Dad's Stories

My Dad was a great story teller. he didn't invent any, embellished maybe, but had a knack for finding interest and humor in the events of his life. He lead an interesting and varied life.

One of his favorites, Dad invited an athletic young lady to his high school football game. As the game progressed, it was quite dull. Dad and his date were eating oranges. It was a different era. She said to Dad, "See that cop down on the field? I'll be I can hit him with this orange." True to her word, she plastered the officer right in the back of the head. Today, the officer would be in the stands and the offending young lady, and likely her date, would be off to jail. But in the 1930's, nothing happened. Like I said, it was a different era.

Like me, Dad struggled in chemistry. His teacher was Miss Pickett, granddaughter of General Pickett of Gettysburg fame. Miss Pickett had a wooden leg so it was difficult for her to get around. Dad offered to drive her to school every morning. He finished chemistry with a C-. My chemistry teacher was in great shape and had his own car. I would have loved a C-.

More sensitive readers may want to skip this one. Dad graduated from Inglewood High School in 1937. He immediately secured a job as a reporter with the Los Angeles Examiner. One night, he was sent out to report on a suicide. Dad arrived at the scene, showed his credential to officer guarding the door and started in. The officer stopped Dad and said, "Kid you don't want to go in there. The guy used a shotgun."

One night, Dad was manning the night desk. A call came in about a huge fire in Culver City. Dad called the Culver City Fire Department. The fireman who answered said, "Yeah, we know. They are burning Atlanta over at MGM." The filming of Gone With the Wind had just started.

About the time Dad graduated from high school, he had a girlfriend named Evelyn. Evelyn was convinced that the two of them were destined to spend their lives together. Dad was more hesitant. Grandpa Ross was at the grocery store one day and visited with Evelyn. When Dad came home that day, Grandpa looked at him and said, "I hear you're getting married. Anything you want to tell me?" My Mom's name is Joyce.

One of the most dreaded words in the English language...

COLONOSCOPY!

I had mine yesterday and survived once again. Thanks to Lynne, here's Dave Berry's take on it:

ABOUT THE WRITER: Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the Miami Herald.

 

Colonoscopy Journal:
I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy.

A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis .

 

Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner.

I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, 'HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!'

I left Andy's office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called 'MoviPrep,' which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America 's enemies..

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous.

Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor.

Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons). Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes - and here I am being kind - like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, 'a loose, watery bowel movement may result.'

This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but, have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch?This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep.

The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, 'What if I spurt on Andy?' How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.

At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked..

Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep..
At first I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.

When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point..

Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand.

There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was 'Dancing Queen' by ABBA. I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, 'Dancing Queen' had to be the least appropriate.

'You want me to turn it up?' said Andy, from somewhere behind me..

'Ha ha,' I said. And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.

I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, ABBA was yelling 'Dancing Queen, feel the beat of the tambourine,' and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood.

Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that It was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ.