In Memory of My Mother Denise
1956-2002
Anomaly
By Nathaniel Davis
Copyright © 2011 by Nathaniel Davis
Smashwords Edition
This book is a work of fiction conceived entirely in my overactive imagination. Any resemblance to real people, alive or dead, is strictly coincidental or used fictitiously.
The author holds all rights to the material contained in this book (including the cover art).
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Chapter One
This beginning now meant that I only had 18 long weeks of boring lectures, disgruntled students, and, quite simply, useless enslavement left before I would finally be able to begin the rest of my life. It’s not that I hated school. I just never saw the real reason why I was there. To me, it was a useless means to an end I never saw. I’m sure somewhere out in this vast cosmos in which we live there is a person who would kill to be me. That’s not the point. I hate money. But there’s something I hate more than money. It’s people who think they are something when they’re really nothing. Those who would kill to be me are the people who spend their whole lives trying to make a “name” for themselves in their world. Quick! Name the team, head coach, and starting quarterback of the winners of Super Bowl XXXIV. At the time, everyone (and I use this term loosely, because in the middle of Podunk Africa I don’t think some poor pigmy gives a care about American football. In fact, I don’t think that anyone outside of an American cares about American football. I don’t even think that anyone outside of America cares about America, much less the football we play here. Just a thought.) knew their names, but with time, people forget (They were, in this order, the St. Louis Rams, Dick Vermeil, and Kurt Warner). Hell, I don’t even know the name of the CEO of McDonalds, and I eat there just about every day. Though I’m sure he thinks that he is the most important person in the universe as he drives to work in his BMW, or whatever the hell kind of car he drives, listening to his 6+ speaker stereo surround sound system while he tries to figure out how to save the company thousands of dollars on health insurance. Maybe he should take a lesson from the Wal-Mart executives. Make the people do harder, more physically demanding work. That would force out all of the sick and elderly that really need the company provided (but God knows not company paid for) benefits. But is that all that life is about? Is life simply a lot of working, driving to and from work, and squeezing out a few choice moments to be with the people we love? Microsoft advertises a slogan “Great Moments at Work”. In it, they show normal people with normal jobs becoming excited about the special achievements they are able to accomplish at their jobs. If I did something good at my job (and wasn’t going to be “rewarded” in some way) and I pranced around like those people do, I’d have to shoot myself. Who cares if you took an “impossible amount of data and turned it into something really good”? I certainly don’t. Bad Company said it best when they sang about “Johnny” in the song Shooting Star. Everyone loved him, but then he died. Afterwards, no one gave him a second thought. I bet, though, if he’d have stayed at home with his mama, he would’ve made a better name with her than with any of the morons in this world that he was trying to please. She’d still remember him, and her children, and her children’s children, and so on. All his life was about was a bunch of vanity. It was chasing after the air. He reached, but came down with nothing. There’s no way that would be me. He must’ve realized that when he took the sleeping tablets and the whiskey. Hell, I’d have done the same thing if I would’ve been “Johnny”. Basically, right now I’m simply lamenting that the new spring semester at my community college was already upon me, ready to meet me head-on. That’s all.
My mother was also visiting the hospital with a greater frequency. It seemed a month never went by anymore with her not spending a week or so there, stuck in captivity. Those weeks were the worst. (Note to Microsoft: This is life. Hospitals are an everyday reality, not someone taking a water cooler and dumping it on some overpaid paper pusher. Understand?) Whenever she would be there, my whole week would be wasted. Between worrying about her while I wasn’t there, trying to be as positive as possible around her and my little brother so they wouldn’t be discouraged, and running back and forth between home and hospital with my brother several times a day, I was stretched very thin. We wanted her to get better. That was our objective. Why bother to go for treatment if you know ahead of time that one day you’re going to give up anyway? Why fight if you think you’re going to quit someday anyway just because the going got a little bit rough? Is there any point in fighting if you don’t even believe that you have a chance, no matter how minute that chance may be, to win? That fight kept us going, me included. As long as she was breathing, there was a chance. As long as there was a chance, there was going to be a fight, even if that fight was going to cost us everything we had, which by this time wasn’t much. Sure, there were many times when I wanted to give up, but that light at the end of the tunnel, that’s what kept me going, sometimes for weeks at a time.
My father couldn’t have been better. I may sound like a broken record when I express my highest regard for what I saw in him, personality wise that is, but it’s all true. He never left her side. I can think of no one else who would sleep in a rock hard hospital chair for eight straight days, all the while being forced to watch the love of his life fight for each precious breath right before his eyes. He’d plead for her, help her, encourage her, and, most importantly, fight for her when she simply lacked the strength to keep going. I know I’ve never seen anything like it, and many of the healthcare workers have joined in echoing my sentiment. He was the best caregiver ever.
Unfortunately, however, everyday I had class, and everyday I would pick my little brother up from kindergarten so he could visit our mother. Ironically, he had the same kindergarten teacher I had when I was his age, way back in the day. She was a rare breed of teacher. Old school definitely. If you had her as your teacher, you could expect to learn new ways to refer to your body parts. For instance, your butt was your gloudious (anyone caught saying “butt” in reference to that part of their anatomy was instantly thrust into the corner), you couldn’t talk about your eyeball, and any reference, spoken or implied, to your own personal private area gave you an instant earful from your parents after she’d call and inform them of your crudeness. I never really got into a lot of trouble when I was in her class, though. Sure, I did have to spend fifteen minutes in the corner once, but it never happened again. I learned my lesson, believe me. I hate punishment, and I hate to let another person down. Another thing I must say about myself is that I’m a lightning quick learner. I picked up on how to survive in her class instantly, even though I was only five-years-old. My brother was like that, too. He just had that knack about him.
