall asleep in the CCU. I was certain that I'd broken myself and I wasn't sure how I was going to fix it and I couldn't relax. But also there's always some noise in the hall, or someone coming in to someting buzz or ring a bell or to take some blood. At one point I opened my eyes to see my doctor just staring at me with a warm smile. He asked if I had chest pain, or numbness and I answered no. He kept smiling and said "Jeff. You are a puzzle to us. From the way your heart looks you should be a man who is having a heart attack. But you're cool as a cucumber and your other tests say you're not having one."   I guess that was comforting.

The next morning I had a new set of doctors. The resident was a spunky friendly woman who did a nice job of keeping  me calm. The on-call was fine but not especially friendly. At this point  I was pretty scared and it didn't help that my room was the one next to the room where the doctors had all their conversations and made calls. It was only separated by a window and a curtain and I could hear everything. I kind of reminded me of the Wizard of Oz hiding behind his curtain. I heard a  half dozen conversations about me. Most of them started with "No that's right 300. That's not a mistake."

The resident came in in what I thought was mid morning; I didn't have my a watch or phone so I wasn't sure. She told me they were doing Grand Rounds with the student doctors and she'd like to include me. She wanted to warn me that I was very unusual so there might be a lot of scary questions, but I shouldn't worry. She was probably afraid that in my condition I'd get freaked out and have a heart attack.

A few minutes later my two doctors came in surrounded by a gaggle of Doogie Howser aged doctors and a pharmacist. The resident started by giving a long, embarrassing explanation of my medical neglect, my vitals etc. Then she explained the mystery of the "not a heart attack". I didn't fully understand it but it had something to with my blood pressure being so high that it had enlarged some portion of my heart which caused it to look like I was having a heart attack.

I kind of knew how my dog felt at that point with a long conversation going on around me and not understanding most of it. Occasionally I'd hear my name and I'd smile or nod my head. There was an argument between the on-call and the pharmacist about what kind of blood pressure medicine to give me. The pharmacist wanted to follow protocol and the annoyed on-call said there's nothing protocol about this  case. They ultimately went out in the hall and argued.

Finally I started hearing phone calls from the OZ room about finding me a bed and me being relatively stable. I kept hearing Telm which I knew meant telemetry which his essentially where hear patients go. They put what's essentially a little radio on you so they can check your vitals continuously.  A few minutes later two transport guys put me on another wheelie bed ready to take me to the Telm unit.

(To be continued)

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Face Down in Georgetown

So this weekend is the Power Tool races in Georgetown. It's a lot of fun to watch these dressed up power tools like saw and sanders racing down a Pinewood Derby track and I've been going for years. For some reason it always worked out that Lisa, my wife, was out of town so I'd go myself. But two years ago she was around and we'd finally arranged to go.

That Friday I felt kind of fluish, with a low fever and upset stomache but I figured I'd get better. By the time we got going on Saturday I felt really sick, dizzy, headache, fever, nauseous. But I'd been looking foward to this I put on a hoody for the chills I was having and had Lisa drive. I  felt like I was getting sicker with every mile. By the time we parked I was sweating buckets. We started to walk around the fair that was part of the event and there were a lot of food vendors but I was so sick that the thought of food made me feel worse. Lisa looked for some food and I saw a Vitamin Water booth and got a free bottle of that. I drank a little thinking it would help, but it only made me sicker.

Lisa went to a food truck and I started feeling light headed. I've passed out once or twice in the past and I had a feeling it was coming. I can only describe it as a softening of focus around the edges of my filed of vision, a slight buzzing in my ears and a feeling of coming untethered from the world. While she looked at a booth I found an older brick building that had windows with a little ledge around the base. I sat/leaned on the ledge and felt myself suddenly fading more. It felt like I had just drifted into a deep sleep, when I suddenly started hearing carnival noise and Lisa yelling "Jeff, Jeff wake up,"

I woke up finding myself laying on the ground with a pair of broken sun glasses and a sore face. I sat up and Lisa looked panicked. I was a little disoriented but I've always had this ability when drunk or out of it to sound very coherent. I insisted I was fine but Lisa wasn't having any of it and she made us go home.

Now here is where it gets embarrassing. Somehow over the years I had developed a pretty bad medicacl phobia. I hadn't been to a doctor in over 10 years. I knew that High Blood pressure ran in the family and whenever I tested it myself it was high. I'd been treating myself with herbal medication and had convinced msyelf that my pressure would go down over time; it had already been 3 years of self treatment.

The ride home was tense. Lisa was insisting that we stop at the drug store and take a blood pressure, but I knew that it was going to be high. I tried to persuade her that I didn't need one, that I just had the flu and needed to go home. Fortunately I lost. We went to Bartells and took  a pressure. I thought my arm was going to fall off from how much it had to pump. Finally after a long time, the number came back....300/120.

This sent Lisa into panic mode and me into full denial mode. When we got home I insisted on just needing to get into bed and rest to which, suprisingly, Lisa agreed. I got into bed upstairs and a few minutes later I heard a whispering phone conversation. Lisa was on the phone consulting nurse at our medical center.

