Choose Wisely

Six years ago I hired an executive assistant. She’s smart, efficient and dependable. But the best part about her is the fact that she is as unimpressed with me as it is possible to be, the queen of the affected eye-roll, and a world class wisenheimer. Yesterday, however, she was something else. She was wise and discerning...

Me: You read my blog this morning?

Her: Yes! Can I make a suggestion?

Me: Sure.

Her: Every time you write a blog about her you call her your “sick friend” or your “friend with cancer”

Me: Yeah, because I don’t want to use her real name because of privacy.

Her: Sure, but she’s much more than that, right? Sick? Cancer? You’re defining her too negatively!

Of course, she is absolutely right. Those are both terrible modifiers. They only describe what she is going through, not who she is.

This morning, another friend of mine sent out an email devotional like he does every week. In it he talked about visiting Old Faithful out in Wyoming a few years back. He used two words to describe it...magnificent and reliable. I responded by observing how rare it is that we use those two words to describe the same thing. Usually in life things and people are either magnificent or reliable, seldom are both traits found in the same thing or person. Words have power, and what words we choose to describe people is important. Sick and cancer are the two worst possible words I could have used to describe my friend.

So, from now on I will use more appropriate and descriptive adjectives. Words like brave and courageous.

The lesson in this is that words matter. They have the power to bless and curse, to lift up and to tear down, to edify and to label. 

Choose wisely.

Cheap Laughs (are better than no laughs at all)

I was talking with my sick friend this morning when she told me about the most recent symptom of her chemo. Suddenly her hands have started shedding their skin like a snake. Because I asked, she sent me a picture. Holy Cow. Almost instantly I found myself scrambling around for jokes to send her. It felt awkward to be cracking jokes right after she had shared such a disturbing new twist in her journey, but it was almost an involuntary impulse. I can’t help myself. 

But the experience reminded me of one of the worst days of my life from five years ago when my two sisters and I spent a day searching Richmond for a nursing home for Dad. I remembered feeling about two seconds removed from crying like a baby all day long. But I held it together by...telling jokes. 

Shopping For Nursing Homes

I just spent the day shopping for a nursing home for my Dad. In many ways, it was the most heart wrenching experience of my life. I was with my two sisters who seemed so remarkably composed and professional when all I wanted to do was throw something. But I managed to mask my emotions well enough to get through an extraordinarily difficult job that simply had to be done. To make a long story short, we ended up picking the very first place we visited, a remarkably unanimous decision from a family famous for our contentiousness. We felt the power of the hundreds of prayers which were being lifted on our behalf and by the end of the day felt as good about our decision as one can feel about this sort of thing. So, I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression about what follows. 

Throughout my entire life I have dealt with the most unpleasant events with dark humor, some would say gallows humor. They tell me that it is a complex and rather bizarre coping mechanism, but whatever, all I know is, it gets me through some rough days. Driving between nursing homes today I started compiling an assortment of David Letterman top ten lists like, things you don’t want to see in a nursing home, or the top ten indications that you’ve spent too much time shopping for nursing homes…that sort of thing. Sometime the choice is between bursting into uncontrollable sobbing or start cracking jokes. I’d rather crack jokes:

Things You DO NOT Want to see in a Nursing Home:

1. A social activity in the multi-purpose room called “bedpan bingo.”  
2. A banner hanging in the nurse’s station congratulating them on going 37 consecutive days without a patient wandering off the property.
3. You don’t want to stumble upon a rowdy group of PT people playing beer pong with specimen cups.
4. When touring a Catholic home, you don’t want to see red “last rights hot line” phones at every bedside.

Misc. Tips:

1. Just because the Jewish homes smell like delicatessens when you first walk in doesn’t mean that there is no urine smell on the premises. 
2. Before agreeing to take the “dime tour” ask how much the place costs first. It speeds up the process.
3. Even though you’ve done your research online and already know how many “stars” Medicare has given the place you are visiting, ask the admissions guy how many stars the place has, ESPECIALLY if they got a bad write up last year and only got two stars. It’s kind of fun watching him squirm and hearing the fascinating back story.

