The Pig Zombie and My Land Speed Record

My family and most other rural families view their children at least in part, as slave labor. It only makes sense. You give them a roof, food, education, a free taxi service, protection, and all of the sound wisdom and advise they may need in order to grow up to be fine upstanding Christian citizens; it's only fair that they do a little work around the place to lighten the load. I remember once as a kid, probably around ten, I was sitting in front of the television watching my favorite cartoon when my dad came in and told me that I had to go out and change the water pump in the car. I didn't know what a water pump was. I was under the impression that cars ran on gas. My dad brought me out to the garage, pointed out the device in the engine, pointed out all the tools I would need and told me that if I had any questions to come find him. Scarcely a week later the water pump was replaced and with only one part left over that proved to be a mystery to all regarding its proper place and function. Memories like this one fill my head. My dad would come in and tell me,

"You need to go out and ____ the _____." Read: fix; build; find; make and car; barn; cattle etc. respectfully. This almost always occurred when I was, in my mind, doing something immeasurably more enjoyable like taking a nap or twiddling my thumbs. I'm sure that it all "built character" but at the time the blueprints were a bit hard to read and I've yet to see the finished product.

During my summers as a kid my family would be in Kansas helping with harvest. Because I was small and not strong enough to do anything requiring any kind of strength, I was frequently tasked with chores that were near fatal in their tedium. One of my main chores was driving a pick-up around the farm hauling odds and ends to and fro. At first this was fantastic! I was still in my single digit years and was allowed to drive a real honest to goodness truck! What I discovered, though, was that because of my short stature, I would have to get down on the floor and slowly let out the clutch until the vehicle would start to roll and then climb up on the seat to steer. What this meant was I never traveled over idling speed and if I had to stop in a hurry I was to simply shut off the engine since I could not reach the pedals. At first it was great, but after a week or so of plodding along over the same little trail over the same half mile, back and forth all day, it got pretty boring. I could literally get out and run along side of the truck and get to where I was going before the truck did. I only tried this once though. The parental advice that was bestowed on me because of this experiment reverberated around the farm for at least an hour and effectively removed any temptation I might have had to ever try out running the truck again. I was stuck with the tedium.

One day, however, a miracle was laid upon me and one of the pigs died. I know that sounds odd, but every little boy loves to poke a dead thing, and I was lucky enough to get to bury a dead thing! I was told that once the work for the day was done, the dead pig would be loaded up in the back of the truck and I was to take a shovel out to the field and give the pig his final spot of reprieve. I was so excited about this, that the day drug on even longer than normal, so much so, that I began to wonder if God, for no other reason than to spite me, had frozen the sun in it's place in the sky and I would never get to do a grown up's chore let alone one that was so fascinating to my young insensibilities. The day did end, though, and my dad and my grandfather loaded the dead pig wrapped in a tarp onto the truck and I was off.

It was long since dark at this point and from the visual prospective of the field I had driven to, there was no light save for the tiny glow from the kitchen of our farm house on the horizon. I was all by myself, young and impressionable, in the darkest of worlds imaginable, alone with a dead bloated pig that had sat out in the sun all day. My nine year old imagination began to rev up.

I exited the truck and as quickly as I could, located the big flashlight that was always kept there for spotting cattle or for, in my mind at least, spotting enemy bombers in the sky. The thing was huge and I was confidant that its far reaching flood of light would keep any would be phantoms of my imagination and any other demon of the night at bay. As I flipped the switch on, my sigh of relief was frozen midway. The light didn't come on. I flicked the switch back and forth a few times but to no avail. I was in the dark. Had I known I could, I would have flipped on the headlights to the truck, but someone had told me that if you do that, the battery would die and you can't start the vehicle with a dead battery. Whoever told me this failed to mention that the battery would not die immediately. So, there I was in real true darkness with not even stars out to light the prairie. My imagination began to crawl forward.

As I began digging the grave I started hearing things in the dark. I would snap my head around to locate the source and finding nothing would assume that whatever made the sound had seen me looking for it and not wanting to be discovered retreated into the darkness. I would hear another sound, whip my head around, and it would be gone. I was imagining all kinds of horrible things and all sorts of evil people were lurking out in the dark hiding and waiting for just the right opportunity to jump out and attack. Pretty soon I was digging at a whirring, adrenaline induced pace and my head was snapping back and forth over my shoulders like the small hanging punching bag that boxers use. My imagination was in full gear and approaching overdrive.

Once the hole was deep enough to contain a pig I shakily unfolded part of the tarp so that I could pull and dump the dead beast off of the truck and into the hole. The pig, having spent several hours in the sun earlier, had filled with gas and was bloated so that it's skin was taunt and was emitting an oder that would make a rat gag. None of this was good for my imagination. I heaved and pulled with all the might that could be generated by my nine year old body and the pig stiffly rolled off the truck. As soon as it hit the hole, all of the gas that had built up inside of it, released itself through the throat of the pig which had the effect of creating the most hideous, blood chilling, death rattle of a squeal that was ever uttered by a pig. Well, that did it. My imagination red lined and the throttle stuck open. My inner perception screamed, "Good, sweet Almighty! It's ALIVE!! RRRUUUUUNNN!!"

Having not waited for the completion of that message my feet had, at that point, already dug two six inch deep ruts in the ground in an all out effort to propel the rest of me to top speed. Leaving the truck, the shovel, the pig, and all else behind, my arms and legs were blurs as I screeched across the dark countryside while fully convinced that the zombie pig was inches off of my heels and gaining.

Before I knew it, I arrived at the tiny speck of light from the kitchen and burst through the screen door while still gaining speed. This was of some surprise to the current occupants or so I surmised by the fact that every member of my family had suddenly and simultaneously learned the art of levitation. My grandmother showed particular adeptness as she was able to dart about from wall to wall at her newly gained altitude. Before any of them had returned to the ground I had begun to regale them with the recent events as quickly as I could.

"Son, son!" my dad said as he climbed off of the grandfather clock, "slow down and take a breath! What in the world is wrong?"

