In one evening watching TV I counted three different commercials for products that treat “overactive bladder”. This would have been disconcerting if I hadn’t been watching The Plumbing Channel, but it did get me thinking. Why isn’t there a product to treat shy bladders? I sometimes have this problem that I can’t go when there’s someone standing next to me, and I once stood in a public bathroom stall with one foot back against the door because there was no lock. The potential side effects for overactive bladder always seem to include dry mouth and difficulty urinating, so I guess anything that would treat shy bladder could have the side effects of needing to wear adult diapers because you’re running like a tap that can’t be turned off and excessive drooling. It must be a completely untapped problem because I know the pharmaceutical industry will target everything that’s potentially a problem, even something like shy bladder that, at least in my experience, is easily solved. I either drink one of those half gallon bottles of water and wait ’til I feel like a dam about to burst or I just relax, take a deep breath, and think about Niagara Falls. That always does it for me. Even just the mention sets me off. If you’ll excuse me I need to see a man about a horse, and I also need to urinate.
Gina over at Endearingly Wacko reminded me of the Myers-Briggs personality test which I’ve taken three or four times. Everyone I’ve ever talked to has said no matter how many times they take it their results are always the same. Because I can’t do anything right I’ve ended up with slightly different results each time.
Another time I took a version of the test with an even number of questions and came out as an INXP. That is I was precariously balanced between being a Feeler and a Thinker, both analytical and emotional.
In that same test I was just one question shy of being an XNXP since I was, according to the results, an introverted extrovert. Or an extroverted introvert. And I’m so ludicrously ambivalent about most things I think I’m just a few questions shy of being an Australian beer.
Australians only drink Foster’s when this stuff gets caught in their work computer’s filter.
When I took the test at work I came out an ENTP. Maybe that explains the variations in my results since that type is described as “Bored by routine, will seldom do the same thing the same way”.
Again, though, it was a very small number of questions that made the difference between me being an E and an I, and I didn’t think all the questions were exactly fair. One stood out: “Do you prefer to (a) see a movie in a theater or (b) watch a movie at home?”
Anyone who answered (a), I understood, must be an extrovert while anyone who answered (b) must be an introvert.
Is it that simple? I love to see movies in the theater—it’s my preferred way of seeing a movie, and I enjoy going with people I know so we can talk about it afterward, but I don’t want to carry on a conversation while the movie’s going on. And I’m fine with going to see a movie by myself. It lessens the chance that someone will (a) sit directly in front of me, (b) sit directly in front of me and hold up their phone, or (3) talk during the movie.
Sometimes it’s just me and Claude Raines.
Normally people talking during a movie, or even during the previews—hey, sometimes the previews are the best part!—makes me crazy, but I think because I’m an iNtuitive type there are times when it doesn’t bother me. There are even times when I enjoy it. Well, there was that one time. During the first few minutes of Pulp Fiction a woman directly behind me said, “I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen this on the TV.” And then a man next to her chuckled loudly and said, “You’re dumb! This ain’t never been on the TV.” They kept up this discussion a little bit before I finally turned around and gave them an “Okay, the joke’s not funny anymore” look. The guy added a final parting shot of “See what you done?” before shutting up.
Then there was the time I went to see the 2011 film The Thing which was a prequel to the 1982 film The Thing, which sometimes gets described as a remake of the 1951 film The Thing From Another World, but was really a more faithful adaptation of John W. Campbell’s novella “Who Goes There?” first published in 1938.
This simple diagram should make everything clear.
As Ennio Morricone’s haunting theme played over the credits all of us—me and half a dozen others, I think, all strangers—in the theater gathered together and got into an impromptu discussion of how the 2011 film fit with the 1982 film, how both differed from the 1951 film, and what all three films drew from the novella.
