oomph!

Is there anyone out there who might like to share some "oomph." One of those weeks when the fatigue from last weekend is not quite lifting. Gas tank is on empty. Was up much of last night due to my Last Quarter arrhythmic heart. When it goes off on its own, sleeping is, I imagine, much like trying to sleep on a roller coaster and, now, M seems to be developing a similar condition.

And this weekend-coming? Celebrations for a grandkid's winning some awards for her writing .... a talk I agreed to do to a religious group .... showing a film and discussing same with some colleagues at a meeting .... and what about the gardening? Dang! Took off a couple of hours, today, to wheel mulch to the various flower beds .... 90 degrees .... 9 loads = ione cubic yard ... and I was in another timezone ... somewhere near overtime!

Any case. Look here! If you need to read something, write it! Pick up some slack! Get in the boat and row some, aye. Proverbs commends that you rise before a hoar-frosted oldster.

Get it up! C'mon.

I'll get back, soon ... I hope, that is, to get back, soon.

Getting Too Old for &%$^&%(*^%

Betimes, I do feel as if I'm getting too old for some things. If I never thought technology would change ... newspapers go out of business? publishing houses closing down? Lord knows what's gonna happen with universities now that so much online teaching is being sold? But ...

So much for the stuff out there but recognizing that the date stamped on my own lid is almost as out of date as some of the prescriptions in my medicine cabinets, the Hersheys Chocolate in the back of one of my food pantries, and the extra carburetors for my 1967 Rover 2000 that I traded for some carpentry 30 years ago. Why am I keeping those SU Carbureters in my garage? Do I really believe that I'll ever use them? Oh! And the books. Is anybody ever gonna read those books, again. Someone lifted a book from my office ... God bless them, I say ... may you read it in peace ... in your own library.

I guess from the start this attempt at blogging about Playing in the Fourth or Last Quarter (I could never comfortably decide which it should be) was about expiration dates. I don't mean to be maudlin and, perhaps, sometimes I am but expiration dates have some meaning and if you don't beieve that try drinking that Half and Half you forgot about during that lost Winter storm! in 2010.

Thursday, I drove 350 miles ... almost entirely in downpours, it seemed. M's right wing has a torn muscle and driving fell on me. The next day was "Special Persons' Day" at grandkids' religious school. I got to follow my 12 year old grandson through his morning. It was great but by noon, I was pooped. I mean knock-down tired. I visited my brother who lives around there and then a niece who moved from the Middle East to 50 miles south of there. She has these energetic kids. I put on my uncle-shtick for them before driving 30 miles north to where my son and his family live .... including his son whom I followed about in the 6th grade. Next 36 hours I lived in the house of the young and religious. It was great but by Sunday morning ... LIMP ... I was limp.

Sunday morning I led a memorial service for my departed Mother-in-Law near the town where my repatriated niece and a Sister-in-Law and her family live ... then I got in the car and drove 330 miles back home.

This Memorial Day, I will remember those who have fallen ... from my bed ... from which I may fall.

To borrow and twist a bit from Thurber's The Shrike and the Chipmunk: Early to rise and early to bed? Doesn't keep you from ending up prematurely dead!

Did have a good time, though.