My parents, sister, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents all stood transfixed with mouths agape as I urgently informed them of the sequence of events that had just transpired and the danger that was probably mere moments from the door. After I had finished, smiles began to creep around the room and then an uproarious laughter. It was obvious to me that they had all been struck with insanity and since they were my protectors, we were all doomed.

The next morning, it was actually nice to return to the tedium of my slavery. Everyone seemed to have forgotten about the zombie and were working as though it were any other day. It is truly embarrassing to so obviously admit your fear when there is not anything to actually be afraid of. I was glad everyone was back to the routine and it was all behind me. I was content for a long time to not have any grown up chores.

Kayaking the Little Icy.

There was a time in my life that if something had to do with climbing rocks, climbing mountains, hiking, camping, backpacking, kayaking, spelunking (which is the scientific term for exploring caves by the way), canoeing, or just the outdoors in general, I was all over it. Sometimes it was all over me. Sometimes having it all over me hurt. The Stinging Nettles in Iowa, for example, were particularly unpleasant to have all over me especially if I had just fallen off the rock I was climbing in order to get them all over me. It's truly insult to injury to have to check and make sure all your body parts are present and functioning after a fall and then pull little thorns out of all the parts that hadn't gone AWOL. When I wasn't broken or insulted by something outdoorsy, I had a lot of fun teaching other people how to get the outdoors all over them.

It was while teaching a group of people from church how to rappel off of rocks people shouldn't be on, that I injured my back. I had gotten tangled up in my rope and wrenched my spine severely enough to incur a lot of doctor's bills and force me to make a lot of visits to a master of torture who claimed to be providing physical therapy. It was a good time to escape and take a mountain retreat. Fortunately for me, the same church group I had been with when I hurt myself was going on a singles retreat up in the Colorado Rockies and there would be little hiking trails to provide me with my outdoorsy fix without over exerting my back. One of the people that was coming on the trip was my friend Chris.

Chris is not a "morning person" and always looks at me like I've taken leave of my senses when I tell him that seven o'clock indeed comes twice a day. Because of this affinity for nocturnal prolongation, Chris missed the morning meeting at the retreat center when they warned us all that the retreat's pond, although not frozen, was pretty darn close to frozen and it would behoove all of us not to take a swim; this warning came as though some of us were tempted by the possibility of freezing off various parts of our bodies. The absence of this information was probably what removed any hesitation in Chris' mind about taking a kayak out on the pond.

I was just returning from a short hike and was, therefore, not present for the decision making process and hence cannot say for certain what possessed him, but I returned to find Chris in the absolute middle of the pond in a kayak that the retreat used for the elementary kids summer camp. This is significant because Chris is a little shorter than me and a lot heavier. It looked as though an orange was riding a dill pickle out to sea. His life preserver was used by the same little kids and had the appearance of a really puffy choker necklace and not that of an actual life saving device.

A guy named Steve, who had been on the hike with me, began to throw snowballs at Chris in his kayak and Chris, being Chris, was hamming it up by flinging his head to follow the snowballs as they soared by. It was all pretty funny until Chris hammed a little too far to the side and launched himself into the icy water. I think that probably his eyes surfaced prior to the rest of him because they had grown so huge from the shock of the cold water. He had his mouth open and I'm pretty sure he'd have been hollering if the water had not frozen the air in his lungs. Leaving the kayak to its own devices, Chris began swimming for shore with the little life preserver pressing his cheeks up and his winter clothing pulling the rest of him down and when he got about half way to shore he stopped. The growing crowd on the pond's shore started screaming at him to swim because all were in fear of him being too cold to continue and one of them having to get into the water, that was far too chilly to enjoy, and tow him to shore. Myself and one other person were already in the water up to our knees and coaxing him in. Chris did make it to shore and tottered up to his feet. He had a blank stare and had lost his humor.

The crowd, I guess, figured Chris was out of the woods now or maybe they just really didn't want to miss the next meeting, because everyone but Steve and myself left. I told Steve to go start a warm shower and I began to push Chris in the same direction. I was terrified that Chris would stop walking, or worse, lie down and with the way my back was now screaming at me I would not be able to get him moving again. I leaned into his back and kicked him in the calves, left then right over and over, in order to keep him moving and we eventually met Steve in our cabin. Steve took over and half helped and half shoved Chris into the shower. I had already laid down on the floor to rest my back and did not notice the massive amount of steam that had filled the little cabin. Chris noticed.

"Aaaaaauuuuuuugggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!" he said as the steamy water hit his skin. The poor guy was hypothermic and Steve, thinking that he needed to get Chris warm again as quickly as he could, had cranked the temperature up. Cold water would have felt warm to Chris and he was thrust into one hundred degree water. In a short amount of time, however, Chris was singing in the shower and making up songs about being a fish.

Sometimes when the outdoors gets all over you it doesn't end so well, but it does make for pretty good stories. It's a lot of fun and good exercise too.

Really? You Called Me for This? I Mean...Really?

Over this last week my patience with my patients was stretched pretty thin. I thought about writing a social commentary about how the character of our society has slipped into near oblivion and I thought about blasting the stupidity of the general populace but then I remembered that the people I see are a poor representation of our public. I only see either those that are in real trouble (rarely) or those that are either stupid, lazy, or dishonest. It was decided that rather than bemoan the losers, I would make people laugh at them. Those that are not mentally disabled, physically disabled or otherwise not to blame for their moronic behavior do deserve to be laughed at and so with that in mind, here is a short list of some of Colorado Springs top losers. Remember, these are people who deemed it necessary to call 911 in order receive emergency care via ambulance. I have changed the names because it would be illegal for me to give their real names, but the stories are real.

We'll start with Jane. See Jane's toe? See Jane's toenail? Around the edges, Jane's toenail is kind of red. Jane was out on the basketball court at her apartment complex and was showing off her skills of ball dribbling when Jane accidentally bounced the basketball on her toe.

