Howdy fellow who-mans,
One of the things I remember the strongest about being a kid was the experience we all had living as military dependents, as we were called. The military likes to classify things and there were service members and dependents. I remember a couple of times when the line got a little blurry, but it was always easy to snap back to reality.
When I was about 15 or so, after my Dad had retired from the service, I somehow had gotten some sort of infection. I also had a couple of other symptoms. I had a hard time staying upright and was wobbling when I walked as well as having a nasty bad cough that went really deep. I worked very part-time in a gas station pumping gas and they thought it had something to do with where I worked. I was covered by my Dad's retirement dependent insurance so we got our care at military facilities and they hospitalized me in the Army hospital at Ft. Benjamin Harrison in Lawrence Indiana.
It turned out it wasn't really bad. They were unsure whether I had a cold or if I had a neurological problem of some sort because of the wobbling I couldn't control. One of the diagnostic tests they ran was to do a couple of spinal taps over three days. That was actually pretty scary but I calmed myself by staring right at the nurse's boobs that were stuck right in my face while she held me in place. She was holding my head in place and had my left arm stuck between her knees for some reason. I was 15 so guess where my brain was and take a wild guess what was going on in the rest of my body at the time. They were being serious, however, I'll bet my heart rate and blood pressure were off the charts.
It turns out they found an infection of some kind in my cerebrospinal fluid. They thought I had spinal meningitis for a short time but it turned out it was due to something else, I don't actually remember what. I remember I slept for 48 straight hours and didn't know had somehow I lost an entire day. That's all I remember about that time other than a funny story about what exact same TV program was on TV as when I closed my eyes and when I opened them. I also didn't understand how my brother had magically changed the clothes he was wearing in the blink of an eye. It was weird. Your brain can do some really wild stuff when you ain't actually in control.
The line between being a service member and dependent got a little blurry one morning after I woke up. This doctor I had never seen before came in and basically started yelling at me about the condition of my room, the bed is unmade and the trash and dishes lying around and whatnot. The room was pretty much trashed and I didn't care one way or the other. I had just gotten a haircut before I went in because I wanted to join the Civil Air Patrol and one of the regulations was you had to have regulation hair. The doctor assumed I was in the military because of my hair I suppose. He was yelling at me because of their room regulations. They believed that unless you were next to dead or in a coma, you had to be up by a certain time, had to have your bed and area cleaned up, and had to be ready for a room inspection by 7 a.m. He got really pissed off and liked to had an apoplectic fit when he asked me if I thought this was a country club? and wanted to know who my company commander was so he could put me on the report (for my behavior I suppose).
He didn't like my answer.
I told him my mother was probably my company commander and she was definitely going to be pissed off at him for yelling at me. I laughed at him fairly rudely and called him "dude" and his face got so red that he had a vein popping out on his forehead. I couldn't resist it so I dug in a little further. I told him I was curious and I asked him if he ever had his ass chewed out by a career retired Staff Seargent? I told him that much more of this yelling nonsense from him and my Dad would probably want to punch him in his Officer's nose. I said it all real calm and cool because, at the time, I loved to tweak authority as much as I could get away with. His reaction was the funniest thing I think had ever seen up to this point. He seemed to recover a tiny bit and said something like "You're a dependent and not in the military?"
I wish I would have had a mirror and Video recorders were invented because I know I was smiling big enough to be the poster child for cheesiest kid smile ever by an Eddie Haskell imitator. It was great. I was on fire and he was some seriously pissed off Major doctor dude.
He looked stunned, spun on his heel, and left the room. I never saw that guy again, although I did see a nurse right after that and she was giggling and laughing for about 15 minutes, I remember it took about that long for her to settle down and she had to sit down for a couple of minutes in the chair in the room. The only thing she said or did was give me a high five and said "Good One", and left the room after she got her composure back. It was probably one of my better and funnier days. Even my normally taciturn Dad thought this story was funny and laughed a bit. My Mom thought I was a tad disrespectful but she laughed a little bit too.
The other memory that sticks out concerning that time in my life is that I was a clutz. While my Dad was still in the service, every so often he had to go to work in his dress blues, which was the formal uniform they were required to wear on occasion. Gleaming Dress shoes, jacket, tie, and the whole bit was required. You did not want to be the kid that scuffed the shine on Dad's dress blue shoes he was wearing on inspection day. My word, now THAT was an ass-whupping!!
Everything you always wanted to know about crap I absolutely hate
- I have a question, to begin with. Can Oprah "her face is on everything" Winfrey just go ahead and retire and go away already? Man, I am so sick of seeing her mug every time I turn on the TV, every time I go shopping, every time I look at the menu for TV programs. There she is on the cover of every single month of her magazine named..,, you guessed it "Oprah". She has her own "OWN network", she owns enough of weight watchers that she is in every one of their commercials and it goes on and nauseatingly on. The whole schtick she does that she knows what is good for you to watch, to eat, to drive, to read gets on my last nerve. It makes me want to yell at the TV screen and tell her to STFU already. Too Much?
- It seems like after every story I read anymore I see the same targeted ads. The one that I see first all the time is the one that says something like "Let us show you how to EMPTY your bowels", according to top doctors. Its always got the picture of the bananas floating in the water and says click here to find out more. Do we really need help with this? Does anybody click this crap?
- I refuse to believe there is anyone on the planet who hates Phil Swift and his Flex seal brand of goopy leak fixing the leaky shit line of products more than I do. Can't be. I devote considerable energy to hating this guy. To no avail I understand, but man!
- Nurses. They are treated like crap by everybody from administrators and their supervisors to Doctors, to Patients and their families, and everybody else. The level of disrespect they are accorded pisses me off. Every idiot who doesn't understand how vital they are has the same stupid comeback, "Well that's what they signed up for", "They knew it when they started" or another clueless comment about what role they play in our society.
Doctors who think they are god yell at them, administrators lie to them and play games with their health and their pay to suit the needs of the corporations, patients and their families think they are their personal servers to order back and forth like they demeaning a server in a restaurant for fun, and their supervisors just think of them as pawns to move around at will, without regard to their personal safety or well being. It sickens me that all these same groups want to call them heroes so when they have to sacrifice them later they can call them martyrs to the great and noble cause, when these people are the same ones that cut staffing so bad they can't care for your grandmother properly.
Over 10,000 nurses have tested positive for COVID-19 according to surveys done in February through April of this year. Actual cases are probably higher because only about 45% of ICU and ER nurses were surveyed. At least 79 of them have died caring for patients, usually, it is patients who didn't know had the disease because they had NOT BEEN TESTED.
Let me just be clear. They are not your sacrificial lambs to be slaughtered on your altar of political expediency, they are not soldiers in the fight here because you at least give soldiers weapons not locked rooms full of face masks they have to use for a week. - Elon Musk says he is going to move from California because he is mad at some health official who will not let him reopen his manufacturing plant. I think he can do whatever he wants, it doesn't matter to me.
Here's what I have to say about the broader subject though. I do not understand why anyone would want to start or operate a business in California in the first place. They have the most onerous business regulation environment, their laws are famously anti-business and anti-competitive. The environment to do business there is over-regulated, the 9th circuit court of appeals is one of the most liberal anti-business courts ever, Taxes there are OUTRAGEOUS and it is the hardest place in the US to make money.
I saw screw California Elon, go ahead and move,
BigMike
Love it
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