My little brother, however, was quite different from me in another regard. In stark contrast to my aloofness, he possessed quite a gregarious personality. Whenever we were in the hospital, however, I could sense a sadness in him that he would never dare express. He would just clam up, and that just wasn’t like him. Usually he was talking to everyone he met, asking them for their autograph or something. It got on my nerves sometimes, but I never suppressed it. After all, one day he just might get the autograph and number of a supermodel or something. Then, I would be totally set up without having to do anything, which was how I liked it. The way I see it, if you have to work for something, it isn’t worth it.
It wasn’t like I could blame him for his discomfort while in the hospital, though. They are depressing places. The decorum is always so dark and cold, and the patients are always packed in like sardines. No one cares about you the patient. All they care about is making money, and lots of it for that matter. If that wasn’t true, then everyone there would have a private room, but then, I guess, I would maybe miss getting to know each new annoying personality my mother was stuck bunking with.
While sitting there this day, I took a quick glance at her new roommate. Both her and my mother were sleeping, so the room was quiet. Well, it was “hospital quiet”. Hospitals are never quiet. There’s always some stupid nurse running around taking everyone’s temperature, blood pressure, and whatever else they do on their vitals check. Then there’s the hustle and bustle of the nurses station. The constant gossip, annoying stories, and useless patient information. They never shut up! There’s only one thing I hate more than school, and that’s nurses. Why couldn’t they just give us some peace? It’s not too much to ask for.
This roommate was different from the one she had the day before. Her roommate the day before was a talkative middle aged woman who kept getting blood transfusions. She also was lonely, because she kept feeling compelled to inform us of how much she gambles and about all of the places she has been in the world. Don’t even bother to ask me to explain why she thought I actually cared that she’d taken a tour of all the Indian reservations in South Dakota, stopping at each one to throw her money away at each slot machine, or about the time she had hit it big ($10,000. Big deal. I know she had given them way more money than that over the course of her life.) at the gambling boat on the Missouri River a few miles away. One time she started lamenting about the time she actually went to the casino and they were closed (In Missouri, casinos can’t operate between 1 and 5am for some stupid reason). I told her if she wanted to gamble that badly all she had to do was take her money, put it in a sack, and shove it under the door for the owners to get it in the morning. It accomplished the same thing. She didn’t like that too much. I don’t understand why she didn’t like what I said. I was simply being honest. I think she wished that she was in Vegas instead of the hospital. But I still can’t figure out why she wanted me to know about it. Information is strictly on a need-to-know basis, and this was not something I needed to know, that’s for sure. I can’t explain it. She just liked to talk, I guess. I hope I never get like that.
To interrupt the quiet and wake up all who were sleeping, an older man in blue jean overalls walked in the room. I didn’t know him from Adam, so I correctly concluded he was there to visit the other woman. The two engaged in much small talk about their car and its problems, an orange he had brought in to munch on that she wanted him to share with her but he wouldn’t, and I guess it was their grandchildren. All old people like to talk about their grandchildren. I think they must be a badge of honor or something. My mother didn’t even have any yet, but she still would often talk about how one day she was going to see them, teach them, and, this was the one she looked forward to most, spoil the mess out of them. She deserved it. My grandmother used to spoil me rotten, too. I guess that’s just every grandparent’s right. Hell, if I make it to 60-years-old, you better believe that I’m doing some spoiling of my own. Spoiling other people’s children is cool. Some cultures really value the grandparents. All I hoped for was that my children would be able to know theirs.
Eventually the nurse made her way into the room for vitals checks. This was a regular routine for whatever CNA was on duty at the time, and it took place about every two hours I think. My mother hated this part of hospitals. They always seemed to know the worst times to come, either when she had finally gotten into a good sleep or when the conversation had begun to get deep and important. They must have a class at nursing school on how to intuitively know when the worst time to walk into a hospital room is. That’s all I could figure, anyway. Everyone of them must’ve aced that class, too.
This nurse was good at vital checks, though. She was so quiet while checking my mother’s that my mother kept sleeping through the whole process. That’s a remarkable achievement when you consider how light of a sleeper my mother really is. This nurse also knew all of the right questions to ask a patient. She began on our neighbor, saying, “How are you today?”
The caring tone in her voice was admirable. I know if I worked there day in and day out that I would already have been beyond crazy, but she wasn’t. Maybe there was somebody still left in that God forsaken place that had retained a shred of dignity and compassion. It was a good thing that I found her. Now I could keep hoping that one day my mother would find a doctor just like that, who would care enough about her to help her even when the condition seemed hopeless. Trust me, doctors like that aren’t easy to find. We hadn’t found one yet, and I bet my mother had seen just about every doctor in the whole country.
“I’m doing great,” the old woman enthusiastically responded. She must have picked up on the caring and compassion also, for she answered very cheerfully, which is also rare in these parts. “I like it here.”