How You Know You Have Spent Too Long Shopping For Nursing Homes:

1. When it occurs to you that you’ve used the word “incontinence” more times in the last five hours than you had in the 56 previous years of your life.
2. When you decide to ask the woman who has just told you that their skilled nursing unit costs $220 a day, if you could get a discount if you went with unskilled nurses instead.
   
   
   
   
   So, I suppose nothing has changed. I’m still whistling past every graveyard I encounter in this life. It’s probably not the most mature, adult way of dealing with your problems but it works for me. 
   
   
   
   

No Respect

I knew that it was a matter of time before I was going to have to break into my Rodney Dangerfield collection for my friend with cancer. I had been putting it off, not wanting to peak too soon. But with Rodney, you just can’t go wrong. The man was a comedic marvel who’s ability to rattle off one-liners, machine gun style, was unmatched before or since. You all remember his shtick...the guy who got no respect. His themes were basic and universal. He grew up in a rough neighborhood. He never could catch a break. He was unlucky in love. He had a series of ailments for which he always went to see his famous doctor, Vinnie Boombatz. His kids were no bargain either, ugly, fat and promiscuous. And his mother and father? To call them dysfunctional is to damn them with feint praise!!

So, on this Sunday night, I have complied some of my all time favorites by category for your edification.

ROUGH CHILDHOOD:

"I was so ugly my mother used to feed me with a sling shot."

"I had plenty of pimples as a kid. One day I fell asleep in the library. When I woke up, a blind man was reading my face."

"When I was born, the doctor came out to the waiting room and said to my father, 'I'm very sorry. We did everything we could. But he pulled through.”

“After I was born the doctor slapped my mother.”

“One time I was kidnapped and they sent my old man a piece of my finger in an envelope. My old man says he needed more proof!”

"I could tell that my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio."

“One time I lost my parents at the beach. A cop was helping me and I asked him if we would find them and he says, “I don’t know kid, there are so many places they could hide!”

STUPID FAMILY:

"I come from a stupid family. During the Civil War my great uncle fought for the West."

“I come from a stupid family. My father worked in a bank. They caught him stealing pens."

"Boy, is my wife stupid! It takes her an hour and a half to watch 60 minutes. My daughter's no bargain either. In public school she was voted most likely to conceive."

MEDICAL PROBLEMS:

"I went to the doctor because I'd swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. My doctor told me to have a few drinks and get some rest."

"I went to see my doctor. 'Doctor, every morning when I get up and look in the mirror... I feel like throwing up. What's wrong with me?' He said, 'I don't know but your eyesight is perfect.”

“Doctor tells me I drink too much. The last time I gave him a urine sample it had an olive in it.”

"My psychiatrist told me I was crazy and I said I want a second opinion. He said, 'okay, you're ugly too.”

MARITAL WOES:

"I haven't spoken to my wife in years. I didn't want to interrupt her."

"My wife had her driver's test the other day. She got 8 out of 10. The other 2 guys jumped clear."

"I told my wife the truth. I told her I was seeing a psychiatrist. Then she told me the truth: that she was seeing a psychiatrist, two plumbers, and a bartender."

"Why, her cooking is so bad that the flies pitched in to fix the screen door. I leave dental floss in the kitchen and watch the roaches hang themselves."

“Who am I kidding? It’s not all her fault. I’m not a very good lover. The other night I caught a peeping Tom booing me!”

If you want to have a good laugh, Google “Dangerfield with Johnny Carson.” His 35 appearances on that show are unmatched. Every joke was his own—he wrote his own material—and you won’t find a single curse word in his delivery. Oh, despite at least a million attempts, he never loosened that red tie!!

What a maroon...