The house lights came up, a theater employee came in to sweep up any spilled popcorn, and we separated—reluctantly, or so I imagined. As an extrovert I should have said what I was thinking, which was, “Hey, there’s a burger joint next door. Why don’t we continue this over milkshakes? By the way, I’m Chris, but you can call me Spunky The Wonder Squid.”
So I got this preview of my voice mail and I thought, come on, just give me the word, I can take it. I’ve been known to make sailors blush. It doesn’t matter if it’s a vulgarism, epithet, oath, or opprobrium. I’ve used ‘em all. And I’m not aware of any legal ruling that there are seven words you can’t say in voice mail.
Then I listened to the message and realized what the program had mistaken for “curses” was my name.
This reminded me of a completely different situation when a man who didn’t speak English very well asked my wife what my name was. She told him. His eyes got very wide.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “that’s a very famous Western name. Christ is a very famous name.”
And then she explained that it’s just “Chris”. The “t” is dropped because it’s short for “Christopher”, which is the name of the patron saint of travelers, or it was until he turned out not to be a real person. I’m not sure what the current status of the saint formerly known as Christopher is, but since I was actually named after Christopher Robin it doesn’t bother me too much.
Tourists don’t ride the bus. Well, I do, but I’m not like other tourists.
I find things the locals don’t know about.
So it was wonderful to me when a few people, a husband and wife, I think, and their son asked me for directions. And there was no mistaking that accent. They were Australians. Or from New Zealand. I’ve heard those are actually two different countries. The important thing is they were from two hemispheres away.
“Could you tell us which bus we need to get to the Parthenon?” the woman asked.
I nearly fell over my own tongue starting to answer. The Parthenon is the centerpiece of Centennial Park which, for years, was the site of the largest Australia celebration outside of Australia. This was a fun annual event in September attended by the likes of the Australian ambassador to the U.S. and Colin Hay. I loved being around bona fide Aussies, hearing them drop terms like “g’day” and “dinky-di” so casually I could almost believe those were real words. There would be a tent where they sold food and beer, except they called it “tucker” and “ice cold tubes of the amber fluid”.
I could have used this.
It was also the only place I could find Vegemite. I’m not kidding. I love the stuff, but that’s another story.
The festival ended several years ago when the original organizers moved away, and I wasn’t sure whether this family was even aware of it since this was early June. We were near downtown, but fortunately standing on West End, a large road that leads directly to Centennial Park. I told them all they had to do was catch the next bus. I could just as easily have said, “Follow me,” since I was going the same way, but I was struck by a sudden and overwhelming shyness. There were so many things I wanted to ask. What brings you here? Are you having a nice time? Can I help in any way? What part of Australia are you from? Where in Australia is Wellington? Do you have any Vegemite? Don’t you love that song about the bunyip of Hooligan’s Creek? Instead I just smiled politely.
“Is the Parthenon easy to find?” the woman asked.
“Oh, yes, very easy. There are two or three stops along the front of Centennial Park, and you’ll see the Parthenon as you go by.”
The fence for some stupid construction project wasn’t up at the time.
I gulped and hoped that made sense. When the bus arrived we boarded. I made my way to the back while they sat close to the front, watching out the windows and checking a map. I desperately wanted to call in to work and say a couple of dingoes had got me and I’d be waltzing Matilda on walkabout, and maybe throw in a “crikey”. Instead as I disembarked I merely smiled and said to them, “I hope you enjoy the Parthenon. It’s just a few blocks away from here.”
Happy birthday Ian Frazier. Born June 21, 1951. A friend recommended his book Dating Your Mom which led me to Coyote v. Acme and Lamentations of the Father. And then there’s The Cursing Mommy’s Book of Days, about someone most of us know.
Here’s a piece from Lamentations of the Father, which is appropriate for Father’s Day.
Can you see it? Maybe you’re distracted by doughnuts, or the big neon OPEN sign in the window. Chances are good you’re also driving by so you’re unlikely to see something so small. You may not even notice where it is. It’s hidden in plain sight.