I can still feel glimmers of embarassment

Maybe it's the age thing ... maybe me ... but I don't typically feel much embarassment ... betimes, transient glimmers. By the time I and maybe others, too, reach the Last Quarter, we've been penetrated through just about every orifice .... "Howard .... Relax. Lie on your side and take a deep breath. This won't hurt" says the doctor with a gloved hand either with or without one of the tools of the Inquisition .... "Howard, did you blaspheme, today?" .... "Anything but the proctoscope" .... "Anything?" ... Well. .......................... All this is to say that my Crotchety Old Man rant yesterday about WORDS left me embarassed for the only time I can remember since my Mother found Margaret and I playing Show and Tell ... Well! Show and Show ... in the back yard maybe in 1951. .................... Railing at House Members and Doctors like Old Mr. Engler on W. 5th Street in Coney Island who would shake his cane at the kids on their steel-wheeled roller skates. I've become Mr. Engler! ..... "Own up to it, Howard, you are Mr. Engler, may his Soull and Memory be for Blessing." (LOL for some morbid reason.) ...........................  To rant and rail? or not to rant, at all! Aye! that is a more or less irrelevant question. I find the urge almost uncontrollable. Am I shaking my cane, so to speak, like the Colonial poet Edward Taylor who penned: "A fig to thee, Oh Death"? Am I pissed about being in the first pew? about being abandoned as an orphan by my parents who swore to me they wouldn't move the umbrella and it was safe to go in the water ... they'd be there when I came back? ........................ I dunno. But by the Fourth Quarter there seems to be simultaneously less sensitivity to the slings and arrows of Playing in the Big City ... and more sensitivity, too. ........................... Heading up with M for Special Persons' Day at some of our grandkids' religious schools 350 miles North. There, too, there'll be a splitting in the meaning of the words SPECIAL PERSONS. To my grandson who I'll follow (M will follow our grand-daughter) I'll be that maybe embarassing piece of history ... of his unique history ... his story. To the school, I'll be a potential donor, hopefully who still remembers that 'Tis, indeed, a gift to be special ... and to carry a checkbook. ........................ Don't get cynical, H!

........................................ Time for a road trip, Old Man!

Smoke and Mirrors

Hey! Thanks to CB for comments, for getting in this crickety boat and rowing with me (see yesterday's comment)

I suppose I'm getting crotchety. They say (who the Hell are THEY, anyway) that Old Folk get to be more of who they always were.* Words are getting to me more than they once did. Gettin' cantankerous. Oh! I have long-been annoyed by words. Bill Maher was criticized and lost his show, as I recall, for questioning the use of COWARDS applied to all the 9/11 killers. I guess I've been crotchety before ... never really liked Bill Maher, anyway. He was too flip for me. Ach! I even stopped watching Saturday Night Live when Eddie Murphy made fun of Mr. Rogers. Can you imagine a cheeky bastard like me being annoyed by Eddie Murphy in a sweater. Lotta nerve! ................ Any case, back to words. I get upset by calling people on our side HEROES for dying doing what any decent virtuous person does. You stick your head out the window and tell a killer to stop killing Kitty Genovese and you get labeled a HERO! ...................... Today, I was listening to the House Oversight Committe ripping a new one into three IRS leaders over the latest attempt to demonstrate that the First Family that I said, yesterday, warmed my heart ....  into scheming devils who play nasty politics. The ex-head of the IRS, some clean-cut middle-ager appointed by Bush the Younger, was being crucified by both sides. Tammy Duckworth kept pressing him to take RESPONSIBILITY for the failures that presumably occurred in TARGETING certain Tea Party groups in having them demonstrate their right to Non-Profit status or something. A tempest in a Tea Party, if you ask me ... but that's for another day. What got to me was that word RESPONSIBILITY. He kept sayoing that he was sorry these things happened on his watch but he was the head of a 90,000 person organization and he didn't sign off on every transaction and didn't himself peruse every letter. .................... RESPONSIBILITY, I suppose, means the ABILITY TO RESPOND. Am I responsible for the way my kids turned out? No! I can no longer respond to every gliche in my middle-aged kids! Is it my fault? I suppose so (I wonder if my kids are reading ... oops!) ............................... I remember the Iran-Contra Hearings, too. Not only did everyone seem to cite Thomas Jefferson for what they did but they all claimed RESPONSIBILITY .... not that they could do a blessed thing to RESPOND ... nah! but they were RESPONSIBLE. ................... Words! I hate the misuse of words. .................. Last Summer, I was sitting for the second time waiting for my Podiatrist. After an hour (the previous time she was an hour and a half late), I asked when I would be seen. "Oh, Doctor is very busy and there are still three patients ahead of you." I explained that I had someone coming to my office and would need to leave. "Would you please return my check." The receptionist explained that she couldn't do that, as I was not keeping my APPOINTMENT. Much to the chagrin, perhaps, of my wife, I quietly explained that the word APPOINTMENT was built on the word APPOINTED ... as in a meeting at an APPOINTED time. "I was here at the APPOINTED time and if you don't give me my check back, the Brooklyn in me would hold court as I made a bloody scene in the waiting room." The receptionisist called the Doctor and I kindly re-explained the origin of the word APPOINTMENT. To avoid a scene, they did return my check and then sent a note to my Primary Care Physician explaining that this Old Man was no longer welcome in her PRACTICE. ........................... WORDS, CROTCHETY OLD FOLKS ... and the vagaries of PLAYING IN THE LAST QUARTER. ........................ I've got two words for the House Oversight Committee!