The gist of it was that the nurse clearly wanted me in the hospital right that minute. I hollowly argued with lisa and the consulting nurse, but in the end I knew it was time to get some help. I pretty much felt like an alchoholic who had just hit rock botom and had an intervention.

5 minutes later I had a small bag packed and was wearing sweats sitting on my couch gloomily waiting for Medic One two show up. There's something very odd about hearing a siren like you've heard a million times but knowing that it's coming for you. For some reason I kept hearing the lyrics to I heard that lonesome whistle blow.

(to be continued)

Friday, June 6, 2014

Strange Day in Oakland

I had one odd experience while I worked in Oakland (see Last Train Out of Oakland). Most days I didn't have use of a car so I would take a combination of buses and Bart from SF to the school. Some days I would walk from BART but if I was in a hurry there was a bus that I would take after work.


I had somehow gotten walking pneumonia(probably from the stress of the job). It went away after two weeks but I had a really bad cough that hung on. One particularly awful Friday I was on the bus headed back to BART to go home. I was in my usual dark mood and coughing away. It was one of those loud, hacky coughs that drive everyone around crazy.


The bus was empty except for me and a few people at the front. I was sitting toward the back on one of the sideways seats when this down and out looking guy ambled on. He was an older African American guy, probably in his sixties, wearing threadbare clothes. He also had a tall nicely made walking stick. he sat in a seat near the door a few seats away from me.


I was more or less lost in my head coughing as usual, but I did notice him staring at me briefly. I went on coughing, but after a few minutes I heard a humming. I looked up and this man had his eyes closed and he was humming something with an arm wrapped around the stick.


After a few minutes he looked directly at me, then closed his eyes again. This time he rubbed the stick with his left hand a couple of times then put his right hand out flat palm up. He hummed again while waving his left hand over the outstretched hand. Then he acted as though he was pulling something out of the right  hand. Then he’d act as though he was flinging whatever he’d grasped out the window. This stopped after a few minutes and when I looked at him again he was leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed.


After a few minutes I got up to leave. As I hit the top step the man opened his and he stared right at ; I got a chill. Then he spoke in a clear loud voice. “It will be gone.” He smiled at me and I half smiled back and walked off the bus. At the time I just chalked it up to one of those odd experiences that often happen in a big city.


But two days later  I was out with some friends and one of them said “are you feeling better? It sounds like your cough is gone anway.” I realized that not only had I not coughed since the bus but I hadn’t even taken any of the cough medicine I had been guzzling.  And then I remembered the man had started his ritual right after one of my coughing jags. To this day I don’t know if losing the cough was coincidence, some sort of psychological placebo or a mystical treatment but I think about that man often and how much I dismissed him at the time.

Friday, May 30, 2014

Danger Island Part Two

So there we were, The racist Burt sitting on the dock in his soaked clothes, staring at me like he was going to rip my throat out the first chance he got. Ralph was up in the bathroom with one of the guests, taking a shower and warming up. The boat with my friend Jack at the helm tied up with the other two people. They were a man and woman who both had the look of lifetime alchoholics, red blotchy skin, wrinkled skin,noses with broken blood vessels and, despite having been in the water for at least a few minutes, they smelled like Tequilla.

After he tied up and got out of the boat I waved Jack over to where I was still watching the ramp to the grounds to keep Burt from charging. I explained what Ralph said had happened and Jack Laughed "They didn't make much sense but those two that we just got said they hit something and the boat tipped over."


"Lots of stories," I laughed. At that Burt started yelling. "How come the N__ger gets to take a shower? What about us?" Pete and Jack and I huddled for a minute and decided that we had to keep them separated from Ralph so Pete sent one of the boat owners up to get Ralph out of the Bathroom and and bring him a back way back to the dock while Jack lead the rest up to the bathroom so no one would confront anyone.

The scraggly threesome went up the walkway with Jack and a few seconds later Ralph came down another path. As soon as he got to the dock he said he was missing his wallet. "It probably fell out in the water" I said." " I dunno. I think of them assh__es took it."

We decided to leave the rest of the group up in the bathroom until the Coast Guard came. The Delta is hot during the day but it's cold and foggy at night. Most of us were still wearing shorts and shivering there on the dock. I really wanted to go back to bed but this group seemed pretty sketchy and I wanted to make sure nothing happened. Suddenly I heard Burt yelling again from up the walk. "You can't keep us in here. We got rights." Suddenly Pete's radio crackled. It was the Coast Guard they were about two minutes out. We could actually vaguely hear the boat's engine. I yelled up to Jack to let them come back down.

As they got back to the ramp Burt almost immediately started to run down the ramp toward Ralph who was sitting, dejectedly on the deck. "I'm gonna kill you, you motherf__ker" I jumped up again to block him and he yelled "get out of my you n___er lover".
"you migh want to think twice about that." And I pointed at the Coast Guard boat that was now just a few hundred yards off shore. Several Armed men standing on deck. Burt practically deflated and just sat down on the ramp.  It really did feel like the Calvary arriving in the nick of time. I don't know how much longer I could have bluffed Burt with my tough guy act.