Hell no! How could anyone like it here? She must’ve been on some heavy drugs or something. That was the craziest thing I had ever heard. No one in a sane and logical mind would ever say that without the aid of narcotics. Narcotics are a wonderful thing if they can turn this hell hole into paradise. I should’ve been on whatever she was having. I remember one time when I had my wisdom teeth taken out. I went with my friend to visit his fiance. Anyway, my teeth were really hurting me, and the doctor had given me a prescription of codine to help me make it through the weekend. I had my pills with me, and when the pain got bad during the movie we were watching at her house, I popped some pills. To make a long story short, I popped the pills, passed out on her couch, and now I don’t remember a single thing that happened that night. This woman must have forgotten about all of the horrors of her new environment, or simply taken enough narcotics to sleep through them. Somebody give me some codine please!
“You do?” the nurse answered, sounding surprised to actually hear her enthusiasm for this wretched place reciprocated. Maybe I would have a more optimistic outlook on hospitals, too, if I was being paid to be there. And some of those nurses make good money. I’m by no means saying that they don’t deserve it. Hell, you couldn’t pay me all the money that Apple Computers makes in a year to spend eight hours a day in a hospital (though I spent more than that there some days now anyway, and I wasn’t being paid dime one. Go figure). But being paid to do a job has a tendency to make it a bit more palatable. “That’s wonderful. What do you like about it so much?”
“I feel secure here. It’s a lot better than home.”
What a sad plight. Coming to the hospital because that was the only place where you could feel secure. I was over at my friend’s apartment once and the neighbor downstairs got shot to death while we were playing video games and I felt more secure then than I do whenever I’m in a hospital. Wherever she lived must’ve been just terrible, because to me this was as bad as it got. I shudder when I imagine someplace worse. The nurse, however, seemed to enjoy this woman’s optimism. “I’m sure it makes it a lot nicer having company?” she asked, referring to the older gentleman dressed in the overalls in the room with her.
“Oh him? He probably puts me here.”
The nurse choked back a laugh. Personally, I didn’t think it was that funny. To me, it was more of a cliché than humor, and a cliché is never funny. Athletes are the worst at speaking in cliches. “We have to play within ourselves.” Or, “we have to take it a game at a time.” Or, my personal favorite, “I just wanted to go out there and give 110%. Fortunately we won.” What a load of absolute garbage. How can you give 110%? Then, there’s the infamous “Our backs are against the wall now”. Think of something original for God’s sake. I always wanted to be an athlete. I always said that if I didn’t have all of these family duties that I would’ve taken my show to the big time. I’d be making the big bucks throwing some ball around. Who am I kidding? Those athletes are dedicated. I wasn’t dedicated. I don’t think that I ever stuck with anything for longer than a week before abandoning it to obscurity. One time I even wanted to be a trash man for God’s sake.
Anyway, the drama continued to unfold before my eyes as the nurse responded, “Well, a lot of other patients aren’t so fortunate. I hope my husband would never leave my side.”
“How long have you been married? You look young,” the old woman asked. Granted, the nurse might have been young by the old woman’s standards, but I still bet she was every bit of thirty, which was definitely a time to be married if ever there was one.
“Thank you. You’re too kind. Really, I’m 25, and I just got married last year. What about you two?”
25? That was the oldest looking 25-year-old I had ever seen. She’s going to have a terrible time when she hits 40. She’ll probably look 60 or something. Her poor husband. I remember one time when I was at school, and I met these two Finnish chicks. They were awesome. They were always talking to each other, joking with each other, and sometimes they’d even joke with me. Normally, I don’t like it when fellow students try and talk with me, but for these two, I made an exception. They were flat out hot. They seemed to always sit right in front of me, too. They had so many stories. So many experiences. They had been all the way around the world. How many people can say that they’ve actually circled the globe? They could. Anyway, when I first saw them, I placed them in their early 20’s. As I heard their experiences, I figured they had to be mid-20’s. Well, one day I asked how old they were. They were 32 and 34 respectively. My mouth just dropped open. Come to find out, they had been transferred to USA for work, and they needed to take this English writing class to keep their job. Something about how their English didn’t meet “company standards” or something. I thought they spoke fine, but who am I? That’s what I need. A chick who’s going to look 20 when she’s 40. Not some chick who looks 40 when she’s 20. After I heard that, I wanted to go to Finland.
“What’s it been Harold?” the woman asked the man in the overalls. “Fifty-two years?”
“I think so,” Harold agreed.
The nurse was visibly impressed by the longevity of their relationship. And rightfully so. Those two had been married for longer than anyone in that room had been alive. That is quite an accomplishment in today’s world. “Wow!” she admired. “What’s your secret?”
Without missing a beat, which would’ve ruined the entire moment altogether, the woman answered, “I divorced him last year.”