"Well, golly, that stings," Jane thought, "I shall go back to my apartment and drink a whole lot of vodka so that my toe no longer stings." And Jane went back to her apartment and drank and drank and drank. Then Jane looked at her toe. "My toe is red! I should call 911." So Jane called 911 and the ambulance came. The medics were not happy and said so.

Next is Tim. Tim was trying on his friend's ring and to his dismay found that the ring was too small for his finger. It would not come off! Tim tried soap, and grease, and cold water, but nothing worked. It was time to call 911 so Tim called and while he waited for the ambulance he leaned against his car and enjoyed the sun.

"What do you want us to do for you?" the medics asked with just a little bit of perplexed irritation.

"I want you to get the ring off my finger!"

"Have you tried lubing it up with something?"

"Yes, but it didn't work."

"We can cut it off."

"No!" Tim said, "It's my friends ring and I don't want to ruin it."

The medics tugged on the ring and suggested that Tim soak his hand in cold water. "I already tried that", Tim whined.

"Well, the only way we can get it off is to cut the ring."

"I don't want you to cut the ring."

The medics looked at each other. "Well, there's not much we can do for you then."

"How am I going to get the ring off? I need to give it back to my friend!"

At some point, breath is just waisted. Tim, you are dumb.

"We don't know, Tim, but we need to go. We're pretty sure someone somewhere is having a problem for which they will need an ambulance and we want to be there. Not here. Don't put on any more rings, Tim."

In Colorado there is a law stating that if someone wants to go the hospital via ambulance, the ambulance has to take them; it does not matter what the reason is. This brings us to Shanikwa. We were called to one of the 7-11's in town because Shanikwa told the 911 operator that she stepped off the curb and turned her ankle. Upon arrival at the 7-11 we found our patient walking across the parking lot as though she were enjoying a day of shopping in her high heels. She did not even say hello, she just strolled over to the back of the ambulance, opened the door herself and climbed in. My partner snickered because it was my turn to be in the back with the patient.

"It's not nice to laugh at people's miseries," I told him.

"She doesn't look miserable to me." he said.

"I wasn't talking about her, I was talking about me" and I climbed in back with our miserable patient. "Lady, why did you call us?"

"My family is driving me crazy and I want to get away from them for a while."

"So, you want to incur an ambulance bill and a hospital bill because your family is annoying you?"

"I have Medicaid." Says it all, don't it?

Now, for the winner! Heeeeeeeere's Lucy! We found 19 year old Lucy lying on her bed in a fetal position and moaning softly.

"Lucy, what's the matter? Where do you hurt?"

"My stomach hurts." My partner began asking all of the standard questions meant to determine which of the possible reasons for abdominal pain we were dealing with. My eye caught something on the bed and I interrupted.

"Lucy? Did you eat this candy?" I had picked up off of the bed the wrapper of a Sam's Club family size package of M&M's.

"Yeah."

"Lucy, did you eat all of this candy?"

After a long silence, "Lucy?"

"What?"

"Did you eat all of this candy?"

"Yeah."

"OK, Lucy, don't eat any more candy. You'll be fine. Have a nice day."

The list of stupid people that I've provided "medical care" to is longer than my memory can possibly retain but these were some that popped to mind as I sit here. I've even been called for the hiccups for Pete's sake. The guy that called us because he had a door knob stuck in his butt also popped to mind but this is a family blog and you'll have to give me your e-mail if you want that story (It's not immoral, just weird). In the mean time, laugh often and...don't call me for...um...stupid things.

Out Running the River

As our Junior year of high school was drawing to an end, and summer was once again promising freedom, Brett and I were feverishly anticipating the epic canoe trip we had been planning to take down the Tahlequah River in southeast Oklahoma. The trip promised to provide fishing, cliff diving, swift water navigation, and whatever else we could dream up or come across. We only had two more obstacles to negotiate before we were set for the adventure of our lifetime. First, we needed a canoe. We weren't excited about the idea of floating for a week down a river with our butts hanging through an inner tube thereby causing severe pruning of the posterior. Besides that, there would be nowhere to put all the gear we would need for fishing, cliff diving, swift water navigation and whatever else we might need. If we met any girls on the trip it would be hard to look impressive or suave with the backs of our jeans soaked through and a question mark shaped posture from hours slung in a tube. We needed a canoe.

Both of us still being dependents and not of the wealthy spoiled type but more of the "get your own gruel! Do I look like your slave?" type, we had to find someone willing to lend a canoe to a couple of high school kids bent on impressing girls and catching fish in the middle of the back country. There was not a long line of potential lenders. There was a guy in our class who lived up on the hill with all the other rich people that said we could borrow his canoe if he happened to break both his legs and both his arms thus postponing his own trip. We hoped for the worst but kept looking. Pity was eventually taken on us by Brett's uncle who had an old fiberglass canoe that, as long as we kept bailing and didn't let it sink, we were welcome to use. That was better than nothing.

The second obstacle was Mother Nature. It had not rained hardly at all for the entire year and the word was that the Tahlequah was not much more than a trickle. As summer drew steadily near, Brett and I began to get anxious about our epic trip not ever coming to fruition. Then it rained. It rained a lot. In fact, the rain we received caused me to wonder that maybe an ark would be more appropriate to take a trip in because it was the first and only time in my life that I was able to paddle a canoe up to the drive-in window at Wendy's and order lunch. The Tahlequah would be a raging adventure for certain and Brett and I only had to wait until the water had gone down enough for us to drive out to south eastern Oklahoma.

Other than not meeting any girls, our trip was a great success. We didn't have to bail out the canoe thanks to a copious amount of plumber's caulk, and the fish were biting like they hadn't eaten in weeks. The river was high and fast and deep enough along the cliffs that our jumping from the twenty or so feet above into the murky water went off with almost no incidents. Oh, there was that one little rock that I landed on with one boot (yes, I was jumping into the water while wearing cowboy boots) thereby wrenching my ankle so severely that I could not get that boot off but nothing else happened. Well, unless you count when I nearly got killed.