A couple of the Coasties got off the boat and talked to Jack who explained our end of the story and the stories that the group told us. The coasties just shook their heads and one of them said."typical Saturday night on the Delta."

They lead the group, Ralph First, followed by a a couple of sailors and then the rest. As the boat pulled out Burt was standing on Deck. He did one of those two finger pointing at his eyes then mine moves and shouted "I'm coming back." The Coastie standing next to him, looked directly at me gave me a small smile, touched a pair of what looked like handcuffs and shook his head as if to say "no way".

After they left I realized, with everything going on I hadn't peed in hours  so I ran up to the men's room. While I was washing my hands I glanced down at the trash and noticed something covered by a few paper towels. I reached in and found a wallet. It was empty except for an California ID belonging to Ralph.  One of them must have taken it from him and then hid it here, probably expecting to be searched by the coast guard.

The next day I was making breakfast in one of the outdoor cooking areas.We'd heard from the Coast Guard  I looked up and saw Jack come running across the lawn with a huge smile on his face.  He's one of the most serious people I know but he did an actual cartwheel. I laughed and asked him what was up. "Well first I just talked to Pete, the Coasties charged Burt with Piloting a Boat While Inxociated. But the big thing is the club is going to pay for our entire weekend for helping out last night." Those pancakes tasted especially good that morning.

Monday, May 26, 2014

Danger Island

Memorial Day just passed which reminded me of one of my strangest weekends ever. I have friend named Jack who loved to sail. His family were members of the Saint Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco. His dad died of cancer when Jack was 21 but because his dad had been a board member Jack was given a lifetime membership.

One of the perks of the club was that they owned a small island on the Sacramento Delta called Tinsley. The delta is a long chain of rivers and Islands The island was very small, but it had a nice lawn area, pool, bbqs and lodgings which Jack got for half price which was  a big deal for us in our early twenties. The other, better off members of the club would bring their boats and stay on those. But there was a converted lighthouse with several rooms boatless people. Aside from the two of us who were in our twenties most of the rest of the guests were much older.

Jack and I had stopped at the "crawfish guy" on the way up and had a feast of crawfish, corn and a couple of beers. Another member had a pavlova cake that he insisted was left over and he gave that to us. Full and a little tipsy, we turned in around 10:00 in our room at the top of the lighthouse. It was a warm night and we had our windows open.

I think I had been asleep for maybe an hour when I started dreaming that I was hearing screaming. Suddenly I found myself awake and saw Jack throwing on a pair of shorts. The screaming was coming from somewhere out in the Delta. Maybe 4 or 5 voices yelling "help. Our boat flipped. Help."

Jack  was not only a sailor, but was also an EMT and volunteer firefighter and he loved action and drama. In about 1 minute we were running down to the dock where the Island manager and a few guests were already getting a little skiff  ready.  Jack and a couple of the guys jumped into the boat, leaving me to help whoever they brought back since I had First Aid and CPR training. It was a foggy night and the boat was out of site in a few seconds.

Me, Pete, the Island manager, and a few older guests stood on the dock hearing our guys calling out and the victims yelling back. After a few tense minutes we heard Pete's radio crackle with Jacks voice "We found em. They managed to swim to a little island. They're are four of them we're going to bring back two at a time."

A few minutes later they brought back two soaking wet guys. One of them was a guy in his late 20's with long hair, a scruffy beard and what looked like prison tatoos. The other guy was a youngish African American guy. The both walked up the dock and Jack his crew went back out. I took a look at them both, they were just a little cold and wet so we gave them towels and coffee.

The African American guy who said he was named Ralph turned his back to the other guy and looked scared. The other guy was shooting daggers at Ralph. I would have been happy to just keep everyone quiet but this sort of loud guy named Saul who had made it clear he liked to be in charge started asking questions. He asked the other guy, Burt, what happened. Burt's face got deep red, and he started breathing in an angry way "That N---er flipped our boat. We were out drinking beer and he got drunk and stood up and started jumping up and down."

Ralph jumped up. "That's not true. You and your f__king friends were trying to kill me." He looked at me, "we work in the same canning plant and they asked me out on their boat. They stopped the boat and started calling me the N word and stuff and then..." He looked at Burt" You said you were going to beat the sh_t out of me. So I jumped out of the boat."

At that Burt jumped up to attack Ralph. Ralph jumped up to defend himself and somehow I got caught in the middle facing Burt who was swinging his arms wildly and cursing. With me trapped in the middle on this slippery dock, having huge fists pummeling me, I heard Sol yell "Throw them in the water. They're all crazy. Cool em off."