Shock! Horror! Panic! These emotions were all conspicuously written across the face of our formerly chipper nurse. No words could have been spoken to answer that brazen statement. All knew something had changed, but I knew not what or why. All I could do in response to that tremendously humorous drama that was being played out in front of me was look at my father and laugh along with him using our patented silent laughter. The old woman must’ve picked up on the shock of the situation and felt compelled to justify her predicament. “I had to. He wouldn’t support me,” was all she could say, and even then she continued on as frank as could be. It was almost as if she thought we should all have expected her to say that. I mean, what a waste. I could just imagine spending 52 of the best years of my life with someone, and then throwing in the towel. What’s the point? Just think about all they had to have sacrificed over the years to stay together for so long, only to have it all come crashing down in their old age. At least I was smart enough to know that I never stick with something anyway, so why get started. My father once told me that in life you have two choices. One: change your situation. Two: learn to live with your situation. Now, the second is definitely the lazier of the two. For example, if your car is making a funny noise, learn to live with it, or fix it. I could easily live with it. Turn the volume up on your stereo (which happens to solve a lot of car problems). Or, let’s say, your bathroom light has begun flashing like a strobe light. You can either live with it until you begin involuntarily falling into uncontrollable seizures, or you can fix the problem. I had taken that advice and become remarkably adaptable. You’d be amazed at how many people aren’t adaptable. If things aren’t “ideal” (and what really is ideal anyway? Absolutely nothing. Life is a series of disappointments and moments that fail to meet your expectation. Deal with it.) you just let life go on. You aren’t the center of the universe. The world won’t stop spinning or the sun collapse into the earth in a big cataclysmic explosion just because your sink is backed up. There is always a way around the dilema. Well, after all of these years of adapting (and trust me, you can’t survive a single minute in a marriage without being somewhat adaptable. Not like I’ve ever really been married, but I’ve seen enough of my parents saga to know that adaptation is one of the paramount ingredients to a successful relationship) they just gave up and stop adjusting like that on a whim. This woman really was on some drugs. Hard ones.
Her statement must’ve been true, too. The old man in the overalls (Harold I presume) could say nothing in his defense. How could he? She said it all in those three craftily worded sentences. Maybe that’s why he divorced her. Because she was always speaking for him. No man needs a wife who always speaks for him and criticizes him publicly like that. My mother taught me that. Any woman who will criticize her man in public is not a woman you want to live with. It will be like Chinese water torture. Everyday another drop on your head until you have a hole to the skull. It may not be fatal (I once heard of a man who drilled 16 holes in his head with a Dewalt drill to try and commit suicide. It didn’t work. They found him still drilling. Of course, that can never be proven. It may just be urban legend. Like the alligators in the sewers. Who the hell knows?), but it can sure mess up your life. She must have been that kind of Devil woman, which would explain why he did leave shortly following his ex-wife’s strong criticism. I guess he just couldn’t take the abuse. Narcotics are terrible.
That wasn’t the only gem this woman provided us with that day to keep our spirits high, though. Around five o’clock (that seems to always be when they come) her doctor came in for his daily checkup on his valuable patient. He wasn’t a hand picked doctor, but, rather, one of those chosen by an insurance company or HMO. Those kind couldn’t care less about their patients. As long as their practice is still profitable, they’re happy treating their patients like cattle. It’s kind of like those attractions at Universal Studios or one of those Disney parks. They get so many customers, that all they can do is cram them into these little rooms and keep moving them around like the cattle in those cowboy movies (and people actually pay for this!). I remember when I went there, I called out, “Moo!” one time just to express my frustration. Nobody laughed! That’s how these stupid doctors are. They fit as many patients into their schedule as their workload will allow, yet there always seems to be thousands more waiting to be treated, so if they mistreat one poor old woman, their workload still won’t be effected because they can always replace her with ten more just like her. If only they could find it somewhere inside themselves to show a poor old woman like that one small shred of compassion, much like the nurse did earlier, but unfortunately, that would be asking too much. Maybe they’ve seen as much as me, and that has caused them to become very bitter towards the whole health care arrangement. Or, maybe they’ve realized just how truly powerless one man is to make a difference in the world. Either way, he reluctantly came in for his daily prescribed visit.
“What have you eaten today?” the doctor began. He couldn’t even afford her the dignity of eye contact as he spoke to her. Instead, he just looked down at his clipboard and kept writing.
I must give the old woman credit for one thing. She still had a good head on her shoulders, and she knew how to spot and then treat these arrogant doctors. Her sense of timing in comedy was also impeccable. Responding to his question, her voice became very serious as she said, “Soft stool.”
Maybe that was her way of testing her doctor, or maybe she was crazy enough to believe that she had really eaten poop. Whatever her reason, I didn’t really care. It made me laugh, and that was something I desperately needed while in such a discouraging place.
Her doctor must not have found her answer to be very amusing, however, because it wasn’t until after he had appeared to have finished writing her answer down on his clipboard that he really gathered the full import of what she had said to him. “Soft stool?” he replied, shocked, bewildered, and right in the middle of a double take.
“Stool softener you fool. Aren’t you paying any attention to your patients? After all, I am in here for a bowel problem. Don’t you know that?”
Bravo! I bet the doctor didn’t know and, even sadder, didn’t care to know. He was one dense man, as he proved by his reply. “What did it taste like?”
Pausing just long enough to build the suspense but not long enough to kill the moment, the woman answered, “It tastes like warm piss!”