Getting closer. Walking down the sidewalk you’re more likely to spot it unless you’re distracted by the big neon HOT sign in the side window, or the cars getting doughnuts at the drive-through. Maybe you’re thinking about cutting through the grass to get a doughnut.
Wait a minute. What is that? Is that…?
Yes. That’s exactly what it is.
It’s been there for at least ten years, maybe longer. Who put it there? And why? Those are the questions I’d like to ask any graffiti artist, but this one stands out because whoever did it has my kind of sense of humor. Maybe it’s stayed there so long because so few people notice it, but I like to think it stays because it makes people laugh. The box is for electrical wiring or some crap like that so I assume some technician has to check it regularly. I hope they call the box itself Barney.
So I ran into an old friend I hadn’t seen in a while, and he asked me how I was doing. I said fine and asked how he was doing. He said fine, then motioned toward his body and asked, “All clear?” And that’s when I realized he was asking, seriously, “How are you doing?” It’s a question people sometimes throw out just out of habit, but for me it’s one more thing that’s taken on a whole new context. It’s been a year now since the longest two days of my life, forty-eight hours that felt like a year because I was diagnosed with cancer, rushed to the emergency room, and then taken in for an orchiectomy. It was only as they were wheeling me into surgery that someone thought to ask if I’d like a prosthetic replacement, not enough time
for me to ask, “Can I get a bionic one?”
It’s now been a year since the day I was diagnosed. Most of the time it feels like nothing’s changed in that year, but then I stop and realize everything’s changed. Until that day I hadn’t spent the night in a hospital since I was four. I hadn’t been out of work due to illness for more than two days. I could say “I never get sick.” I could say “I have no allergies.” I didn’t take any medications regularly. I hadn’t had a doctor’s appointment in three years.
Events tend to get telescoped in memory, but at the time it seemed like time itself slowed down. I became very focused on time. My second night in the hospital, the one I spent alone, seemed to move so slowly. I couldn’t watch TV or read even though the book I happened to have with me, Mark Twain’s Roughing It, was strangely appropriate. I had a really cool nurse who talked to me about the future, then reached over, picked the book up, and said, “Swear on the spirit of John Wayne…” then she looked at the cover and said, “I mean Mark Twain that you will get through this.” It was the best thing that she could have said. Like a young Samuel Clemens I was facing an uncertain future. Like him I was determined to push on, and I was determined to look back on the whole thing as comedy rather than tragedy. The strange thing is thinking about the future seemed to slow the present. When I walked to the window at the end of the hall the lights of the cars below made long streaks like a long-exposure photograph. I couldn’t sleep. When I tried the pain in my leg that had been the symptom that drove me to the doctor flared up. I called the nurses to ask for medication three times. If I’d called again they were going to come back with a needle of black tar heroin. And then it was all over and I was home, then back to the emergency room in the middle of the night because I sat down on the toilet to pee and stayed there for what felt like hours while nothing happened. A nurse gave me a pitcher of water with instructions to drink all of it then told me I might need a catheter which scared me into going like a fire hose.
The few days before I started chemo seemed like months. I could barely sleep or eat. Then, after my first week of chemo, things fell into a comfortable routine: five days of treatment, Monday through Friday, then just an injection on the following two Mondays. The off weeks I had nothing to do. I found ways to keep myself occupied, but time still seemed to crawl by.
One of the drugs I was taking made my appetite come back with a vengeance. For days I’d dreaded my wife asking, “Have you eaten anything?” because I didn’t want to eat. Then suddenly all I wanted to do was eat. I hopped out of bed early one morning and made myself French toast with chocolate hazelnut spread and pecans. That was at seven-thirty. At ten-thirty I had a sausage biscuit because breakfast had been hours ago.
My hair started falling out just before my second round of chemo, and I thought, well it’s about time. I thought it was never going to happen. It had only been three weeks. It felt like years.
Even as I fell into a comfortable routine of chemo I kept the final day, September 22nd, in mind.