Last night I attended the C.S. Lewis play, The Reluctant Convert, at the Paramount Theatre in Charlottesville. It was fantastic and the actor who portrayed him was delightfully good. Packed house. Wonderful show. Lewis has always been one of my hero’s, his writings did more than anything else to help me work my way through the intellectual underpinnings of my faith, making it real and dependable. To read Lewis is to be reminded of one’s intellectual shortcomings. To listen to his character hold forth for 80 minutes felt like a master class in English Literature, rhetoric, philosophy and religion...with more than enough wit mixed in make it palatable to even the most ardent atheist. A great time.

Then, after the show and a ten minute delay, the actor reappeared on stage, having removed his costume and makeup, to take questions from the audience about the show. It is always a risky thing to offer an audience to the general public because of the undeniable fact that most people are idiots. Sure enough, about four questions in, an older man stands up and offers the following gem. Ok, remember what this play was about, something that it might be easy enough to discover simply by the play’s name...The Reluctant Convert. It is the story of how an avowed atheist, and renowned scholar of classic literature went from being an atheist to becoming perhaps the greatest apologist since the Apostle Paul over a period of 20 years:

“Can you explain to us how it is that C S Lewis went from being a devoted atheist to an ardent believer??”

To which Max McLean relied, “What? Would you like me to do the play again?”

Perfect. Answer.

As that other noted philosopher and scholar, Bugs Bunny would say...what a maroon!!!

Getting Excited!!

Many of you are aware that I wrote a novel a while ago called Saving Jack, and that my daughter has been in the process of editing it so I can proceed with self-publishing it as an e-book by Christmas. Well, I hired a guy to do the cover art for me. He’s a graphic artist by trade and a good friend of Kaitlin and Jon. First, he read the book. Then he shared with me which scene in the book he thought would be appropriate for the cover. I agreed right away. He had chosen well, I thought. Well, last night he sent me his first attempt...

He cautioned me that he still needed to add detail to the kayak and some trees along the shoreline, and I reminded him that the loons look more like ducks than loons, but other than that...I am thrilled to death. More news to come regarding all of this later.

Ok, so I got a text from my son last night asking if I had been watching any of the Impeachment Show on television yesterday. Of course, I hadn’t, being the annoyed and disengaged citizen that I have become, so I said “no”. Then Patrick says “I’m obviously a biased lefty, but my perspective is that this is going very badly for the Republicans in the room...”

Less than two hours earlier while I was at the gym, a friend of mine who can fairly be described as a “biased righty” says to me, “Hey, you watched any of this hearing? Geez Almighty, the Republicans are killing it!!”

Here we are, both sides having already made up their minds concerning the President’s guilt or innocence, finding only confirmation from the proceedings. We hear what we want to hear and see what we want to see. But, these two observers would quickly admit their biases. This thing is going to be determined by how many people watch it and have their minds changed. That’s a difficult thing to predict. My biases are against politicians in general, regardless of party affiliation since I find the majority of them to be self-interested strivers more interested in their own power and prestige than matters of the common good. My gut reaction to all of this is that Trump deserves to be voted out of office, not impeached, that having these proceedings this close to the next election seems calculated. In the parade of stupid things this President has done, this Ukraine business doesn’t, in my opinion, even make it into the top ten!! But, what do I know?

My Friend’s Impossible Week

This week is a big week for my friend, so I felt that I needed to step up my morning joke game for the occasion. I failed.

Me: What do you call it when 7 Austrian children get you to commit a crime?

My Friend: I have no idea.

Me: Von Trappment

My Friend:......sigh

Undeterred, I forged on with:

Me: I heard on the news that Amazon will start delivering custom made shirts to your house within 48 hours.

My Friend: ?

Me: The program is called...Tailor Swift

My Friend: You just aren’t right...

At this point I probably should have dropped it and moved on to trying to encourage her in other, more productive ways. But I didn’t.