Now, I have never tasted warm piss before, but I can imagine it to be very disgusting. My heart just went out to that poor woman, too. I’ve eaten and seen some pretty disgusting things before in my life. I ate fish brain once. Raw pig fat (My grandmother was Ukrainian, and where she came from, it is a delicacy. It’s like the national dish or something.) has to be high on my list. Since my mother had colon cancer at such a young age, though, once I had to have my guts checked out. Well, the day before you go in for your checkup, they give you this junk called “Golyitly”. I think that’s how you spell it. I laughed when I first heard the name, because the drug is designed, not to make you high, but to make you “go lightly” to the bathroom. All night long in fact. I never visited the crapper more in my life. Anyway, that stuff was the worst stuff I had ever drank before in my life. It almost made me want to hurl. Judging by the doctor’s stupid question, I don’t guess that he has ever tried to taste any of the junk he prescribes. I bet if he did, then he’d stop prescribing it. That would make a great horror movie. The patients turn on the doctors and make them take all of the medicine they prescribe for their patients. It could be called Revenge of the Chronically Ill or something like that. All the patients would be walking around like zombies force feeding doctors pills and making them drink these awful liquids. Kind of gives a person goose bumps just thinking about it.
Anyway, the doctor left almost immediately after the warm piss incident. She must have been too much competition for him I guess. Experience has taught me that doctors don’t like it when people cross them. You can easily rattle a doctor by challenging him. It’s amazing how many of them don’t know how to explain what it is they are doing, or, more importantly, why they are doing it. That’s what they call insecurity. They just prescribe things like a bunch of robots. Totally inflexible, too. What a waste of a life. Proudly, I can say I never saw that doctor again in my life. Not yet anyway.
Following that incident, my mother awakened and was able to spend about an hour with us before receiving her next pain killer. I was glad that Rick was able to spend this time with his mother. This gave him a precious opportunity to, as my mother always put it, discuss “every little thing” with him. It also gave me and my father a chance to talk together outside the crowded hospital room. I think those moments were the only times he ever left her side. What a man.
******
Chapter Two
I am no morning person. That’s no secret. If I could, I would sleep until the afternoon everyday, but, unfortunately, we live in a morning society that continually forces people like me to conform. That is what I never understood. Why do other people think that you want to be like them? I think that it is inherently born into each person to try and fit everyone else into their little box. Everyone wants to tell me how to run my goddamn life. They think that they can make decisions for me, tell me what I like and don’t like. It’s insane. Just because they may like to get out of bed at the butt crack of dawn doesn’t mean that I want to. But, if it’s what they want, great! We can still live in peace. Except there will always be those people who try and control your every move. They’re not happy (actually, those types of people are never happy. Look at them. Do they ever smile? That’s how you can tell who they are. Beware of a person who never smiles. That’s bad news if I ever saw it.) until they’ve done everything in their power to control your every action. To make you think like them. It is totally unreasonable, I know. But, what can I do about it? Absolutely nothing. For example, I’ve been told that in other countries people don’t wake up until after ten everyday. That must be paradise. America is just messed up that way. Why else would they require a kindergarten student to be at school and in his chair by eight in the morning? Don’t they know that someone has to get them there? For Rick, that someone was me, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. Maybe I didn’t want to get up that early in the morning (and I didn’t). No one ever asked me what I wanted. No one ever gave me a choice. It’s always “do this” or “do that”. What really bugs me is when someone tells me that I “must” do something. I don’t must do anything. I am a person with free will. If I want to do something, fine. But, if I don’t, that is fine too. Don’t tell me that I “must” do something. The school told me that I “must” get Rick to school by eight in the morning. This meant that even though my first class at my respective school wasn’t until ten (and even that is too early if you ask me, but nobody did. I just need to be the president of a university, and then everything would be awesome. Classes would be short, and the instruction would actually mean something, and they would cater to everyone. Come to class whenever you want. If you like the morning better, then come in the morning. If you prefer evening, come then. Afternoon? Fine!), I would have to wake up two hours earlier and drag myself to the car, his school, and then to my school for a quick nap before class. Fortunately, I discovered the room where my first class was held to be empty the hour before my class. That meant at least I was provided with a dark, quiet place to try and recapture those precious lost moments of sleep. Therefore, on the first day of this particular class I chose a seat in the back corner of the room and rested my head on the desk and slept.
“Good morning class,” the voice of a medium built professor heralded upon his arrival into the classroom. It was important enough of an announcement to awaken me from the shallow sleep I had been enjoying only seconds prior, and immediately I was greeted by the lack of students in the room. It must be hard to teach a class with so few students. It would almost feel like you were wasting your words. You know, that whole if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it bit? That’s what it must be like. My initial head count was only seven, and that’s a stark contrast with my average of about twenty for my other classes. “My name is Mr. Letz,” the professor announced as he wrote his name on the board, much to the delight of his lackluster audience.
This guy was hard core. Nothing could stop this guy. I mean, he had a mechanical chalk dispenser that worked much like the mechanical pencils that I love to use. The edge is always sharp, and you can erase what you’ve written on a whim. What a perfect arrangement. I never saw a teacher use one of those before, and I was definitely impressed by it. He continued writing with his dispenser after he had written his name. What he wrote went like this:
y=y’
“This problem,” he said, referring to what he had just written on the board behind him, “is the fundamental differential equations problem that we will solve this semester. Now, is there anyone here bold and daring enough to take a stab at the solution?”