................. and they ain't Argh and Hrrumph! .......................... Old Man LOL




* Lifted from Jim Hillman's book on getting old ... The Force of Character written as he was getting on in years.

Stunned! Aghast!

Those of us Players in the Last Quarter, those born -- say -- before 1950, have seen a great deal. It may well be that something very similar could be said of the Fourth Quarter players of any era. I, for one, was not sentient or aware for either World War and didn't have to live through the flu epidemic that left the dead lined up on the streets. It is my guess that every generation comes to feel that it has gone through new crises and technological changes more profound than those who came before and the Last Quarter folk are, I suppose, the witnesses that are most likely to sit about talking and musing on these great changes. ................... Recently, I fascinated about my own busted delusions about how we had, in the words of Rogers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma, "gone about as fer as we could go." When the book publishers and newspapers began to fail ... when the world of photography just about left film whether in the still camera or the digitalization of theater projection .... when the typewriter is gone and the room size computer with its punch cards has been replaced by a book sized laptop and Dick Tracy watches are in everyone's pocket .... it's hard to maintain the illusion. ...................... All this having been said, living in the 24 hour news cycle is, indeed, mind boggling. The latest national mourning in the United States, the loss of life from another mega-storm (this one tornadic), the Lord knows how many little kids ... how many parents have joined the mourners of Columbine and Newtown and all the other man-made and natural disasters that take over the airways for something like a week and then "flies off like a dream." 50% of marriages end and 50% of those that remain suck and, if we doubt it, we note how many of our public figures are caught with ther "bousers untruckled" (to borrow from the Capital Steps and their wonderfully silly songs) ... or mouthing off simply for political gain. ........................ If I have a prayer -- independent of any political similarities or differences that I may have -- it's that the Presidential family that does, indeed, feel a bit like Camelot, not turn out to be like the Kennedy's of Camelot. There's something very restful and soothing for me in knowing that there's a family out there somewhere that seems intact with a whacked out looking pooch to keep them company. Especially with all the mourning I need to do for Colorado, Arizona, New York, Boston and, now, Oklahoma. ......................... Michelle! You and your family (your thoiughtful husband, the two very sweet looking kids, your ever-watchful Mom and Bo) mean more to many of us than you may imagine. Go, Girl, go!

G'night, John Boy!