We had made camp at a wide spot in the river where the water was calm. We had spent several hours that day screaming at each other about the obstacles in the water we were trying not to hit as we careened past in the swift water; we were both exhausted and exhilarated at the same time. I was out in the middle of river floating and goofing around while Brett was sitting on shore laughing and throwing rocks at me. It was absolutely perfect. We had fish to eat, a great camp, and a wonderfully serene wilderness shutting us out from all the worries in the world. We were having a great time. Then Brett started making a lot of noise. A lot of noise is the best way I can describe it because all of a sudden he was screaming and jumping up and down while waving erratically with one arm and pointing with the other. I was transfixed for a moment due to his sudden and bizarre behavior but then I was able to make out part of what he was trying to tell me.

"GET OUT OF THE WATER NOW!!"

I had no idea what could possibly be going on but because of his urgency and his being the perfect picture of panic, I though it best to do what he said and do it quickly. I paddled, kicked and scrambled as fast as I could and came up on shore beside him. Still not knowing what was going on, I looked at him questioningly and with a little bit of trepidation since I thought it might be possible that my friend had just gone nuts.

"LOOK!" he said, while still pointing up river. I followed his finger and was confused for a moment before my blood ran completely cold. Up stream and floating down to where I had just been in the water was a black cloud that took up almost the entire width of the river. Every so often we could see the black head of a Water Moccasin pop up over the current. There were hundreds of them. I involuntarily stepped backwards farther up the shore and my legs nearly gave out on me. If I had remained in the water I may not have survived long enough to get to shore. Brutal little pit vipers, Water Moccasin are extremely venomous and after four or five bites can kill a person. They had probably been washed down into the water by the recent downpours. We watched as they gently floated down the river and then being young, dumb and quick to recover, we began throwing rocks at them. It was amazing to see them thrash the water as a rock would land near them. It was too bad there weren't any girls to comfort.

My ankle was still sore and swollen when Brett and I were talking about making the trip again. We never actually got around to doing it but being one of my favorite memories, it would have been nice. Perhaps I will take my family there someday and bore them with all the stories that pop to mind as we float along. There's nothing like a captive audience. No one will be allowed to jump off the cliffs into the river though.

Windows That Hated Me.

When I was a kid, my friend Ryan and I were incredibly adept at using our imaginations to stay in trouble. We would hold G.I. Joe burnings at the stake. We discovered that if you light a ping-pong ball on fire it will vanish into dust instantaneously and match box cars will indeed burn like a roman candle. Tennis balls filled with "strike anywhere" match heads blow up like little hand grenades. We also discovered a whole slew of ways to break things that didn't involve fire or home made explosives, such as rolling a bowling ball down a hill into a street curb turning the ball and the curb into a pile of debris (Amazing amount of destruction. You'd really have to try it to believe it). Sometimes we did not even have to use our imaginations, things would just get broken through no malice aforethought. There were times that we ourselves would get broken. We were two walking rogue demolition balls that had parents with nervous conditions.

When Ryan and I were not busy being in trouble or endeavoring to get into trouble we would combat the tedium with sports or some kind of game that we made up. Baseball was a favorite. I recall a particular instance when we were playing catch in his back yard. Ryan's house had a four foot chain link fence in back, and behind the fence was an ally. Beyond the ally was a church. We were taking turns practicing our curve balls with one of us squatted down like a catcher on the ally side of the yard and the other throwing away. We had picked this arrangement because the non-ally side of the yard was just slightly higher than the other which was fundamental to having a makeshift pitchers mound.

It's the bottom of the ninth, the bases are loaded, the score's 5-4 in favor of the home team, and it's a full count. Ryan glances toward first, he shakes off the first signal, shakes off the second signal, he nods and prepares for the pitch. Here's the wind up...here's the pitch! STEEEERRRRIIIIIKE!!! Well, it would have been if we had actually had a batter and that batter happened to be twelve feet tall or wearing stilts. I jumped up outstretched toward the ball and it just glazed the top of my glove sailing over the fence, over the ally and into the dead center of one of the church windows. The ball dropped to the ally and the window still stood there impervious to the insult. The pitcher, now rattled but safe from the wrath of his mother, called for relief and we switched places.

The batter having fouled the last pitch, stands in the box nervous and determined. There's a fresh arm on the mound and Covey's fastball is legendary. The pitcher winds up...here's the throw!! Low and in the dirt, the ball bounces under the glove of the catcher, off the top of his head, over the fence; it rolls across the ally, hops over a pebble and gently taps the bottom corner of the church window before dropping to the floor of the Sunday school room.

"Haaa ha ha haaaa!" Ryan's sympathy for me and my impending doom at parental hands was of no comfort, "You look like Calvin [of Calvin and Hobbes] with a little cloud of skulls and lightning bolts over your head!"

A little over a week later when I was able to sit again, and he was allowed to do so, Ryan came over to my house. Being freshly sprung from the clink, we both agreed that it was better to stay out of trouble for the time being and pass the time with a sport other than baseball. Baseball had left a bit of a sour taste in our mouths and a sore spot on our behinds. Field hockey seemed like a good idea. Nothing like smacking a hard ball around the yard with sticks. Besides, we thought, what could go wrong with that?

We took turns standing in front of the garage door defending the goal. After and hour or so of seconds on the clock to winning "the cup", the puck was once again on Ryan's ice and he was poised to deflect my brutal slap shot.

Covey skates past the defenders, he has a clear path to the goal! He draws back and fires! The goalie ducks! He actually ducks the puck!! GOOOOOAAAAAALLLLL!!! The buzzer sounds and the clinking of tools dropping off of the back wall of the garage interrupts the celebration. Why would tools be falling off the wall? I looked at the garage door and my eyes focussed on the perfect field hockey ball sized hole in the garage window.

"Oooooh, boy" Ryan knew my parents were not going to be thrilled.

"WHY DIDN'T YOU BLOCK THE PUCK!!" My freedom and my physical comfort were slipping away before my eyes.

"Because it was coming at my face at like a hundred miles an hour! That's why!"