I realized that no one knew me like they did Jack and they probably thought I'd come of the boat too. I started yelling "I'm a guest. I'm trying to stop this fight. Help me." After a few more rounds of "cool em off". Pete who had been on the phone with the coast guard and another youngish guy came back down and grabbed Burt and pulled him off of me. With that Ralph calmed down.  Pete suggested Ralph go up to the poolhouse to take a warm shower. So Saul escorted him up.

After a minute Burt tried to run up the ramp to find Ralph. I jumped up and blocked the ramp. And he screamed for me to get out of his way. I'm not a tough guy but I can also hold my own and I told him to sit down and wait for his friends. Pete also reminded him that the Coast Guard were on their way which seemed to make him settle down a bit. I guess he didn't want to give them any reason to arrest him.

(Next time the thrilling conclusion)


Friday, May 23, 2014

GoodHeart

My last name means GoodHeart in German and I've spent 52 years trying to live up to that. It's hard, there are days when I can be the biggest jerk on the planet but I do try. I don't know much about my dad's side of the family and I don't know the origins of the name, but I've always assumed there was a scholar or Rabbi somewhere in there who actually earned the name.

Though I don't know the origins of the name I do know that my dad and his parents lived up to the name. My dad is really one of the gentlest and truly kind people I know. As a kid you always see your grandparents through deeply rose colored glasses but there is very little negative I can remember about Benny and Selma either of . My dad is and his parent's were truly goodhearts!

As a kid we spent a lot of time with them. My grandfather worked the race track circuit as a paramutual agent(the guy who takes your bet). That meant during the summer Poppa Benny would spend time in Stockton for the State fair and Santa Rosa for the Santa Rosa county fair. My brother and I  would usually spend a week or two with them. We'd usually all stay in the same room them in one double bed and me and my brother in the other; my sister is 7 years younger and I'm pretty sure my grandfather retired by the time she would have been old enough to stay with us.

We'd lay in bed at night in the dark and she'd tell us all kinds of stories about their travels(which was odd because the only travelling they did when I was a kid was to these fairs). She talked about Los Angaleez(that's how she pronounced it)  and meeting Clark Gable at a hamburger joint and about the geyser in California where she was certain the owner would turn it on from a faucet when the crowd got big enough. If she was mad at us she'd threaten to give us fifty lashes with a wet noodle. I guess that was a phrase that was popular when she was younger, but she had a bathrobe that had a long, ropey tie on it that she sort of tap us with if were bad. She always giggled when she did do it.

Their favorite place for breakfast was a chain called Sambos They actually had the story of Little Black Sambo painted in a mural on the wall. By the early 70's someone figured out that this was deeply racist and changed the name to Sharis. In any case, once we liked something they always made us order the same thing. I don't think it was a bossy thing, I think they just got great joy out of  watching us enjoy things. So I always had to get a Monte Christo and my brother always had to get Chocolate Chip Pancakes. Thank god I never mentioned how much I like beef liver; imagine eating that at every meal.

In Santa Rosa there was a german place called The Black Forest. On birthdays they would play a Hurdy Gurdy machine with Happy Birthday on it. Even though my Grandfather's birthday was in October Selma would  always tell them it was my grandpas birthday. They'd come out with the Hurdy Gurdy and then the waitress would kiss him on top of his bald head and leave a huge lipstick mark. He always acted surprised.

My favorite memory was the summer of 69; the moon landing. They would always invite their friends to the hotel we stayed at in Santa Rosa, The Flamingo. They'd spend a couple of epic days with the women having Mah Jhong Tournaments and the men drinking beer and playing Canasta. They'd get a bunch of rooms together and put some card tables on the lawn in front. For the moon landing they dragged a TV(one of those giant consoles) onto the lawn and we all watched along with Walter Cronkite as Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. Everyone cheered and, while I didn't understand why they all were teary eyed back then, I get tears in my eyes whenever I watch clips of the moon landing now.

There were some bad days too. I remember my mom coming up and screaming at my brother in a drunken rage about something and Selma whispering (terrible, terrible) under here breath. There was the time Selma forbid me to ever read Mad Magazine again because she misunderstood a cartoon that satirized the hypocrisy and racism of the time with an American Flag using every hateful racial word possible written in the stripes. But mostly those were times I remember in a shimmery light.

(more next time)

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Last Train Out of Oakland

My last and hardest teaching job in California ended in death and destruction; literally. I managed to find a job running the afterschool program at an Oakland YMCA. It was the worst, most dsyfunctional place I'd ever worked(until I got into the Internet business in the 90's). It was in a school gym where the principal hated the program so much that she was always threatening to kick us out of the gym we used as our "classroom" if everything wasn't locked up in closets and out of the way for school assemblies. There were something like a hundred kids and a staff of 4.

The parents didn't like me. They thought I wasn't disciplined enough. The previous teacher had been a stern woman who apparently the kids were terrified of so that they'd  never act up; Miss Mamie. I had the impression there may have been some spanking involved. The staff was untrained, the kids were rowdy and the facility was awful. I despised every minute of that job. My forty minute Muni/BART ride from SF was one of complete dread and fear. I usually feel asleep from stress the minute I got on the  BART train. The one good thing that came up was that Lisa got a job offer in Seattle. I didn't want to move but the thought of leaving this hell-hole made moving seem almost pleasant.

