PILLOW TALK

When I was a kid, as an only child I would hold a pillow over my face to see how long I could hold it without suffocating to death.

 

I know that probably seems a strange thing to do.  But, mind you, we were poor and I had few

things in the way of store-bought toys.  So attempting to suffocate myself was just one inexpensive way of playing.

 

I could go for about a minute and a half back then. Then I would yank the pillow off my face and gasp loudly for air.  Just seconds longer and I would have been a goner.  At my own hand.

 

My Mother, when she would hear the gasps (we had a very small house with very thin walls),

would yell out, "What are you doing in there?"

 

What did she think I was doing, I wondered.

 

I never answered her.  I just tried to gasp quieter the next time.  But it's difficult to gasp quietly if you have a real pillow on your face.

 

I would usually do the pillow thing four or five times trying to better my time, much as a swimmer might do.  I pretended to be in training for underwater swimming.  I had no intention

back then to end it all.

 

I still put the  pillow over  my face now that I am very old.  But now I'm practicing to put myself away when the time comes...mainly if things get any more shitty.  And I'm not apologizing for saying shitty.

 

You be the judge.

 

I am completely deaf.

I am blind in one eye.

I have had eye surgery on the so-called good eye four different times.

I had colon cancer that left me with a belly scar so big people think it is my ass crack.

I had a stroke.

I am bald.

I am fat.

I can't sing.

I will never get on DANCING WITH THE STARS unless they do a segment for physically challenged  people...which they probably will do.  (Wayne Newton looked physically challenged...he's had so much plastic surgery, he can't turn his head and he moved like

a robot that needed oil.)

My friends are dying like flies on the first cold day of autumn.

 

Add it up!

It comes to "shitty".

 

So I now put my pillow over my face after taking what I think might be my last breath.  I pretend it is my wife that's doing it.  Who could blame her.

 

I can hold my the pillow there for two minutes most.  Then I yank it off because, really...in

spite of all the aforementioned, I still condider myself lucky.  Especially with such a wonderful caregiver.

 

But I must say, I get a little nervous when I see her changing the pillowcases and coming

toward the bed with a fluffy pillow.  I start to cry out, "NO!  Not the PILLOW." But who would

hear me.

MR. GOODFOOT

I am recovering from a stroke that paralyzed me on the left side.  With therapy I am learning to walk again but with the aid of a walker.  The walker does me no good on steps so I have to hold on for dear life and take one step at a time. Surprisingly I am suppose to lead with my bad foot first.

When it is safely in place, I follow with my good foot.  Going up, I lead with my good foot.

 

I got in the habit of saying aloud: "Bad foot first.  Now good foot".  And I started affectionately calling my right foot Mr. Goodfoot.

 

But then I feel psychologically I should stop calling he bad foot "bad".  It was like scolding a dog

for soiling the carpet.  "Bad foot.  Bad foot."

 

Really now, Mr. Goodfoot had not done anything to actually deserve being called Mr. Goodfoot,

although I certainly appreciate its support, literally and figuratively.  Yet it was truly just the regular foot that it had always been.

 

I felt as if I were undermining the comeback of my geek foot by calling it "Bad Foot".  I did know how to reward it.  Maybe I could yell, "Way to go boy," evereytime it made a step.  But

it still  needed a name of its own.

 

I decided to call it Mr. Not-So-Good-But-Getting-Better-All-The-Time Foot.  Of course now

I am much slower going down steps with that monoger.

 

 

TARZAN: KING OF THE TALL GRASS OUT BACK

I loved movies when I was a kid.  I started going to town on my own when I was only six.  I took the bus and I usually had fifty cents to spend.

 

My friends and I liked Tarzan movies and were always pleased when one was playing.  They were so exotic

compared to Gastonia.  They had big snakes.  Alligators.  Elephants.  Quicksand.

 

It seemed that Tarzan would step in quicksand in every single movie he made.  We would yell out,

"Oh, no.  Not again."  Today people would call him mentally challenged.  We called him stupid.

 

The quicksand was like a magnet that drew Tarzan to it.  Thank goodness he had a monkey, Cheetah,

who was always handily nearby.

 

"Get the vine, Cheetah," Tarazan would yell.  "Get the vine!"  Cheetah would run off and soon come back

with a glass of chardonnay.

 

"I said get the VINE, stupid, not the wine you dumb cluck."

 

Meanwhile Tarzan was sinking deepeer and deeper into the quicksand.  He should have known that flapping his arms only made him sink faster.  Here's a tip from the book THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW BEFORE GOING TO

THE JUNGLE...if you are in quicksand, you try to float.  And try to get a human to help you instead of calling a monkey.  Even a Hollywood monkey.

 

We liked to play Tarzan after we had seen a movie of his.  We would play in the high grass behind my house.