What a simple problem. If this was all the semester was going to be about, I knew this would be a breeze. Not like I had ever had a problem before in math. I just liked the positive reassurance. After all, some professors can be a real pain in the you know where. I rank professors in the same bracket as nurses. Maybe even lower (if such a thing is possible). They are worse, not because they are more inconsiderate of the needs of others, but because they are so smug about it usually. That is what happens to a person when they have knowledge. They get so damn smug. Their nose goes in the air as they walk. They talk down to their students about how stupid they are and how many of them are going to “fail” or “crash and burn” this semester because they aren’t smart enough to handle their “genius” teacher.
Patiently I waited as he sorted the papers he had on his desk in front of him, gathered together each syllabus, slowly passed out a syllabus to each student, and resumed his previous position. I couldn’t believe that no one was answering such an easy problem. There was no way I was going to because I hate speaking up in class. I’m a back row student and quiet by nature. Answering teachers questions and the back row don’t mix. That’s why we sit in the back row. No expectations! When was the last time you ever heard someone say, “Boy, I sure wish that I could get a little bit more out of that dude in who sits in the back.” Or, “That dude in the back is a real genius. We’ll be seeing great things from him someday.” All the nerds and the kids who get weggies from the football team sit in the front row. But in the back row, many times, no one even knows that you’re there. Most teacher’s eyes probably aren’t good enough to even see your face (that‘s why they all wear glasses). I love that! The less the teacher knows about me the better. After all, I’m not their kid (thank everything holy). But nobody else was answering his problem. Even the smart kid with glasses in the front row wasn’t daring enough. He’s the one with expectations. Not me. Boy, he’s really disappointing somebody right about now. I couldn’t help but wonder what he was doing in a community college. The kids in the front row with glasses belong in Harvard or Yale or something. Not St. Louis Community College. This was for the “smart rejects”. People who couldn’t get into a “real” school (or who simply lacked the money or the desire). Finally, I begrudgingly said, “Mr. Letz, are you still looking for an answer?”
He must have known about mixing back row and speaking, too. Surprisingly, therefore, he answered, “Do you have one?”
“It’s y=e^x, right?” It was a guess, yes, but an educated one at that. I did have a gut feeling telling me that I was right, and experience has taught me that whenever I feel that way I must be right on.
“How do you know?”
Could I be wrong? Why else would he begin cross examining me like that? I was beginning to realize that I probably should’ve stayed silent. Anyway, now was my chance to prove myself right. That’s the great thing about mathematics. There is a right answer and an infinite number of wrong answers. Nothing is speculation. A right answer is a right answer. Period. If only life was like that (actually, it becomes a problem when people try and make life like that, because then you have the situation where there is their way of doing something, and the wrong way, and nothing else. That‘s when you get inflexibility and unreasonableness. There is just no balance in our world. Everyone wants to take everything to the extreme.). Now, though, I had to present my proof. “Well, you asked for a function that’s derivative was the same as the function, and y=e^x satisfies that equation.”
What sound, logical reasoning I was demonstrating. Sure, I couldn’t work out the problem and come to a conclusion. I was, however, able to answer the question by understanding what it was I was supposed to find out, and then finding it out. I think it took Mr. Letz by surprise, too, because he was looking very perplexed while he was obviously assimilating my answer. “Your answer is correct,” he finally admitted, giving me my much needed and earnestly sought after validation. That is one curse I have. I always crave validation and acceptance from others. I can‘t stand it when I don‘t have someone’s approval. “I don’t know how you did it, though. For the benefit of everyone here, I’m going to demonstrate how one can solve that problem mathematically rather than by guessing.”
Then I was given a perfect example of why I hate school. They spend all of this time teaching you things that you already know. If I already knew the answer to the problem, why did I have to have it explained to me? I didn’t care why it was true, as long as I was right. If the reason why something was correct was important, I’d be able to tell you why “conscience” is pronounced the way it is. Bottom line: I don’t care. Someone once told me that “my lack of knowledge was only outdistanced by my lack of interest.” Very true. Except I have the knowledge. Just because everyone else in the room was stupid shouldn’t mean that I have to suffer. Unfortunately, however, that is what usually happens, which means that smart people like me will forever be tortured with endless boredom.
Dismissal, however, changes everything. It’s the silver lining to my dark cloud. Over the years I have taken great pride in my ability to be the first person out of every classroom I’ve ever been in, and today was going to be no exception. Mr. Letz, however, hadn’t been around me long enough to know how things worked yet. “Hey,” he called out to me as I walked by him with my head down, totally focused on leaving. I then made the cardinal mistake of rebellion and raised my head to the person addressing me. I just couldn’t keep walking. It is too much a part of my nature (no matter how much I hate it) to care about other people and do what is nice to them. Once he was given that invitation, he continued, “What’s your name?”
“David Summers,” I answered suspiciously. “Why?”
“I was just curious. I liked the way you answered my problem. It showed a real intuition. You can’t teach that you know.”