"WHY DIDN'T YOU BLOCK THE PUCK!!" I argued.

The next week Ryan and I were pretty much restricted to sports like checkers and piddly winks. Did you know the little plastic disks that you play piddly winks with can be fused together with a match and WD-40? Be sure to wear leather gloves if you try it though.

Sir, Please Stop Wheezing So That I Can Hear Your Mother. Oh, and Move the Cow.

"Medic 25, code 3 waaay east on 94. Stand by for further."

"25, OK. En route", lights and sirens lit up as our ambulance headed waaay east which was the informal designation for somewhere that would take more than twenty minutes of driving like a bat out of Hell to get to. More than likely we would be heading to the corner of "Tumbleweed" and "You got pretty lips" if you get my drift.

Dispatch came up again, "25, you're going to a 98 year old female, conscious and breathing, she's out of home oxygen." We had recently had a winter storm that had knocked the power out of most of "out east", but Colorado being Colorado the roads were now dry and the sun was shining. Our patient was likely using an air condenser that no longer had power so we drove the miles and miles of nothing to see road to help her out.

After about fifteen miles of washboard road we located the patients double-wide home sitting in the middle of a cow pasture. We shooed away a couple of cows, walked up to the front door, reached up and knocked. I say we reached up and knocked because the front door did not have a front step. It could have used about four, but it did not have any. A guy swung open the door and looked down at my partner and I like The Wizard looking down at Dorothy and Toto. The guy had monstrous glasses that were held together with bits of wire and electrical shrink tubing. The lenses looked like they had been pilfered from the Hubble telescope and made his eyes look so inordinately huge I worried that if he blinked, I might be blown over.

"Hey, guys (wheeze)", he pushed his glasses back up his nose, "my mom's in (wheeze) her room. Come on (wheeze) in". My partner and I looked at each other both of us looking for some sort of reassurance from the other that this could indeed be done with a straight face. I laced my fingers together and boosted my partner up through the door. As he was pulling me up into the trailer I saw "Eagle Eye" grab a hold of the door jam exiting the little entry way, swing his feet into the air and he was out of sight. My partner and I looked at each other again.

As we walked over to where we could see where the guy had gone, my partner stopped so abruptly, I almost bumped into him and knocked him into the gaping hole in the floor. Now we knew what the acrobatic leap was all about. My partner looked at me, raised his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders and took the leap over the hole. When he landed, he is a big tall guy, and he made a boom that scared about ten cats from every nook and corner of the kitchen into the hole and presumed safety. I tossed our jump kit to my partner and jumped the hole myself.

As we were led to the back bedroom the man with the glasses continued to wheeze.

"Would you like some oxygen, or a breathing treatment?" my partner asked.

"Nah, (wheeze) I just got the asthma (wheeze). I'm fine." He pushed his glasses back up his nose.

The double wide was a good size inside but it only had one piece of furniture; a couch. On the couch sat a woman with an angry scowl. She was wearing hair curlers, a mu-mu; she was smoking a cigarette, and sporting an eye patch. Not a medical eye patch, but a black pirate style eye patch. She didn't say anything to us. She just scowled.

In the back bedroom we found Mom. She was in sort of a fetal position and looked kinda dead. I took a breath as I thought about how badly this could go out here in the middle of nowhere and reached out to touch her shoulder. Before my hand actually touched her, she spun around in bed and yelled, "whozzat? What're you want!? Get away from me!" I checked my hand just to make sure I still had all my fingers.

"Mom, let (wheeze) them check you out. You've been (wheeze) out of air all day."

"Hmmph" Mom replied and rolled back over and ignored me as I did my assessment.

Finding nothing wrong with Mom we left a spare O2 bottle with Wheezy and headed back out past the angry pirate, the hole, the cows and to our ambulance.

"Medic 25, we're clear on a...um...no medical needed I guess". I looked at my partner. "Drive faster. I hear banjos."

If You Don't Laugh, You'll Cry.

I don't know what made me think of this little story. Perhaps the thought of going back to work tomorrow kind of depressed me and somewhere in my random train of thought I decided to laugh instead of cry and that's what reminded me.

As those of you that know me are aware, I work on an ambulance and will sometimes witness things that can't be forgotten. Sometimes I witness things that I just can't figure out as to if they are funny, tragic, bland, or what. Here is a case in point.

My partner and I were called to a church for a feinting, and for a possible DOA. OK, so right off we were looking at each other thinking, "what the heck?". Did dispatch screw up? Did someone see a dead body and feint? What is a dead body doing in a church? Is this a crime scene? Is the person who feinted the same person that is possibly a DOA? Sometimes we just have to shrug and assume we will find out what's going on after we get there.

We arrived at the church and the door was equipped with the standard frantic waiver/pointer guiding us to the obvious. As we walked into the sanctuary it was quickly apparent that we were at a funeral interrupted. I bit my lip and kept my professional poker face on as I started to realize that the DOA dispatch was talking about was probably the center of this somber gathering's attention. Not much we can do for someone who has already been embalmed.

Our patient was found up on the platform lying down but conscious with someone fanning her face. Beside the patient was a coffin. A tiny coffin. My heart went limp. As my partner who was in front of me moved to the patient I caught out of the corner of my eye a small bundle at the bottom of the three stairs that led up to the platform and altered my path to affirm my suspicion. I picked up the deceased infant as gently and respectfully as I could and walked up and placed him back in his coffin. I straightened out his clothes and posed his hands as best I could and walked over to my partner and my patient. The patient was fine and did not need any medical intervention. One of the funeral attendees was able to relate to us what had happened.

The lady who had feinted was the mother of the deceased who had been a SIDS victim. Mom had gone up to the coffin and picked up her child. In her grieving she had become so emotional and had been weeping so hard that she passed out and in so doing dropped the body which went bouncing across the stage and down the stairs end over end. My partner and I expressed our condolences and returned to our ambulance. As we drove away in silence we stopped at a light and my partner let out a half grunt, half chuckle and this sent me into a snicker.

"That was horrible!" he said.