My last day at this horrible job was also a school holiday. What this meant was not only would my center be open and filled with kids whose parents had to work but the other two programs in the other schools in the area would also come to our facility; maybe 120 kids or more. For all these kids I had 3 teachers that day plus 1 aid each from the other schools. My boss was furious that I was leaving and didn't give me any extra help.

It was basically crowd control at this point. We set up two TVs with kids movies, an art table and some games outside. After stopping 3 or 4 fights I decided that we needed a change of scenerey.

The one good thing about this place was that it was near the lake in Downtown Oakland. So after a morning of breaking up fights and not being able to get anything started I took the crowd over to the lake. I broke the group up into 4 groups and sent each group off. 

Things were going okay. My group was playing kickball when one of the aids from the group I'd sent to play by the lake  ran over screaming for me to come right away. I aksed what the problem was but she said "you just need to come." When I got there I saw a park ranger and a woman in her twenties and one of the first graders named Damien standing in a little semi circle. No one looked happy. Damien was a kid from one of the other schools who I'd already seen was troubled. He was very aggressive with other kids, biting, hitting etc.. He had no facial affect and he had already instigated several fights.

The young woman had tears in her eyes, the ranger had laser beams shooting out of her eyes directed at me. Damien who was from one of the other schools was a kid who a bad reputation. It can never be good when someone whose only been on this planet for 6 years already has a bad rep. The ranger icily asked me if I was in charge and I answered yes and asked what was wrong.

At that point the young woman started talking and crying. "I'm a park volunteer and I was down here cleaning up litter when I looked up and saw that boy come over toward the ducks who were sitting here getting sun. Before I could say anything he looked at that duck, jumped in the air and then...." she sobbed..."and then he jumped on that duck." She pointed and for the first time I saw a flattened, apparently dead duck."He killed that duck." It took me a full minute to absorb that. Damien had absolutely no expression on his face.

The ranger was furious and I don't know how, but somehow I managed to talk her out of giving me a citation. I didn't even bother trying to talk to Damien, he already had a demented look in his eyes. When I told his mom this story at the end of the day she screamed obscenities at him and threated to "beat the shit out of him." My last act at that center was to call my director tell her the story, tell her about the kid's mom and tell her that she really need to either shut that facility down or put some money into hiring a proper staff. 

As I road BART home to my apartment in SF my last image of that horrible place was of a flattened duck and psychopathic child. 20 years later I still think about him and if he's been able to overcome his problems.

Friday, May 2, 2014

How the Giant felt

There's this great series of videos by the Fine Brothers where they show kids and teens some pop culture or social item and record their honest reactions. Every time I watch one of these it makes me a little nostalgic for working with kids and I wonder if I want to go back to it in some capacity, maybe teaching again or counseling.

I still have that strange kid magnet vibe I've always had. Just the other day I had not  one but two different mothers comment on how odd it was that their babies were "fascinated" by me. I've had more than a few kids walk up to me in big box stores and ask me in  a calm way, as though I was a family friend, where their parents were. Kids are always walking up to me on the beach and just saying hi.

But then I think  back to my teaching days. Most of the time everything went just fine. Occasionally I'd have a kid who was a "little energetic". There were the years I ran the summer camp which had many Russian Jewish kids who had just come from Soviet Russia and were boisterous to say the least. There was Alex who stole the hammers out of a piano. Let's just say the music teacher wasn't to happy when she went to play Dona Dona at the big family Shabbat gathering and couldn't make the piano work right.

There was his buddy Ruslan who threw a rock through a sliding glass window of the Temple next door that we shared space with. The Rabbi called me and Ruslan and his father to a meeting. A meeting with the Rabbi is not something to look forward to. At the meeting, the Rabbi who was not of the wise, patient variety but more of the harried, not particularly interested in dealing with small things type, asked Ruslan why he did it. Ruslan's answer "I didn't think it would do anything." Ruslan's dady said incredulous how could you "think it wouldn't do anything. It was a rock." Ruslan's answer, in his thick accent. "It was just a leetle rock."

Most of that was typical stuff. But for a couple of years I ran a very tiny daycare program for that same Agency. This was a program that had no money, no plan and pretty much no support. There was me and a youth director who might occasionally give me a break. We worked out of a portable classroom on the property of a mostly abandoned school across the street that had a few tenants. Even though this was an almost neglected program it had one very import factor. There were about 7 kids in this program one of them was the son of the director of the entire local Jewish Community Center agency, the other was the daughter of the director of my branch of the JCC and there were several board member's kids.

I've always been really bad at playing job politics and I didn't see any reason to treat these kids differently. The problems was they were a bunch of  difficult kids. Jeremy, the son of the Director was an angry and spoiled kid who even at 7 seemed to know that his dad was important. He was always arguing and giving me a hard time.  On this particularly day we were all playing Four Square in a distant back part of the school. It was late in the day and the administrative staff and my boss were all gone. I was the only adult around.