He complimented me. No teacher before had ever done that, and it felt good. Sure, they had told me how smart I was, but that had always been in the context of trying to tell me how my lack of motivation when it came to study was an even greater waste than if I had been born stupid (and that really irks me too. I hate it when someone gives you all of this praise and commendation only to put you down one moment later. It makes you not trust them anymore. I had this one teacher who always did that. The first time, I kind of liked it, but after about the second time, I learned that whenever he said something good to me, the very next minute he was going to blast me for something or tell me how I wasn‘t measuring up to his expectations in some way. Like I really cared what some salaried teacher thought about me. Who did he think he was? God? My father once told me that people act like that so they can control you even more. They praise you. Hope that you will like it. Then take the praise away from you. That way, when they take it away with their stupid advice and chastisement, you will want their praise to reappear. Then you will do anything possible to make that praise return, which means you will do exactly what they say and what they want. It was genius if I ever heard it.). It isn’t my fault, though. I often would wish as a child that I had been born with some sort of disability or something. Then I would be forced to work at something instead of coasting on through it. It’s funny how adamant a teacher can be about that subject, too. After all, it’s my life, and if I want to waste my potential, it’s mine to waste. Even my grandmother, rest her soul, jumped on their bitter bandwagon. One time, during one of her precious “pep talks”, she told me that I was a “wasted hope”, and that she had been waiting for me to “mature”, but just had never quite had her hopes realized. Instead, they had been ruthlessly dashed to pieces. Of course, she wanted to be a great-grandmother almost as badly as my mother wanted to be a grandmother. I’m telling you. There is some strong motherly instinct that hits women. First, they want to be mothers. Then, in time, they want to be grandmothers. Then great-grandmothers. Hell, I’m happy if I can simply watch football on television. Forget parenting. It’s the simple things in life that bring the greatest joy.
On the other hand, Mr. Letz was very sincere with what he said. I liked that. It made me feel good, and I don’t feel genuinely good that often. Maybe I don’t always have to be the first one out of every classroom anymore. Of course, then I realized that he was probably like every other egotist teacher I have ever had, and with time he was going to withdraw the praise and start yelling at me about something stupid that I had done. People love to beat on a person when they’re down. It elevates them and makes them feel more powerful. Power is a terrible curse. Politely, therefore, I answered, “Thank you.”
“Sure thing. Say, what kind of grade are you expecting to pull in here?”
I’ve heard that question before many times, and my experience has taught me that it is a loaded one. If you answer anything other than “A”, then they think you couldn’t care less about the class, which was true. On the other hand, if you answer “A”, then they think you’re cocky and the pressure they put on you is increased. “I don’t know,” I’ve found is the best way to answer that question (and any other question you don‘t want to answer for that matter. It saves you from committing yourself to a definite stand, and it significantly lowers expectations. It is the perfect phrase to save you from a lifetime of misery.), which is how I handled it this time.
I believe Mr. Letz picked up on my fear of commitment. What can I say? I know how fickle I am. Sometimes I think it’s a blessing because it leads to spontaneity. Most of the time, however, it proves to be a curse because it causes me to waste a tremendous amount of time chasing various pipe dreams. For a good chunk of my teenage years, I would go around and look at various people on the street and say, “When I grow up, I want to be that guy.” If it was the trash man I was looking at, it was the trash man I wanted to be when I grew up. Then, sometimes it would only be about fifteen seconds later, I might have wanted to be the guy on the television selling shampoo or whatever else I saw someone selling. The sad part was that I sincerely meant it each time I said it. It wasn’t just a joke. That went on for almost two years of my life. Even down to this day I find myself thinking along the “when I grow up” way of thought. Maybe Mr. Letz was the same way and that’s why he was able to spot it so quickly. “Why don’t you know?” he asked.
I couldn’t believe I was actually conversing with a professor. More amazingly, I was actually enjoying it. My previous record for conversing with a professor and enjoying it was about ten seconds, long enough to say “Hi” and “Bye” with an added “take care” thrown in for good measure. I guess that’s about ten seconds worth of “conversation”. The students were already filing in for the next class, so this had my record blown away. “I never thought about it, I guess.”
“Well, what kind of grades do you usually get?”
This answer I knew. “All B’s, except math where I usually get an A unless the teacher deducts points for absences. Last semester I skipped my calculus class twelve times and Mr. Burns gave me a C. I did get a C in psychology too, but I only went to four classes. One time I even got a D in a class, but I was working nights then, so I’d fall asleep right away for the whole class.”
He looked as confused as I was after my haphazard answer. “So, what’s your GPA?”
“3.21.”
“That’s a good GPA, and I bet you don’t work hard for it. In all of my years teaching, I’ve only been privileged to have a handful of students attend my classes who were just naturals at the subject. If you really have gotten the grades you’ve gotten with the attendance record you just told me, then I look forward to the privilege of teaching you.”
“Really? You think so?” A smile now came across my face as I listened to the wonderful praise he was sending my way. Never before had a teacher expressed such confidence in my ability. Usually, I frustrated teachers with my atrocious work ethic, but now, for the first time in my life, I could actually see myself becoming a straight A student.
“Yeah, I do.”
“Wow! Thanks.” I left after that, and he still hadn’t slammed me for any past failure or for any future disaster he could see coming. This was amazing. For the first time in my young life I actually left a class feeling better than I had when I arrived. I finally felt like I was going to become somebody other than a godparent to a younger brother. I mean, I wasn’t going to have any “great moments at work” and go prancing through the halls of my school like some damn spastic pansy or anything, but for a brief second I forgot about hospitals and nurses. I even found myself whistling a tune as I walked out of the school. It was momentary, but still effective. It gave me the courage to withstand another day at the hospital visiting my mother with Rick. All that because somebody believed in me.