"Yeah," I was half smiling and shaking my head, "I'm not quite sure how to get back to work mode after that. It was tragic with a touch of the ludicrous."

"Mm hmm"

I have no idea how this story strikes you, but I know that it has struck you if you are human. The balance between compassion and sanity may be easy for you without many horrible events to work through, but never lose the ability to laugh. While it is wrong to laugh at the suffering of others, you will never be able to carry the sorrows of all the world and if you try, you will never be of comfort to anyone. If we did not laugh, we would cry. God bless.

Flight Attendant, May I Have a New Seat? Mine Seems to be Missing.

I've never really traveled much. I'm kind of a home and family kind of guy. Being home and on familiar territory where I know where my things are, what the quickest way to the store is, where the sweet spot is in my bed, and all the other things that make home so nice, kind of makes travelling seem like more of a nuisance than anything else. When I was in college, though, I did do a fair amount of flying because my other option was to sit around in my dorm cell and wait for whatever break we were on to be over. I got to kind of enjoy flying. It was always an amusement to me to watch all the people rush around panicky about their next flight or worried about their luggage. Hurrying along was never a necessity for me because I never had a very hard deadline and therefore did not mind if I missed a flight now and then. I also didn't have to worry about luggage since everything I, as a poor collage kid owned, was in my backpack. It was virtually a no worry way to travel. In fact, the only time that I can remember actually being concerned about anything was due in full to the little commuter airport just outside of the town where I was going to school.

This little airport was classic. You walked up to the ticket counter and the guy that worked there checked you in. Then, the same guy would escort you through security and take you to the gate. It was a courteous gesture and totally unnecessary considering that there was only one gate and it was thirty feet from the ticket counter. The guy would then take you out onto the tarmac when it was time to board your plane. The only aircraft at the airport were little prop jobs used primarily for commuting to O'Hare in Chicago. With the size of the airport, the condition of the planes, and the Mom and Pop type atmosphere, one got the impression of being in a flying rental car joint.

I remember one December I was headed back to school from Christmas break. I walked out onto the tarmac in O'Hare to board my puddle hopper bound for Iowa and stopped to talk to the pilot who was standing outside of his aircraft doing his routine checks. He was staring at one of the engines with an expression that said he was either bored or annoyed or both. I smiled and asked him if there was anything wrong with the engine.

"I dunno." He shrugged and continued his checks. Nothing will instill confidence like a pilots indifference to engine performance but I boarded that flying crate anyway.

The craft was only equipped to seat about twelve people so finding my assigned seat was a quick process. I should say, rather, that finding the place I was assigned to sit was a quick process because where my actual seat was supposed to be was a clean spot on the carpet with four bolts sticking out of the floor. I called over the flight attendant and pointed out the possible safety shortcomings of simply sitting on the floor with my legs stretched out in front of me. After a few moments of "hmmm"s and "ummm"s the attendant worked through her bewilderment and sat me in the seat directly behind the clean spot on the carpet.

"Oh, well," I thought "I've now, in any case, got leg room". I just hoped that whatever happened to the missing seat did not happen to the one I was sitting in, particularly not while I was sitting in it.

The seat next to me was then filled by a large black lady with a gargantuan hat covered with paper flowers. By the lady's demeanor and nervous activity I could already tell she was going to be a captivating companion for a windy, wintry flight. She absolved all doubt for me when she looked over wide eyed at me and disclosed that she was absolutely terrified of flying and her Xanax was not kicking in at all. Oh, goody. Then she popped some antacid and started fidgeting.

"Well, it's a short flight. We won't be in the air for long" I said to her by way of reassurance. She squeezed a smile out at me and I wished that someone would reassure me.

As the plane began to taxi up the runway, I started to snicker to myself because the plane was rattling and bumping like it had square wheels and the vibrations were making the paper flowers on the lady's hat next to me brush and whisper together and her fat cheeks were jiggling as she hummed and moaned with anxiety. Shortly, my mirth was interrupted by a stabbing pain in my arm. The lady had reached over and apparently was trying to perforate my arm with her long fake nails. Once we were in the air she relaxed a little and I was able to assess my wounds.

Most of the rattling ceased, once airborne, but for one rattle that was visibly annoying to the only flight attendant. She was looking over and around her seat trying to determine the source. It appeared that she found the source because she got up, opened a cabinet and took out a napkin which she folded into a little square and then jammed the napkin into the door to the plane. One of the louder rattles stopped. Now, I am not an aeronautical engineer, but in my mind it would seem that if a craft is so rickety that stuffing a napkin in the door is considered a fix, then perhaps the plane is not quite as air worthy as it used to be. Besides, this sent the lady next to me into fannings and conniptions like those oft witnessed in a black Pentecostal church in the South.

Like I had told the lady next to me earlier, it was a short flight and before we knew it we were descending on the Mom and Pop rent-a-plane airport. The weather was typical for a mid-west winter with blowing snow and ice over everything. We touched down and discovered that the guy that worked at the airport had not deiced the runway. We were on the ground for only an instant when the plane slid on the ice and turned ninety degrees to the runway and began sliding along. I was transfixed as I looked out my window straight down the runway expecting us to cartwheel at any moment. The sound was awful with screeching and rapid pounding but eventually the lady with the hat ran out of air and energy and the plane slid to a stop in front of Mom and Pop's. The plane's passengers let out a synchronized sigh and we began to deplane.

I still enjoy flying when I get the chance and I do like to see places I've never been but I think I will spend most of my time staying around home. My home doesn't slide around on the ice or try to claw my arm off.

Three Wheeling in a Blizzard

That October hosted one of the worst blizzards in decades. It was the kind of storm that made people feel obligated to share with anyone that didn't hit them to shut them up, all of their woes and trials of suffering through it. People told stories of how the snow had drifted up to the eave of their garage, how they had to wait a whole week in order to get out the front door, how they had no power, that they nearly ran out of food, and all sorts of trials and tribulations that nobody would have believed except that they had a story just like it. I am no exception, except that the day of the blizzard progressed for me in such a manner that the blizzard is almost a side note.