Trying to Build in Compatibilities

My youngest child and I share a professional office ... we've even written some things, together. We often discuss professional matters and soimetimes discuss the nuances of the work we do with the visitors who visit this office. That was the situation on Tuesday. Actually, she and her brood (3 girls and a Greek Philosophy husband) had come over to help me get the cover off the pool. I had done all the preparations and removed a mesh cover that catches Winter's leaves and had bailed and pumped most of the filthy bilge that collects in the October to May of Philadelphia's colder months. The grand-kids are always somewhat excited at the pool coming back to life ... My preparations were adequate to the job and the cover came off with only 4 of us working ... a joint struggle against a common enemy ... a filthy piece of plastic and fiberglass weighing as much as a wild animal as one never gets the last couple of hundred pounds off the cover till after it's removed. ........................ My daughter and I then talked. It was a good talk about a struggling visitor. Was it more appropriate for her or me to support this person in their quest. At some point, our talk turned to an online discussion group to which I belong. I explained that they were fighting. She asked if I was involved. Not this time, I explained. "Wow! Does that mean there have been other fights?" Oh, yeah, I explained ... many and I was not infrequently characterized as troublesome and nasty. It's not easy to explain to a child that Papa is seen very differently by a group of colleagues ... differently than he may be seen by his own family. ............................. Got me thinking about the discussion group. I've mentioned these groups/listservs before in these AM Blog to whomever Last Quarter Players are listening. Most of the folk in these groups are also in the Fourth Quarter. They get angry ... they subgroup in a variety of ways and fight ... talk nasty to each other. Just the previous night there had been a flurry of epithets hurled at the moderator, a younger woman whom I experience as snarky ... but maybe that's me. That we don't really like each other seems obvious. A somewhat older woman was being attacked on both personal issues and theoretical positions. These goes on a lot online ... there's a certain permissiveness to turn these discussions into combat exercises ... the take-no-prisoners variety. ..................... It was when my grandkids came into the office that I decided to write my resignation from membership in that group. It occurred to me that the Good Life in whatever Quarter benefits from a compatibility of its different parts. Like Jepthah returning home from his battles (Judges 12 or 13) and soldiers coming home from contemporary wars (my Dad came home to his brood of kids after WW-II) .... the gross clang-dissonance between different parts of our lives creates more noise than music. ................................. Still working on building those harmonies and compatibilities.

A Little Guilt

A little guilt never hurt anybody. I've heard just about every Mediterranean-origins person who has visited my office talk of their Mothers and "the guilt trip they laid on me." Whether it was designated Italian Guilt or Jewish Guilt or Greek Guilt or Catholic Guilt .... it was reported as something that interfered with their lives ... "Mom really did a trip on me!" ... or somesuch accusation. .................. I have already whined on for several years now on the healthful function of sadness .................. CAN this loony-toon think GUILT is healthy, too? ...................Reminds me of the song from Rogers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma. "I'd like to say a word for the cowboy. The road he treads is difficult and stony. He rides for days on end with just a pony for a friend. 'I sure am feelin' sorry for the pony'" .............. Well! I (verbally) beat up on a 90 year old cowboy Monday and Tuesday morning I was feeling guilt. "Good job, Mom!" I sent him an apology.  ......................... An old doctor, no longer with us ... Hans Loewald .... used to separate guilt from atonement. Guilt, as I recall his distinction made in 1978, was the feeling that I've done someone harm, wish I hadn't and wish there was some way to make them whole again. It is a mental experience that promotes goodwill in our societies, in spite of our human propensities to strike out and the fact that when we dance, we sometimes step on toes. ........................... Atonement, he thought on the other hand, was the attempt to offer up as sacrifice a part of ourselves in a magical attempt to restore the other person to wholeness by punishing ourselves. If I may: Cutting off our nose to save someone else's face. ..............................
What to say: Magic doesn't work ... well, at least not that magic. ......................... Years ago, the wife of a famous pair of writing physicians (Spurgeon English and Geral Pearson) spoke of her husband's and his "friend's" falling out. They had been, again, friends and coauthors and founders of a training institution. Then, something happened and they pretty much restricted their rare communications to grunts at professional meetings. Ellen English had few comments but in true maternal fashion opined: "And they should have known better." ...................... After writing about my retribution against the old Geezer, I did send that apology and then, as time permitted, visited a listserv to which I belong. The mean-spiritedness was in full bloom among people who were mostly Players in the Last Quarter, have extensive training in the illnesses of the human Soul, and shoulda/oughta/coulda known better. Geez! I wish there had been more of those guilt-trip Moms teaching their boys and girls who grew up during or shortly after the Great War that prompted Rogers and Hammerstein to pen "Oh, the farmers and the cowboys should be friends." A little guilt potentially goes a long way.