That's as close as we could come to simulate a jungle.  We had to hand out parts.  Almost everyone wanted

to be Tarzan.  (We called him TAR-ZAN...it made him sound more like an action hero.)  I wasn't personally crazy

about being Tarzan because you had to wear a loincloth.  If it had been made of tiger skin I might have liked it.

But we usually used a piece of oil cloth from a castaway tablecloth.  Plus I didn't like the idea of wearing a homemade loin cloth without my underwear, and especially if I had to climb a tree. Some boys didn't care.
Just like Hollywood today.

Cheetah was a popular choice.  If you got to be Cheetah, you could jump around and roll around like a fool....pick your nose and flick the boogers...show your genitals inappropriately.  You know how monkies
are.

Sadly nobody really wanted to be Jane, not even the girls.  She was very pretty in the movies and she was often an highly trained scientist of some sort and it made you wonder why she would take up with an Ape
Man.  But put her in some kind of animal skin and she reveerted to a ditsy housewife every time.  Even in
a treehouse without a gas stove.  She tried to make Tarzan and Boy eat oatmeal for breakfast every day
and pick up around the treehouse after breakfast.  And she kicked poor Cheetah out.  She said monkies didn't belong indoors.  And that they were very smelly, and I'm sure she was right about that.
If we had no girl to play Jane, we would try to make a Sissy Boy play the part.  Preferably a blonde boy.

The main thing we did was hack through the high grass whicH was filled with man-eating snakes (so we
said).  Well, maybe not man-eating but certainly ones that could eat a monkey which, of course, made the
role of Cheetah slightly less desirable.

Remember in Tarzan movies how a big snake would swallow another living thing and you could see the
form of it in the snake's body.  Scary, huh?

If we whacked through enough grass, we would come out at a little store where they sold penny candy.
The storekeeper would usually say to Tarzan, "Why you got that tablecloth on you, boy?"

And Tarzan would say, "I am not Boy.  I am TAR-ZAN, King of the Jungle. And this is a loin cloth."
Neither one of them knew what a loin cloth was.

We would conduct our business as quickly as possible before the storekeeper looked under Tarzan's
loincloth.

Back home we would run into cannibals.  My grandmother washed clothes in two big black kettles
over open fires.  My friends thought she was a witch when she would be outside punching and stirring
the clothes.  But she didn't wash on the weekends, so the big black pots were perfect for cooking a
cannibal meal.

We always wanted to cook Jane figuring she would be the most tender.  Our other choice was the
Sissy Boy playing her part. We certainly didn't want to cook the monkey, and Tarzan was the star.
So we would pick Jane up and put her in the pot.  We really didn't cook her although I am sorry now
that we didn't try at least once.  Of course I would be writing this from Juvenile Jail.

We pretended to cook her and Tarzan would beat his bony chest and proclaim, "Sweet ribs tonight."

Oh, those were glorious days  before electronic toys and computers.  And that, dear readers, is why
we grew up with FAMILY VALUES.

 

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Email and AIM finally together. You've gotta check out free AOL Mail!

WHAT GOD HATH WROUGHT

I'll tell you what he hath wrought.

I have to dress myswelf with a pair of giant tweezers.

 

Yes, you read that correctly.

Tweezers!

 

I"m recovering from  stroke.

The Occupational Therapist (O.T. as they like to be called)

prescribed the Tweezers.

 

The Tweezers are like a long stick with pinchers on the end.

 

The O.T. says you can amazingly pick up pennies with them.

But why would a stroke victim need to pick up pennies?

 

I pick up my underwear.

I pick up my socks.

I pick up my shirt.

I pick up my glasses when I accidentally drop them.

I pinch my wife inappropriately.

(Heh, these things are more fun than I thought.)

Anf I would pinch the O.T. if she were here.

 

I just hope none of my friends from my former life

don't see me dependen on big Tweezers.

 

I mean, I used to be somebody.

Mr. Somebody, they called me.

Now I'm putting on my underwear with Tweezers.

 

Amazing tweezers to be sure.

I'm Edward, Tweezerhands.

FRAGILE

I feel like a package being tossed around the post office of life.

 

Put a FRAGILE sticker on me dammit.

I can't take much more.

 

At least give me a HANDLE WITH CARE sticker.

I'll never get to my destination in one piece.

 

Couldn't you have asked for EXPRESS MAIL. 

Or Special Handling.

 

Where am I going anyway?

WAILING

I admire those old MIddle Eastern women you see on tv.

They are always wailing their hearts out over the insane killings and bombings.

Sometimes they are wailing over the rotten fruit in the marketplace.

But the whole idea is that they wail when they are pissed.

 

I think we should have Wailing Walls here in America...

Someplace to go and wail when things don't go our way.

Maybe have one in every backyard instead of a plastic pool.

 

I would like to wail, and I would do it even without a wall

but it scares the dog and sets him to barking...and my wife yells

"Stop that wailing you crazy old man".