I, at the time, was the proud owner of a big piece of rust with a Ford Bronco growing on it, and it was with that vehicle that I transported myself unreliably to and from various job sites, working as a contractor. The truck was no longer equipped with a heater because during the summer previous, the heater core busted and dumped boiling radiator fluid all over the front passenger floor board which was at the same point occupied by a college buddy's sandal clad feet. That little break down was easily fixed with the temporary (by temporary I mean permanent) bypassing of the heater core so that the boiling fluid stayed in the engine where it was supposed to be. Don't worry about my college buddy. After he quit screaming and dancing like a little girl over a little hot fluid, it was seen that his feet would only blister a little bit and he would be fine. For the purposes of this story, it is more worrisome that I was now without a heater.

The morning of "the blizzard" was not too unbearably cold, that is, unless, you were driving a pile of rust with no heater out to East of Nowhere, Colorado with the back window down. That morning I had just two pieces of lumber to pick up at Home Depot and it did not seem practical to hook up the trailer for two eight foot boards, so I hung the boards out the back and dealt with the cold. Fortunately, once I got to East, the job I was doing was finishing out a basement and thus, not out in the cold.

In Colorado, the building codes dictate that when you put up a wall in a basement, the wall has to "float" one and a half inches off of the floor. When I first learned this, I was under the impression that the building department must be big fans of the paranormal and was enormously relieved when I learned that "floating" a wall actually means "hanging" a wall off of the ceiling joists so that the bottom of the wall is one and a half inches from the floor. You then drive spikes through the bottom of the wall into the floor to keep the wall from swinging like a really stiff bead curtain. Why didn't they just say that it the first place? So, I built my first wall of the day then leaned it up against the concrete basement wall and turned around to look for something to jack my wall up into place. When I turned back around, the wall was no longer obediently leaning against the other wall, but had silently advanced to within a quarter inch of my nose and had gained a lot of speed. The wall flattened me out on the floor and did a fair nose job all in one motion.

The second wall went up quickly with not one painful glitch. Unless you count my wallet as a viable recipient for painful glitches. As I was pounding on the wall to make it nice and straight, and my nose was pounding on my face from the other wall, my aim with my hammer deviated slightly from the intended board and instead smashed into oblivion the drain pipe for the kitchen sink. I let loose with a long string of completely unintelligible language and called a plumber. I did not call the plumber because I don't know how to fix a pipe, but because all the stuff I needed in order to fix the pipe was back at home in my trailer that was too much of a bother to hook up and I did not have the time to drive all the way back home from East and all the way back again. I work on a schedule you know. The plumber was a nice enough guy though. He asked how I broke the pipe, and then he asked what had happened to my nose. He was, in fact, so concerned about me that he only charged me one hundred and seventy five dollars to fix six measly dang inches of pipe. I guess the prices are higher when the work is done East of Nowhere.

After getting a little more work done with no more incidents, I called it a day and headed off to class. Yup, off to class. I was still in college...sort of...and had a night class I was attending a little south east of town. On my way there, it started to snow. Once in class, the teacher decided that because the snow was supposed to get bad, he would get right to it and hand out the exam I had forgotten about. Oh, the joy. After the class had completed the paper version of the third degree the instructor dismissed us stating that the snow was really bad now and we should hurry home. Yeah, right. Hurrying home was certainly a nice thought, but the foot of snow that had fallen in the last hour made any sort of expediency a non-viability. As my rusty Ford trudged into the storm, I began to hear a noise.

The noise was quiet at first, and not really distinguishable from all of the other bangs, clanks, rattles, and squeaks that the thing made on a normal basis, but this noise got louder. It was a metallic clunking coming perhaps from a very flat tire, but the snow made it hard to be sure. I pulled off the side of the toboggan run that used to be a road and checked all four tires. Nothing.

"Well," I thought, "it could be that I'm about to throw my drive shaft...again. I'll just take it easy, and drive to the gas station up the road where I can get out of the snow, into the light and

check it out".

I never made it. I was doing about twenty-five mile an hour when out of nowhere a tire goes flying by me up the road. Just as I was thinking this to be a very odd occurrence the back passenger side of my Bronco dropped about sixteen inches and through the snow into the asphalt beneath and I went for a ride swerving back and forth from one side of the road to the other until the whole death trap came grinding to a stop smack dead in the middle of the road. I sat there stunned for a few moments and then blinked for the first time since seeing the tire go by. As the situation began to set in and I began to realize that I was still nearly an hour from home on a nice day, I started to get grumpy.

"Hey, man!" a female voice, not angelic repeated, "Hey, man," the voice was coming from a woman outside of her car in an intersection a block ahead of me, "your tire, man, it's all the way over here, man! MAN! It almost hit me, man!"

By this point, I had got out of my truck and was trudging through the snow to retrieve my wayward tire. She continued,

"Man, are you OK, man? Man, that tire really flew!"

I just grunted in response because what I wanted to say was, "Lady, if you say, 'man' one more time, I will get back in my three wheel drive truck and run over your face". She apparently took my curt response to mean just what I wanted; "Leave me alone, and go away", because she did. I should have asked her nicely if she would help me carry my wheel back to the pile of rust in the middle of the road because it would not roll in the snow and I had to hoist it to my shoulder and carry it a full block in nearly knee deep powder.

Once I reached my Bronco I dropped down to my knees to inspect the damage, catch my breath, and see what could be done about it so that I could set to work and get home. The problem was that at night, in the dark, in the middle of a blizzard, it's hard to see. It would have been handy to have the flashlight that I kept in my trailer.

Just as I was taking in a deep breath to utter a few things my mother would disapprove of, the world lit up. I looked over my shoulder and into a set of headlights which was, if the ride shortly before was not, a sure cure for constipation for the headlights were, although they were trying, not stopping. Reflexively, my legs shot out in an effort to propel me out of harms way, but because of the ice and snow, all they succeeded in doing was elevating me about a foot off of the ground in a full outstretched Superman pose where I hovered for a split second before falling straight back face down in the snow. The headlights, which belonged to an old Subaru station wagon, did finely stop when the bumper was directly over my heals and within kissing distance of my pile of rust.