Confessions of an Aging Homicide

I don't like losing my cool! I like the idea of being "cool" but the Last Quarter has its sensitivities, too. Oh! The fact that the grandkids just seem naturally drawn to M, the Grannie? I got that. The matter of GuntherDog the Rescue Hound who would prefer a woman cat-burgler to his loving and Dear Old Dad? I can live with that. But when an Overtimer came after me at a meeting last night, even though it was just as I expected, I ripped through him like a table saw rips throug a 1x6. Mea Maxima Culpa .... What happened to "Take an Old Geezer to Lunch" and all that. Ah!  ..................................... He's an aging physician and his web-presence says he has 67 years of experience and I don't think that means since he began loading his diaper. Maybe he started, again. No. 67 + years to finish K thru Med School and you have maybe no more than 90 years. He musta been a smart little kid and, truth be told, I like him ......................Oh! And  I am averse to killing people but not opposed to reveling in the thought. ..........................  ............................. I admit it. I'm becoming protective of some of the ideas I've written about. You may get it: the Last Quarter is serious. You don't get to go back to the Locker Room and redesign plays. So that, for instance, what you've done (in my case thought and written and played out) is generally not repeatable. M and I married in 1965 ... no encore performance for that. And the kids? Kookla, Fran and Ollie? Too late to return them. Even those who support second trimester abortions would look askance at getting rid of a 47 year old. ......................................... But, apparently, when someone uses the argument: "You came to different conclusions than I and my colleagues did, so you're wrong" and says it so that it almost sounds reasonable, Ole Howard draws his sword and heads off to the Battle of the Bulging Men. ................................ Oh! I feel a little better. This is the first time I've used these Bloggy Blathers as a confessional: Pater Noster qui est in Caelum ... Avinu she'ba'Shamayim .... Our Father who art in Heaven ... Avuha di'bi'Shmaya .... I have sinned. I struck out (even if not gratuitously, my Lord) against an Old Man because of my pride and -- dammit -- because of  his mental sloth! ............................... THINK I'LL HIT HIM, AGAIN!
.............................................................
I do feel better, now! I needed that!

Psalms and Other Metaphors

I find, among my visitors to my home and to my office, a wide variety of levels of acceptance of each person's idiosyncratic Self. I have little doubt that it's good to be open to others' views of us ... The Good, the Bad and 'the Oh, Boy, that part of you is UG-LY.' I got that part but struggle with figuring out how much of a part is played by an-Other's Critical Eye or even an Envious One.  "why do you associate so often to Biblical themes?" ..... "why do you like being silly, cheeky and even occasionally distateful?"  .... People's "why's" about us and their criticisms. .....................................................................................................................................................
I suppose it came to lying in bed in the midst of an arrhythmia where my heart rate was bouncing about 3 times it usual resting heart rate. I remembered Psalm 90, I think it is. "The days of their lives (literally years) are 70; and if they be particularly strong 80." There you go with my Quarters ... 20-40-60-80 with a goodly number of people not strong enough/lucky enough to finish the Fourth Quarter. ...........................................................................................................................................
Then there were images of tonight. Last month, a reading group to which I belong was discussing some work on kids and I had to pee. While I was gone, the other Old Geezers voted to discuss my 6th chapter on a book from 15 years ago. It was not in line with the general thinking of the group and i suppose, instead of being honored, i was committed to keeping down my liquid intake during these meetings. Do I need to really be excoriated again for presenting my views on how people become socialized to the joys and pains of living in communities of mutual interest and concern? ........................................................................................................................... Isn't it enough? Who we are, that is? Maybe one of the benefits (Lord knows ... you don't get dental!) of Playing in the Fourth Quarter is not caring asmuch perhaps. ......................................... I, Howard, have a metaphor that comes from my Biblical training from a half a century ago. I, Howard have views about the world that have accrued over the same time. I, Howard don't know if they are RIGHT, these views and, in some sense, it's just too late to change the Game Plan. If that sounds depressing? I'd disagree with that, too. And, by the way, I like others who have their Game Plan pretty settled, as well, and don't mind the differences. ..................................................................
Any case, those who have a metaphor in Pop Culture get to understand the commercials on TV. Howard doesn't. He gets other stuff and with any luck will convert to a normal cardiac sinus rhythm before his first visitor arrives in 3 hours or so. ............................................................. Embrace you metaphor!