Jeremy was up and he got out and was angry and threw the ball so that it rolled down a walkway. I asked him to get the ball and he shouted "no." I asked him again and this time he yelled "NO". I walked over to him to try to get him to calm down and his face was red and there was real anger in his eyes.

He was inches from me; I'm about 5;11 he was a little 3.5 foot tall kid. I was about ask him to sit down on a bench and suddenly he swung out with a tiny fist. Instantly I felt a sharp pain in my crotch and in another nano second I was on the ground writhing in pain. The little brat had just punched me in the crotch. The teacher in me wanted to get up and deal with this, but my brain and nether region had different ideas.   I don't know what causes a grown man to go into the fetal position but there I was completely paralyzed. When I look back now I see stars flying around like in a cartoon.To add insult to injury this kid wasn't  upset, or embarrassed or apologetic, he was standing right over me laughing and taunting me like Hulk Hogan at Wrestlemania.

Finally after what seemed like 20 minutes I managed to stand up, orderered him to get the ball and then to sit down away from the group. By now I think he realized he was in serious trouble. Unfortunately his au pair came to pick him up that day and although I told her what had happened I knew she probably wouldn't explain it properly to the parents. I told my boss about it the next day and she said she'd deal with it. But I got the impression that because this was the big bosses kid not much was going to happen. I think my boss made him sit in her office for a day.  Oddly enough the agency dropped the funding for that program a few months later.

I tell that story a lot and it always makes everyone laugh, but I still get a pain deep in my crotch whenever I tell it.

To be continued with more tales from my kid days.




Friday, April 25, 2014

Good old fashioned beat down.

I'm driving home in my neighborhood. It's a typical Seattle street where the streets are very narrow and if there are cars parked on both sides of the street only one car can pass which means someone has to pull over. People are usually polite about it and figure out how to give each other right of way.

So I'm in my car  two blocks from home I'm two thirds of the way down one of these narrow blocks and I can see a huge SUV come bombing down the hill, he rounds the corner onto the street I'm on and basically charges at me. He's not looking, he's not stopping and this forces me to pull over or he's going to hit me. Mind you, I have to back up to pull over into an empty space in front of a driveway.

Now I'm not proud of this next bit. My grandfather used to have a really bad temper when he drove and he'd constantly curse when he was driving. If he remembered there were kids in the car, he'd yell something like "get a horse." but often he would just curse a blue streak. My dad was much better he'd just make a horn sign with his fingers and almost jokingly give the guy what we'd call the horns; it was meant to be a kind of joking curse.

I guess my granpa rubbed off on me. I'm generally easy going, but if I feel like someone's breaking the rules or taking advantage of me when I'm driving I can curse. I've gotten a lot better about it, especially being diagnosed with high blood pressure it's something I've worked very hard to control for my health. My meditation also helps.

But this was pretty blatant, I was tired from work, it was my Friday and I just wanted to get home. This made me really really mad and I yelled "Fuck You." Ooops. It was only when he stomped on his breaks that I realized both our windows were open.

He stops, his window square with mine but two feet higher because he's a little man in a big truck. "What's your problem buddy?"

At this point I realize what I've done, I'm embarassed and sense a little danger here.  . I try to be very calm but firm. "You're driving really aggressively."

He looks at me, face red, veins popping on his forehead, he has a puffy mean face and he says "Hey bud. You're the one who cursed."

"Yeah, I did and I shouldn't have," I say flatly."But I had the right of way on this street and you forced me off the road."

"I LIVE here." he says, as though that gives him some right to drive like he's the king of the road.

When I say "me too". Something set's him off and his eyes turn to slits. He starts to make a big show of taking off his seat belt and says "When was the last time you got a gold old fashioned beat down?"

At this point there are 2 cars behind him, one behind me and an entire playground full of parents and kids a block away. Not to mention, that he's extremely overweight and doesn't look like he's ever had a fight.
The idea of two grown men pummeling each other over this is so absurd to me  I acutally laugh  and say  "Are you really going to beat me up in front of all these witnesses?"

He looks at me and makes a huge show of putting his seat belt back on, narrows his eyes and the dismissively  says."I haven't got time for you buddy. I haven't got time for you." and drives off.

Now granted I shouldn't have cursed.;it's still something I'm working on. But what possesses a grown man who presumably is responsible enough to live in a nice part of town and own a big expensive car to not only drive like an aggressive jerk but to think it's okay to solve a problem with threats and beat downs? I can honestly say I don't drive like that. I was taught defensive driving by a kindly older man named Mr Rowbottom. I gice way when need, I make eye contact and wave when road conditions are confusing, And I certainly have never threatened anyone with a "beat down" because they made me mad.