"Hey! Are you alright, Captain?", the man said as my life was just finishing up flashing before my eyes.

I crawled up onto my hands and knees and opened my mouth to answer him, but he had already moved on in life and now began telling me how scared he had been while skidding down the road.

"Wow, Captain, I didn't think I was going to be able to stop" he related, "I thought I was going to hit you for sure, Captain, and I about wet all over my self!"

He paused mouth agape for a split second, "hey, Captain, what happened to your nose?"

He didn't ask, "hey, is your heart still beating after you just nearly got crushed to death by my car," he didn't ask, "can I help you with your tire," as though being dead center in the middle of the road with only three wheels in the middle of a snow storm was a normal sight for him not even deserving of the term 'spectacle'. No, he asked about my nose.

"Long, story" I said. "Do me a favor and keep your headlights where they are so that I can see what I can do about my wheel."

"Sure, Captain, no problem. I'm glad I'm here to help, Captain."

While this guy was obviously fond of pronouns just like the lady before him, at least he was calm and was of some use. Besides, at this point the irritation had been scared right out of me.

With the help of my near cause of death's headlights I discovered that there was no way that I was going to be able to get going again because the lug bolts that had previously been holding my tire on, had completely sheared off. I shoved my wheel under the crippled heap and stood up.

"No luck, Captain?"

"Nope. I'll just walk over to the gas station there, and call for a tow."

"No, Captain, let me give you a ride! I don't mind. You don't need to walk through the snow!"

"Thanks," I said, and got into the passenger seat.

As the guy started up the block and a half to the gas station he looked over at me and asked, "I hope you don't mind, Captain, but I'm high as a kite! I can still drive though."

It was at this point that I began to pray, "You know, Lord, if you're going to take me, just go ahead and do it. There really is no need for drawing it out like this. I mean, you're God and You know best, but this just seems cruel. Can you just take me now? Please?"

My stoner chauffeur pulled into the station without a glitch and slid pretty as you please into a parking spot right in front of the door. I used some of the upholstery in my hand to mop my brow, apologized for the damage and thanked him for the ride. Who would have thought that such a short ride could feel so long? After I got out, I stood there and waited for him to back out so that I could open the gas station door and went inside to use the phone. They did not have a phone inside that I could use so I made change and went back outside to use the pay phone. Every tow company in the state told me that they had at least a three hour wait and AAA was at this point useless. I had one of the companies put me on a list and I called my dad in order to share my misery. He said that he would come out and give me a ride home since the tow truck would probably not take the Bronco home in this weather, but would just drop it at the most convenient garage.

I was about to hang up the phone and go inside for a nice cup of coffee when my chauffeur the stoner came careening back into the parking lot coming to a stop several feet from anything that might ever resemble a parking spot. He burst out of his of car and began stomping his way toward me cussing like I had never heard anybody cuss before. Perhaps he was upset about the upholstery? I'll never know, because as I braced my feet and gripped the phone receiver as my only weapon ready to reach out and touch him, he stepped on the iced over handicap ramp, slipped and planted his face square on the sidewalk. I was sure he was unconscious or maybe dead, but after a few captivating moments he calmly got up, looked around and walked back to his car without saying a word. Don't ask, I have no idea.

I had been sitting at a table inside, nearly thawed out and nearly done with my second cup of coffee when I saw a deputy walk into the station and ask the lady behind the counter if she knew who the three wheeled truck in the middle of the road belonged to. The lady pointed to me, I waved at the deputy sheepishly and he walked over and sat down across from me. He didn't even wait for me to invite him to sit. He asked to hear my story and I gave him the abridged version which satisfied him. He told me that he threw a few flares down behind it so that no one would run into it. Like I cared at that point, but I thanked him and he got himself a cup of coffee and we chatted a while. He was very pleasant. His "brother in blue" who came in shortly after was not.

"Whose Bronco is that in the middle of traffic!?" he demanded as he burst in the door. I waived, but at this point I was just simply out of patience.

"Take it easy, Barney, and put your bullet back in your pocket. There is nothing I can do about it and a tow truck is on the way." I said this while smiling to that the witnesses to my beating might say that I was only joking with him and he took it the wrong way. It looked like that beating might very well occur but, the cop that was sitting with me started laughing and "Barney" noticed him for the first time, and as was explained to me after the second officer left, the one sitting with me was his field trainer. Score one for seniority. This is when my dad showed up.

My dad had brought with him three of his friends who were officers in the Air Force and were staying with him because they were in town only to participate in the wedding ceremonies of the daughter of a senator. I might have thought my luck was about to change but for two things. One; I called the tow company and was told that it would actually be another six hours. It was now midnight. Two; my dad for what ever reason had brought everyone out in the worst snow storm in decades to pick me up in the family minivan. Hindsight being twenty-twenty, that may not have been the best vehicular choice.

I grabbed the phone book, sick of the day, and called the first tow company my finger touched. I told the guy that I knew it was busy but that if he came and got my truck right now, I would give him three hundred bucks. I wanted to go home. He agreed and an hour later we were all on our way. It was nice having the three extra guys because as my dad drove along we would take shifts jogging along and deicing the windshield wipers. With just my dad and I, it would have gotten really cold.

The day was almost over for me, we were less than a mile from home with no more perceived obstacles the roads slick but not unnavigable. We were sitting at the last traffic light before the home stretch.

"Hang on!" my dad yelled suddenly, "Hang on, hang on, hang on..." BAM!!

A kid in a little red pick up that had no business out on the roads lost it on the ice and slammed into the back of the family minivan. Three Air Force officers sat on me while my dad exchanged information and then we went home to he and Mom's place.

We trudged into the house and my mom greeted me with a welcoming smile, "I'm glad you're all right and made it home in one pie....what happened to your nose?"

"Nothin' Mom. I'm going to bed." I slept well.