Ode to Modern Times

I never got to finish my story ... It wasn't a very good story, anyway, and one that we all of us Playing in the Last Quarter experience ... being prodded, poked and scoped by people typically much younger than us who are, themselves, Players in the Second and Third Quarters of life. My kids are Second and Third Quarter folk ... not a one of them on the bench. Each caught up in the Begats of Life and in getting somewhere. The anesthetist was in that group and still heard very well. Due to complications with my arrhythmias, I explained that I thought it best that the up periscope be done first, leaving the down periscope (which was more likely to induce atrial fibrillation in me) for the finale. ................. Damn, if he didn't get it on the first go-round. ............................ When our kids were born, I recall looking at their various parts .... 10 fingers? just like a person. 10 toes, as well. Eyes in the right place, pretty much, and on and on and on. The anesthetist and the GI doc were just like that. Dang if they didn't have all the parts, including ears that listen. I should explain. Those ears may be connected to minds that disagree but it is so very pleasant to be in contact with others who can hear. ............... Any case, I came through the procedures with everything looking pretty good and no solid explanation for my varied symptoms. .................... Must be gettin' old, Howard, must be gettin' old. Maybe the wiring harness on this Old Jalopy is falling apart .... beginning to fray. A week followed when I was tired. Tried to run a bit in between visitors to my office who seemed to want to cut me no slack. Got a Charlie Horse out of it ... not much more. Online meetings seemed full of cleverness and snarkyness, though it didn't hit home till a lady from London pointed out that our discussions were a bit much. ................................ It's back to that issue of difference. We folk over 60 ... yeah, yeah, yeah! I'm defining the Fourth Quarter as 60-80 and leave the post-80 years to Overtime. Maybe I'll get to write about Overtime, too. Lots of things have to line up for there to be Overtime ... I wouldn't wanna bet on whether a game goes to Overtime ... well ... till it's time. We folk over 60 should have learned that there are many ways to skin a cat ... and each of them may be exquisitely pleasurable (kidding about Kitty).  If 60+ years have passed and one hasn'y learned to appreciate difference and even "similarities among differences and differences among similarities" (an expression I've lifted from Yvonne Agazarian, a post-80 year old theorist about how groups form and behave ... real smart lady, in my estimation), then one is gonna be a real pain in the nether-parts. What the Hell! Life is too complex to have but one story line. ......................... Whether it be theory or the way to best run a polity of mutual concern and interest or what to call the god(s) we worship, there are just too many variables to imagine that different folks wouldn't arrive at different embellishing strokes of the Big Picture. Heartache comes, to my way of thinking, when anyone and their Others imagine that if you come to different conclusions, you both think each Other wrong. .................... People, in second guessing their choices in life and playing "if-only's" are playing the self-same destructive game, themselves. But more of that, soon. ........................ Bye

