I have a doctor’s appointment today.
His staff takes x-rays of my elbow and then sticks me in a room to wait for an hour.
When I’m fed up with the wait, he comes through the door, pokes and prods me for a minute, and then I’m sent to the reception desk to pay and set my next appointment.
I took half a day off to do this. But if I had taken a whole day off, I’d have gotten wellness credit reimbursed on my paycheck for half the day.
My elbow is getting better. It’s my patience that’s broken.
Category: My stories
The Brick
As part of my rehabilitation, I have a blue foam Lego brick to squeeze.
This builds up my grip strength.
However, it’s a lot more fun to throw my brick at people.
It’s like a blend of Angry Birds and Tetris.
And Lego, I suppose. Although what’s the point of having just a single Lego brick?
You can’t build anything with it.
I shrug, and look over my toy drawer:
A single Tinkertoy spoke
An erector-set screw
A piece of this
A piece of that
A pile of team-building pieces I never built with.
I squeeze the brick and laugh.
Meetings
For the past week, I’ve been stuck in meetings.
I haven’t gotten any work done at all.
So, my boss wanted to talk to me about it.
In a meeting.
After the meeting, the people I was supposed to meet with around then demanded that I meet with them about missing their meetings.
That resulted in meetings between them and my boss, then more meetings with me about the meetings.
I still wasn’t getting any work done.
In fact, I couldn’t remember what my work was anymore.
I called for a meeting.
Nobody showed up.
So, I took a nap.
Cognitive Horror
When I was three years old, a scientist sat me down at a table and showed me a box of crackers.
“What’s inside the box?” he asked.
“Crackers,” I said.
The scientist opened the box, and poured out some rocks.
“There are rocks inside the box,” he said, and then he scooped up the rocks and put them back into the box.
“Your Mommy is about to walk into the room,” he said. “What will she think is inside the box?”
“She won’t care,” I said. “She’ll be more interested in drinking your blood.”
I bared my fangs and laughed.
Second Grade
I love to teach.
I love teaching this class. And these kids.
Working so hard, and learning so much. They’re such great students.
So, I’m going to fail them all.
Yes, I’m going to give each one a big fat red F on their report cards.
And they’re going to have to repeat the second grade.
Which means I’ll get them for another year.
What? You think they won’t let me teach them again?
But they let me teach them again this year.
And the year before.
Maybe I’ll keep them forever, here in the second grade.
Pencils down, kids.
French Crime
Most professors get letters from former students thanking them for something they taught them.
Yeah, I get letters from my former students, too. But they all come from prisons and mental institutions.
And they curse me for turning them to a life of crime, madness, and suffering.
Look here, man: I teach Introductory French.
How exactly does Introductory French cause people to turn out so badly?
None of the students ever explain how I’m to blame for their predicament. They just blame me for their woes. And curse me.
The least they could do is write their letters in French.
Lost A Friend
When a friend dies, I never say I’ve lost a friend.
No, they’re still my friend. I just won’t hear from them quite as often as I used to.
And it’s even more unlikely that I’ll get back that five bucks they owed me.
As for friends you lose because they’re not your friends anymore, well, were they ever really your friend?
If that friendship was so weak that it took something less than death to end, then it wasn’t a true friendship.
So take my advice: if you want to keep your friends forever, kill them all right now.
Too Big
I’m too fat to use the stairs and you can’t always depend on elevators working, so I always live on the first floor.
“You should lose weight,” people tell me.
No shit. Really?
I can’t exercise because I’m too fat.
And I can’t diet because I’ve got other medical issues. I’ve spent days with the best nutritionists and doctors, but none could figure out how to reduce my intake without killing me.
So, I live down on the first floor.
And I haul myself from the van to my front door.
Soon, I’ll need a wheelchair.
A really big wheelchair.
Kill Bill
I know a couple who was so into Quentin Tarantino movies that they rented a small Texas church for their wedding and hired the actor who played the preacher in Kill Bill to officiate.
They tried to get Samuel L. Jackson to play organ, but he couldn’t actually play, and he didn’t want to work for scale.
The wedding was interrupted by armed actors playing assassins, and the church was awash in death.
Real blood. Real gore.
Someone got the blanks mixed up with real bullets.
The survivors tried to sue Quentin Tarantino, but the judge threw out the case.
Charity
I don’t give to charity anymore.
Once, I participated in a Fun Run to raise funds and awareness for some disease or another. Sure, it was fun, until I stopped running. That’s when the cattle prods came out, and I was aware… that I was in danger.
Then, I volunteered to be jailed so I could call my friends to “bail” me out with contributions to the Cancer Society. But the cops left me in jail. In Maximum Security.
So, I don’t care if there’s a tax deduction or a free t-shirt. It’s still too high a price to pay.