Saturday, April 19, 2014

It's Easter Sunday and I'm Jewish

"It's Easter Sunday and I'm feeling kind of blueish. It's Easter Sunday and I'm Jewish."
Song Lyrics by Eric Guthertz circa 1980


A lot of things are strange for Jewish kids growing up. I  go back to the unplitically correct era when schools had "Christmas" and "Easter" breaks. And the Christmas pageant was usually filled with Christmas carols and the (usually drunk) gym teacher dressed as Santa. If we were lucky maybe there'd be one token chorus of Dreidle Dreidle Dreidle.

Not being able to hang out with friends a couple of days a week because I had to go to Hebrew School was another odd one. Friends would be at soccer or flag football and I'd be in the basement of a temple learning Hebrew so that I could read my Torah portion in a couple of years. I have vivid memories of Mr Kornfeld lecturing us about how we'd be better people for learning Hebrew and being Bar Mitzvahed instead of spending time outside playing. 

But Easter was always the weirdest and worst. For one thing to a Jewish kid the idea of a big rabbit bringing candy and toys to little kids was kind of nutty. We could almost deal with Santa, he was a human at least.  Even if he did somehow have magic properties at least he looked like someone's granpa. The most mystical character we had was Elijah and his only trick was that he drank a glass of wine at every house on Passover.  

But the Easter Bunny just seemed like a freak. Come on, a man sized rabbit hopping around with a basket full of freakishly colored eggs just seemed scary. How did he get into people's houses anyway? Did he come through some freakishly large man sized rabbit hole? He never talked either. He sort of had a serial killer vibe.

The holiday itself seemed odd too. The idea of giving up something for Lent and, in those days, only eating fish on Fridays was just bizarre. As a Jewish kid you don't have to give anything up, you just have to feel guilty about what you do have. 

And there's the whole resurrection thing. No disrespect intended but it just seems fantastical to a little kid. It's pretty hard to wrap a young head around. Okay, maybe so is an oil lamp that with only one day's worth of oil lasting eight days. The idea that The Last Supper was possibly a Passover Seder is also mind blowing to a young Jewish kid. 

But the social aspect was disconcerting too. Most of the year the topic of my Jewishness didn't really come up. It was a curiosity  and the eight nights of presents might have been a source of envy to other kids. But Easter was different. The Catholic Church only officially repudiated Jewish Deicide in the late 60's. So for many years I had to deal with other kids telling me that the Jews killed Christ. To be fair I was never literally called "Christ Killer." But it was a rare Easter when the topic of Jews killing Christ didn't come up.

Easter Sunday is still odd to me. To those who celebrate it's a religious and festive day with fancy hats, chocolate eggs and a delicious feast. To me it's another Sunday that I have to work. Maybe it's a little better because my job will be a little slower because everyone who uses our website will be celebrating. It's always a little isolating. While everyone else is having delcious cookies and baked goods I'm having a piece of matzo with peanut butter.

Don't get me wrong. I have the utmost respect for the holiday and people's beliefs, but for me I just hear the lyrics of my brother's song rolling around in my head. 

Sunday, April 13, 2014

The Matzo Ball Curse

Okay, I'll admit it,I really didn't like Passover growing up. For a young kid it was kind of an ordeal. For starters there was the length of dinner. We'd have them at my grandfather's brother house, Uncle Leon. He was a nice guy and, as far as I knew, not particularly religious but this was his night to be "patriarch" and he would make sure that every one knew who was leading the service.

The part before the meal felt like it went on for hours, which it may well have. There are a lot of prayers over wine and food, and a lot of lengthy explanations of passover and sections to read and I'm sure he was using some really old book with stilted language. The other problem was that he gave my great grandfather Hymie a lot of the reading. But, as a an immigrant from Russia, he spoke fluent Yiddish and would read from his own Yiddish Haggadah(prayer book). And it wasn't fun Yiddish words like Meshuggah and Oy Vey. 

And the food which is never great was really bad. Leon's wife at the time, Annie, was a horrible cook. The stories of burnt birthday cakes were legendary. She would put out Gefilte Fish which is an already nasty fish loaf in some kind of Jelly. Usually people do something to spruce it up like adding veggies; Annie would plop it from the jar into a bowl, the jelly dripping over the sides of the bowl. Charrosets is an already thick combination of walnuts and various fruit it's supposed to represent mortar and hers did a good job of that.

And of course there was always the grownup drama that wouldn't make much sense. Leon and Annie were on their way to a very bitter divorce and as I look back I remember all of the sniping and sideways glances at each other. My mother would drink way to much Kosher wine and start arguing with everyone.

As I got older the Seder got smaller and my dad would lead it with just my mom and her immediate family(mother, sister, brother in-law) and us. My dad's Jewish experience was minimal, his mother celebrated Christmas and he spent about a month practicing for his Bar Mitzvah which he read in transliteration rather than taking the more traditional 3 years to learn Hebrew. But it was fun and quick. He'd pick his way through the Hagaddah, sometimes skipping parts accidentally. Everyone would laugh and have a good time(except my mother who still drank too much).