Dignity in the Breach? Ch 1 ... Getting Ready

Yesterday I had an outing with M which I had prepared for during the previous day and night through calculated alterations to what I put into my body. From early on in our lives, long before the Fourth Quarter begins, even the healthiest among us are subjected to intrusions into the many orifices of our Swiss Cheesed (and Klein-bottled) bodies. We learn the name of the explorer that enters our Ears, Noses and Throats, a tool that will be joined later by more invasive hoses that enter one's nose, wend their way beyond that epiglottis thing boogling in the back of your throat that isn't your tonsils. We learn that it's OK to gag on big fat popsicle sticks and young women by puberty learn that being back in the saddle and stirrups doesn't always require a Texas "yee-hah." Members of both gender classes find out the there are many orifices from which to draw blood and that women doctors are preferable to male ones, particularly those whose hands are dainty enough not to cause too much pain when it's crammed up your Sphinctor Magnum. Scopes and Needles, Needles and Scopes. ........................... Ah, but the Last Quarter and into overtime when it occurs, the writers of our Maleus Maleficarum, the how-to book of the Inqisitors .... Inquisition for Dummies!! .... those guys had something special up their sleaves. .................... The day that Docs discovered that tubes of various diameters can be fitted with cameras for finding the lost passages to (1) the bladder; (2) the bowel and large intestines (Geez! leftovers from that "procedure" can be used to water the distant edges of an English Garden); and (3) a shorter and smaller diameter "probe" ... "hose" ..... "scope" ..... can go down your esophagus ("make way, Gus!) through the Gastro-Esophogeal sphinctor and then South by Southwest through your stomach into the small intestine. Who knew? Dad/Mom wasn't really going to "Talk to a man about a horse" but was being "scoped" in search of thosebrain   lesions that make them forget the names of the intruders! Embarassing, I guess, for parents to tell their grown kids that someone is sticking a garden hose up their asses trying to find evidence of sentient life ...................... OK, OK, OK .... Enough bathroom humor. .... This time it was the upper and lower Gastro-intestinal picnics that are prepared for by swallowing a variety of minor poisons that empty things out sufficiently for spelunkers to explore for cave drawings and other expected growths. ............................... I said expected growths. The Fourth Quarter in the West is not where it was a century ago and not where it is in Sub-Saharan Africa, today. We -- many of us -- live a long time ... and not only our brains forget but so, indeed, does our DNA which forgets how to reproduce, itself, without suddenly replicating so many clones of one kind of cell that it threatens and does choke off life.Ach ... I'm not a cell biologist but a patient getting scoped. ............................ So what were the excitements of the day? ........................ (A) M and I arrived on time with me driving very quickly for fear, as we say to kids, of an accident .... not a car accident but a "time to get the diapers" accident .... our lease ends in 7 weeks and ... anyhow, it woulda/coulda been embarassing. (B) The receptionist smiled ... she smiled a lot ... and talked so quickly that her lip movements became a blur. I did hear something about how I had a sharp eye for noticing the X next to the word signature and that I'd be called to "go back" when (*#%^&&%##$^&*(^%$. (C) The Nurse, when I got back, talked equally as fast and she didn't ewant to be there and didn't want anyone to know that. "She was Ginny and I was Howard, my veins sucked  and it was sunny, outside." After three tries, Ginny wanted me to see that the tube just wasn't flowing with blood. "Shame," I thought, but I was hiding under a sheet in a Johnny Coat and funny socks ... "You gotta look." ... "No, thanks." .... That conversation went on for her repeated attempts to get my veins to cooperate. Ginny said: "I'll go get Richard. He's good at this." We learn quickly that Old People don't have good veins and by the tone of the blood-suckers that just isn't right. (D) Richard had a rough time too, but he persevered and was friendly. How important that is. Richard actually seemed to want to be there. I guess it's not as disturbing as a lover who really wants to be somewhere else, but disturbing, nonetheless. We had spoken on the phone, too, for they had needed a clearance from my heart doctor (all my cardios are younger than my kids and are in charge of permitting me this and that) to proceed. Richard was a good guy and so was the anesthesiologist who was to come next ... and I'll pick up on that later. ................. For now, I'm struck by how it's still important for me while Playing in the Last Quarter to be treated with dignity, maybe especially when I'm about to be penetrated while under the effects of something akin to ... a date-rape drug. Pick up on this thought, tomorrow.

Off to work ....