 

I suspect that wailing is quite healthy.

But I would do it over all kinds of stuff.

I wouldn't want to have family members killed

just to get in a few good wails.

 

I would wail if my morning newspaper got wet

and I couldn't unfold the pages.

I hate that.

 

I would wail if the lightbulb goes out on the stove.

(You can't reach the damn thing!)

Or if one of the kitchen flourescent lights goes out

and has to be replaced.
I do in fact wail when this happens.

Fortunately flourescents last for hundreds and hundreds of hours. 

On the Road to Recovery

Remember those old Bob Hope-Bing Crosby-Dorothy Lamour movies? The famous "road" pictures that were so funny? My recovery from a recent stroke would make a great road picture. Or one of those stupid reality shows. I used to tell my children when something bad happened: "Two years from now, you will be laughing at this". They never believed it. Some things took longer, but they were girls.

I always believed the sooner you could find humor in a bad situation, the sooner your got over it. But don't laugh at funerals. Unless they drop the casket. I am trying to apply my philosophy to my stroke recovery and I am laughing already. I laughed first when my wife was trying to find a medical transportation company to take me from North Carolina where I had the stroke down to a rehab hospital in Savannah, a distance of about 300 miles. They wanted $7,000! I told my wife to go down to Main Street in Saluda and find some guy who had a pick up truck and see if he would put a mattress in the back and haul me home. But she was smarter. She called a limo service and found someone to take me in a limo for just $432. My grandson wanted to ride with me. When we got to the hospital, they thought a rock star had arrived. The hospital was very, very nice. They have won awards for 6 years now as one of the top 100 employers in the country. They treated me like a prince...the nurses were so nice and so were the therapists. I can't say much for the food but the night nurse made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as a snack. All the patients were stroke victims since that's what the hospital specializes in. The doctor said I should have a fast and complete recovery. But his idea of fast is a lot different than mine. I was in the hospital for six weeks and I've been out for six weeks...and I am still recovering. I am making progress, but it is very slow. I'm trying to be a patient patient. My wife is my primary care giver...when she came to get me from the hospital I reminded her of saying "for better or for worse" some 50 years ago. I said, "This is worse." Actually she's been very good at it. She's been trying to get control of me for all these years so now she has my checkbook, my car, my credit cards. I don't even get an allowance. Plus I think it brings out her mothering instincts. At first we had therapists who came to the house...one suggested getting Amazing Tongs, those things that are like giant tweezers...you squeeze the top part and these claws come together like those machines in convenient stores where you try to get toys. She said I could pick up pennies with it. Now, why in hell would I want to pick up pennies? Honestly. Stroke victims don't need pennies...we need hundred dollar bills. I am using my tweezers to pinch my wife inappropriately. I go to a regular gym now for outpatient physical therapy. It should be decorated like a dungeon because the machines are designed to torture people. I was hoping they were machines where they strapped you on, turned on the switch and the machine did all the work. But no such luck. I think my therapist guy came over here from Parris Island, at the Marine base. He doesn'r put up with any whining. YOU CAN DO IT! he bellows. And when he bellows, I do it. A lot of people come to the gym who aren't doing therapy. I have noticed that the older women are in much better shape than the men. The guys arrive at the gym in walkers or with canes. The women skip in. They have cute clothes and nice shoes. They jump right up on the machines and start moving. My personal take on this is that the guys are in recovery and the women are on the prowl. They are probably recently widowed and want to get back in the game. They aren't the least bit interested in the guys in recovery. Why should they be? They have televisions on the stationary bikes, but none of the programs are as interesting as watching Chicks roll around on huge colored balls. I always want to throw them a fish when they finish and watch them clap their flippers. They have so many balls around the place but I've already told the therapist that I am not getting on one of those balls. He says they hold up to 500 lbs. I'm not worried about the ball exploding; I'm worried about rolling off. I threw myself out of bed the other night, accidentally of course. But as I slid off the side I was smart enough to take a pillow with me. I could not get up and I didn't want to wake my wife in the middle of the night so I just snuggled up on the floor with my pillow and slept until she came downstairs and found me. I am deaf so I have to read lips. But lying on the floor and trying to read her lips was difficult. So she stretched out on the floor beside me so I could read her lips. I said, "How in the world did we ever come to this?" And I do wonder. I want to recover but sometimes I think it would be easier to become an invalid. You could get one of those modernized scooters that are advertised constantly on television (and I don't believe for a minute that those people are crippled! They're models and they probably have a champagne party after the filming.) If I were an invalid, I could catch up on my reading. People could come visit me (but would they?) and bring me food. I could eat anything because as long as I had the scooter I could get fatter and fatter. And if I got too fat for one scooter, I could get a double-wide. But I'm not ready to give up yet. You have to keep at it if you want back in the game. And I want back in the game. Soon.

Joe's Chicken Room