Six weeks after finishing chemo I went back to work, but the days didn’t have a chance to blur. There were the holidays, and then, after some tests, I learned I’d have to be back in the hospital, this time for major surgery. The wait until that day seemed endless, and then the day itself seemed like an endless pattern of being shuffled from one desk to the next, progressing through a series of doors until they finally moved me from a rolling bed to the operating table. I have a sense of time passing in a deep but dreamless sleep before I woke up to my wife and a bearded man saying my name, and a dull pain down the middle of my body.
In my hospital room I read, wrote, watched TV. An old friend dropped by. Another friend sent flowers. I finally worked up the courage to sit up, to amble to the bathroom, to even take a shower.
Finally I was deemed well enough to be released, after three whole days.
Around Christmas everything that had happened over the previous six months finally seemed to collapse on me while we were watching a Peter, Paul, and Mary special. Thanks to my parents I listened to Peter, Paul, and Mary before I could walk. The fact that Mary Travers had fought cancer, and lost, a few years earlier hit me hard, especially during “Puff The Magic Dragon”. Make drug jokes if you want but that song was a major part of my childhood soundtrack, and it affected me deeply because I think it was one of the few children’s stories that was brutally honest about life.
Dragons live forever but not so little boys.
Painted wings and giant strings make way for other toys.
One gray night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more,
And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.
Even as a child I wondered what happened, because the lyrics make it clear Jackie Paper doesn’t just grow up. Maybe Jackie Paper dies. Maybe Jackie Paper also has cancer. Or maybe it’s just that from the perspective of a dragon who lives forever Jackie’s childhood is over in an instant. As a child, maybe from the first time I fully understood the words, the song made me look through the glass darkly to understand that it’s inevitable that we grow up, that we grow old, that we die. Listening to that song for the first time after I’d finished treatment and surgery made me think about how close I’d come to death.
It also might have just been post-surgery hormonal changes that had me sobbing uncontrollably.
Time began to get back to its normal pace as I went back to work, fell back into old routines. I had another breakdown when my urologist recommended I have a second orchiectomy. When they asked for my approval to have the first one I said, “Sure, great, go ahead!” And I looked between my legs and said, “So long, Dexter, it’s been nice knowing you. Don’t let the ass hit you in the door on the way out.” And logically a second orchiectomy was an easy decision. My urologist told me that without chemo there would be a five to seven percent chance of cancer developing in what I had left. He wasn’t sure about the numbers after chemo, but I calculated that the low end of that scale was still one in twenty. My cancer is very treatable but it’s also pretty rare. I didn’t want to push my luck. My oncologist also supported the idea of a second orchiectomy. Who am I to argue with two of the people who saved my life? And it’s not as though I would miss Lefty. At this point the attachment was purely physical. What I’d become attached to was the misconception that I was done. When he suggested another surgery I felt emotionally deflated. Was this never going to end? Every time I thought about it I felt like crying.
It also might have just been post-surgery hormonal changes. I’ve been on hormone therapy for a little over six weeks now, and I can’t tell whether it’s that or time or maybe a little of each that’s perked up my outlook.
The surgery is now scheduled. It’s something I have to look forward to, and, yes, I really am looking forward to it. I’ve been extremely lucky. Some people are in treatment for years, and in addition to chemo have radiation, transplants, infusions. For them it’s like going twelve rounds in the boxing ring with a heavyweight opponent. For me it was more like a late evening brawl between a couple of guys too drunk to hit each other most of the time. And I’m grateful for that. I also have to keep in mind that even though it felt like forever things happened really quickly. That’s made it hard to adjust my perspective, but realizing that it’s only been a year has made it easier. A year isn’t that long. No, it’s not
ever going to end. Cancer is going to be with me for the rest of my life, but given time things will get better. How am I doing? I’m fine. I really am.