Somehow despite all those bad years Passover is one of the few holidays along with Yom Kippur and Hannukah that I observe. I always keep Pasover kosher(no leavening or flour). If I had my way I'd have a seder every year;I've tried to have a seder most years. But I'm convinced it's become cursed.  

I know, sounds nuts, but let me explain. We did manage to have one or two in the first house we owned. They were small but fun. But then came the string. We planned one  but my father in-law was in the final stages of a terminal lung disease. The next years Lisa's mom was fighting brain cancer and Lisa was back east helping out.

We layed off a few years but planned a big one a couple of years later. We even printed invitations, bought a new dishwasher, fixed a long broken oven and invited Lisa's mom to come out. The day before Passover Lisa's mom wanted tea and somehow a burner was left on, and some cleaning fluid got placed  on top and we had a massive kitchen fire and ended up selling that house and moving. We spent the week of passover in a hotel eating out every night. You'd be amazed at how hard it is to keep Passover Kosher eatign out every day; no tortillas, pizza, bread, soups with flour, pasta etc. 

Okay so here we are in 2014. Lisa's mom was diagnosed with another brain tumor but she was doing okay with Chemo. My mom had been pretty sick but was doing better; we were in a lull. We started planning another Seder. We were pretty excited and on the day we were going to send out an Evite....Lisa got the call that her mom was in bad shape; not talking or eating. Not able to get out of bed. So we threw Lisa on a plane and she'll be there for at least another few weeks.

As for me I managed to buy some Whole Foods Matzo Ball soup and I'll probably have some lamb chops. No Seder yet again. Maybe I'll read some Jewish Literature like Isaac Bashevis Singer or Sholem Alechem. Maybe my dog Harry will get a few matzo balls and read the 4 questions to me. 

Seders usually end with the phrase "Next year in Jerusalem". I'll settle for "Next year in my home."


Friday, April 11, 2014

Pook Through the Looking Glass

I didn't think much when Lisa left for New Hampshire. From what I heard Pook wasn't talking, or eating but it sounded like depression and exhaustion. But Lisa called early the next morning. They'd rushed Pook to the hospital with dehydration and what they said was the flu. Her condition was such that she wasn't talking, her eyes would flutter when asked a question and she could comprehend and answer questions after what Lisa said was several minutes.

So the day Lisa left I was doing my daily meditation which are MP3s on an app.  In this phase of my medidation the guide aks has us aks ourselves a question in the third person. As it happened this was a new sequence with a new question. You're meant to aks these in the third person. It helps you consider the question as though you're hearing it fresh and allow you to come up with emotions in a less intellectual way. So the question for this period was "If you knew that today was very last day, how would you feel?

How would I feel? I'd be said, pissed off, but maybe I'd also be calm. I'd be very worried about everyone I was leaving behind. I'd probably worry about my stupid job. Mostly I'd be pissed off.

But this set me off thinking about Pook. Here she was maybe on the brink. She's still relatively young with three adult kids, 3 grandkids, a daughter in-law, son-in law, sister and friends. What was she thinking? Could she think? Did she know what was going on? If she did know what was going on was this what had her so isolated? Was she so deeply lost in thought about her death that she couldn't bring herself to talk. Was she being tortured by thoughts of who she was and who she was leaving behind.Was she hiding from the world? Had she retreated into a dream world of happier days where she read would devour novels in  a day and make fantastic meals that would take days to prepare. 

"Okay. Concentrate again on your surroundings." I practically jumped off my couch when Andy, the guide came back. I usually get deep in these meditations but never this deep. Andy usually gives a little speech and homework at the end of these sessions. "So this question is going to make you feel many things; they're all okay." I quietly said "no shit" to msyelf. This was the first time that a meditation had acutally given me a feeling of dread. 

He went on" but what I want you to think about is change. The inevitability of change. As much as we want. Nothing stays the same. Look for  change in your daily life." with that I burst out laughing. I was thinking to myself  "what an understatement." Lisa was going to be gone, for who knows how long. Her mom could no longer take care of her own physical needs, at least for now. Both her brothers were indisposed I was about to be alone for maybe a month. Our dog was about to lose his running partner for awhile.

But mostly I though about Pook. She'd already gone through this hell once and beaten it. Beaten it soundly enough that the doctors declared her cancer free. But it that firs tumor deeply changed her in ways ovious and subtle. She was different, her thinking wasn't as clear, she was even more eccentric than before. Her hygiene wasn't as good, she didn't cook as well, she'd get lost in crowds. 

That's enough of a life change for most people. But now she was even more sick. The tumor had affected her brain even more deeply already; she was being irritable and mood before it was diagnosed. But now something even deeper was happening. Something so deep and internal that no one but her could even say what going on. Maybe even she couldn't say. 

For some reason I started thinking of Alice going on her journeys to Wonderland. A strange world that she was trapped in and could only escape after a long adventure. I hoped that whatever was brewing in Pook's mind was some great adventure of books and delicious food and not a prison of regrets and fears. 

We wait patiently for you to come back to tell us about your great adventures.