Me: Who was the fattest Knight at King Arthur’s Roundtable?

My Friend: I have a feeling you’re gonna tell me.

Me: Sir Cumference

My Friend: Crickets...

Me: Why don’t you ask me how he got so fat?

My Friend: Crickets...

Me:  Too much Pi

My Friend: Sweet Jesus, help me.

The reason today is a big day for my friend is business related. She has a long time client in another city who has 175 employees. Once a year, my friend travels there to conduct open enrollment, since she handles all of the company’s group health, life and dental benefits. She has been nervous about this day since her cancer diagnosis, being careful to schedule it during an “off-chemo” week. It will take four days to complete. It will be a grind. Because of her illness, she hasn’t worked a full day since the middle of September. I have big doubts as to whether or not she should even attempt such a thing. She will be helped tremendously by a dear friend and business associate who she splits this case with. Still, sitting down with 175 employees over four days is a bear of a job even when you’re healthy. But, she will not listen to reason. She is stubborn as a mule. So off she goes this morning.

This is how I know that my friend is going to beat cancer. When I was arguing with her about the wisdom of doing an open enrollment for this many people she informed me that she had to do it because this company and these people have been great clients for over 15 years and they feel like an extended family to her. She loves them, in other words. So she will put on a fancy hat, throw on a dazzling smile and get after it for the next four days, cancer or no cancer.

Tough. Determined. Committed. Stubborn.

...and absolutely no sense of humor!!

Humor is a Funny Thing

What makes people laugh? It’s complicated, as the kids like to say. What makes me laugh might leave you cold. The things that make you laugh, I might think are dumb. So, as it turns out...humor is a funny thing.

My earliest memories of laughing at things centered around the Three Stooges. But the first time I made Pam watch an episode with me back when we were dating she sat there staring at the television, then back at me with thinly veiled horror played out on her face. “This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. These guys are sadists. All they are doing is playing physical pain for laughs!!” To which I answered, “Exactly!! Isn’t it hilarious??” We agreed to disagree. I still think slapstick, sight gags and a well timed rake handle in the face are funny, but that’s just me.

Later on in life, I became a huge George Carlin fan. Still am. Loved Rodney Dangerfield, Foster Brooks, Tim Conway, Carol Burnett, Steve Martin, and the brilliant physical comedy of Dick Van Dyke. 

Today there are plenty of really funny men and women out there, but there are also comics that I don’t care for. People who I find unnecessarily profane, too reliant on foils, that sort of thing. But again, that’s a personal preference.

Trying to keep my cancer-fighting friend supplied with jokes every day for the past couple of months has been a chore. But I have been helped by several friends who are now sending me collections of jokes to keep my supply full. Some have been really bad, but I so appreciate the effort. Then there’s my sister-in-law, Sharon...

Ok, one of my biggest regrets in life is that I haven’t saved every birthday card that Sharon has given me over the forty years that I have known her. She has what I consider to be a terrific sense of humor. The cards she buys are always laugh out loud funny. She just has the knack, the finely tuned funny bone, and perfect comedic timing. I bring this up because yesterday she sent me a text with an attachment...

In doing so, she introduced me to an entire genre of bad jokes called Confucius Say jokes. Somehow in my bottom-feeding journey of the internet I had missed them. Here are just a few examples of these short, pithy one liners:

Man who have clear conscience usually have bad memory, too.

Woman who puts detergent on top shelf, jumps for Joy

Man who has bird in hand finds it hard to blow nose.

No husband ever been shot while he do dishes.

Man who push piano down mineshaft get tone of A flat miner.

But then all of a sudden, in the midst of a long list of similar jokes comes some really deep and wise things. For example:

Work to become, not to acquire.

He who thinks only of number one must remember that this number is next to nothing.

War doesn’t determine who is right, but who is left.

Even the greatest of whales is helpless in middle of desert.

So, a big shout out to Sharon Nunn. Thanks for the new supply!