AF: Good afternoon. I’m Alan Freed and thank you for tuning in to WKGR, the Grocery Radio. Here are this hour’s headlines. A short in the freezer section has caused the freezer containing ice cream and novelties to stop working. A repair crew is expected shortly. In the Gourmet Items section of Aisle 4 a small child dropped a bottle of kumquat syrup on the floor. A cleanup crew is currently on the scene. T-bone steaks are on sale this week for $4.99 a pound, and this week’s circular includes several valuable coupons including one for fifty cents off all JJ brand cereals. I’m going to turn things over now to Robert Weston Smith, our eye on the aisles, for a traffic update.
RWS: Thanks Alan. We’ve got things moving along smoothly on the back wall from Produce to Poultry, with a little bit of a delay over by the dairy cases. There was a brief altercation between a couple of women over blocking the case that holds the artificial creamers, but it’s resolved itself without too much trouble. Looks like the milk is being restocked and that’s slowing things down. Over in Aisle 4 the kumquat syrup cleanup is going ahead but it’s causing some rubbernecking, so that’s slowing down traffic a little bit there too. There are also volume delays in Aisle 14 where the bread is, and Aisle 15 from the shampoo to the diapers. The maintenance crew has also just arrived at the freezer, and that’s starting to slow traffic from the frozen waffles all the way to the fish.
AF: Thanks for that update Robert. Now over to John Peel for the weather.
JP: Thank you Alan. The misters are on over in produce, so if you’re picking up cucumbers be sure to bring an umbrella. I’m just kidding. They’ll shut off in a minute. Things are cool and dry in the rest of the store, but a warm front is coming from the bakery where they’ve just brought out some fresh bread. And over in that freezer section Robert mentioned things are heating up, so now would be a good time to get ice cream. Back to you Alan.
AF: Thanks for the weather report John. Here’s some late breaking news: Butterchurn butter is now two for a dollar, and there’s a new brand of pecan sandies available in the cookie aisle. Coming up: three continuous hours of instrumental top 40 hits. Somebody please kill me now.
When I was six or seven I was touring a colonial house with my parents. The guide picked up a bucket and said, “Imagine if this could talk. Imagine the stories it would have to tell.” And I thought, well, it’d probably say, “I liked being filled up. It was my only chance to look around. Then they’d empty me and stick me back here in the corner. Been here a long time. So, do you guys like water?”
Jokes aside it was the first time I’d heard the cliché of “if this thing could talk”. It was a concept I liked because it really did tickle me to think how different the priorities of antiques would be, which would make them less than ideal witnesses to the history they’d been privy to.
Especially privies.
So I found the story written on this car interesting. It was as though the car were speaking to me, although it seems to really have been the story of the owner. It sounds like a love story, or the start of one. This was yet another case of a car I would have happily followed to learn more about its owner. I don’t know why I didn’t leave a note. A note is one thing we can create that does speak, not for itself, but for us, which is what matters.
Taking a broader view I can see a couple of other reasons I would have liked to talk to the driver.
In one evening watching TV I counted three different commercials for products that treat “overactive bladder”. This would have been disconcerting if I hadn’t been watching The Plumbing Channel, but it did get me thinking. Why isn’t there a product to treat shy bladders? I sometimes have this problem that I can’t go when there’s someone standing next to me, and I once stood in a public bathroom stall with one foot back against the door because there was no lock. The potential side effects for overactive bladder always seem to include dry mouth and difficulty urinating, so I guess anything that would treat shy bladder could have the side effects of needing to wear adult diapers because you’re running like a tap that can’t be turned off and excessive drooling. It must be a completely untapped problem because I know the pharmaceutical industry will target everything that’s potentially a problem, even something like shy bladder that, at least in my experience, is easily solved. I either drink one of those half gallon bottles of water and wait ’til I feel like a dam about to burst or I just relax, take a deep breath, and think about Niagara Falls. That always does it for me. Even just the mention sets me off. If you’ll excuse me I need to see a man about a horse, and I also need to urinate.