******
Chapter Three
I was still on cloud nine when I went to pick Rick up from school shortly after noon. He was bubbling over with joy over some compliment he had received from his teacher that morning as well. Something about how he was the only one to cooperate and help clean up the classroom. I wasn’t really paying attention to him when he was speaking. Mrs. Bride thanked him for whatever it was he had done, and that was the main thing. Even though she’s incredibly hard on her students, she does freely express commendation. Sometimes she would be the kind of person who leads you on with commendation, only to slam you down later, but for the most part she was good. It was a fortunate thing too, because we both needed some good news to carry with us through the halls of the hospital. It’s not like we would’ve found that in the hospital either. Dear Lord. I don’t think hospitals know what it means to be cheerful. If they did, they’d find a different color to paint the walls. I mean, is pee yellow supposed to cheer you up? Maybe that’s why the woman said what she did yesterday. The drugs had clouded up her mind, and the first thing she did after the man asked her the question was look at the wall. She saw the pee yellow color, remembered that pee is warm, and spoke accordingly. It made sense, anyway. And what’s with the awful smell? I’ve been in Johnny-on-the-spots that smelled better. Isn’t there some sort of chemical a hospital can use to get rid of that disgusting odor? Even if there was, they’d still be too cheap to buy it. I’ve never heard of a bigger bunch of cheapskates in my life. They’re always whining about how insurance companies are out there trying to drive them down. My heart bleeds. That’s just the way the world is. It isn’t just the insurance companies dealing with doctors and hospitals. It is any person who has power. They always use it to drive down the little guy. Maybe if they actually cared and did some good to save people we wouldn’t need to take so much of their “precious” time. I bet their malpractice suits would go down, too.
Arriving at our mother’s room, we discovered the “soft stool” lady had been replaced by an equally old but more obnoxious woman. This woman never shut up. Even if no one was in the room visiting her (and I could understand totally why nobody would want to see her, believe me.) she wasn’t alone because she’d just be busy clamoring away on the telephone. In many ways, I preferred it when she was on the phone because then it couldn’t ring. If she wasn’t on the phone it would ring every five minutes. It was just awful. It’s like those people who have cell phones. Everywhere you go you hear that obnoxious ring. I like when you are in some public place and somebody’s phone rings. Just watch what everybody does. They all check to see if it is theirs. It’s crazy. And everybody has one. Even my 90-year-old next door neighbor has one for God’s sake. When is it going to end? Isn’t the whole point of leaving home so that no one can call you? Is there anything so urgent that it can’t wait until later? In my life, there is nothing that cannot wait until tomorrow (except with me, tomorrow never comes). As you can probably tell, it didn’t take long for her boisterousness to grate on all of our nerves. Even the nurses all hated her loud self. I don’t blame them either. If I was getting written up every time she would complain, I would hate her too. They handled it well, however. All they did was give her extra special attention while basically ignoring my good natured mother. That wasn’t right, but after all, what do you expect? It is a hospital, and if everything that took place in one was just, then everyone would be dying to get in there. Then they’d be even more overcrowded than they already were. It’s not like it isn’t human nature, either. They don’t say that the squeaky wheel gets the grease because it isn’t true. All you have to do to get what you want is be loud and boisterous. Draw a lot of attention to yourself, and people will be bending over backwards to serve you. They may not always serve you out of love (usually it is fear), but you’ll get served nonetheless. It’s not a bad racket. If you want to have a heart attack before you’re 50, that is. Those people are always coronary cases. They are always uptight and act like a hornet just flew up their ass.
She already had one visitor with her when my brother and I arrived, and about five minutes later she received another. This was a middle-aged, slightly tall, and somewhat heavy woman. She wasn’t very pretty, but with a mother as fat and ugly as hers, I didn’t expect much.
“Mama?” the woman asked after peering around the curtain that weakly separated us from the insanity on the other side.
“Stephanie, girl, is that you?” the boisterous woman asked.
“Sure is mama. How you doin’?”
“Awful. Come here and give yo mama a big hug.” I can only imagine that she did as she was told. I cringed at the thought of putting my arms around that tub of lard. Feeling the cellulite between your fingers like the sand on a beach. It made me want to hurl, and I almost did.
“What’s wrong, mama?”
“I’ll tell you what, child,” the obnoxious woman began boisterously divulging. “These doctors, they a pain in the ass, that’s what. They can’t get nothing right. It’s they fault why I’s in here. I think I told you that I take cuminan for my blood clots. Well, about three months ago I went to emergency for these fainting spells I was having. I told them I don’t have no insurance, but they said it was no problem and took me right back anyway. Then, do you know what that damn doctor told me?”
“What?”
“He told me to cut down on my cuminan. That’s what. Now I got these damn blood clots.”
“Oh mama, that’s terrible,” her daughter said in deepest sympathy. It was a sad story, even though it paled in comparison with a situation that had life and death on the line. So I guess that’s why during the course of her endless conversations I never felt even the slightest shred of pity for her. All I wanted to do was stick my hand through the curtain and make the sign of the worlds smallest violin playing My Heart Bleeds For You. But that’s the way people are. We love making mountains out of molehills. Everyone thinks they’re going to die, and everyone thinks they’re a failure. They get one lousy blood clot, and the whole world has gone to hell. It’s not right. But that’s people.