Just a Few Clerihew

  A snide Alex Trebek

   Gave the little guy heck,

   Said he couldn’t spell,

   At least not too well.

  

   Hey, Mister Tom Harris

   Oh, please won’t you spare us.

   We have read all your stuff,

   It’s baloney and fluff.

  

   The Texas senator, Ted Cruz,

   Could be a Canuck should he choose

   To take his disorder

   North of the border.

  

   When the formerly chaste Lone Ranger

   Fell for a beautiful stranger

   He said, “To the drug store, Tonto.

   I need prophylactics pronto.”

  

Notes from the Home - August 17, 2013

   Tuesday morning at quarter of eight, my wheelchair died. The chair had been difficult to rouse when I roused myself around five that morning. But rouse it I did, and all seemed in order as it carted me from bed to bathroom to the refrigerator to the table. The chair sat patiently while I ate breakfast, did the LA Times and USA Today crossword puzzles on line, and then checked out huffingtonpost.com, along with the on-line editions of the Star Beacon, Post-Gazette and Plain Dealer. And when asked, the chair took me to the kitchen sink, the coffee maker and the bathroom without hesitation or difficulty.

   At seven-twenty, I set out for my morning inspection of the Covenant Woods’ grounds. On my way down the hall, however, I was unable to get the wheelchair out of P1, its slowest speed. I stopped and pressed the button several times, to no avail. I went on, and at the door I pressed the button again, and again the chair did not respond. Outside, the clouds hung heavy and low, and the wind whispered, “If you come out, you best be prepared to make a mad dash when the rain starts.” Being prepared to dash madly is one thing, madly dashing in P1 is another, and I opted to return to my apartment to give the wheelchair time to adjust its attitude.

   Back in the room, I pulled up to the computer, shut off the chair and pretended to write for a few minutes. But I didn’t want to write; I wanted to go outside. That’s when the wheelchair, in the manner of all the women I’ve ever known, failed to respond to my efforts to turn it on. And like those women, the chair snickered contemptuously when I tried again and again to get some action.

   So, there I was, at the table, sitting in a power chair that hadn’t any power. The first order of business was to call Convalescent Care, a local concern that, among other things, services wheelchairs. Finding the number wasn’t a problem; I’d put it in the phone a few months ago, when the chair first exhibited its disagreeable feminine attributes. My call was answered by a machine that told me the slug-a-beds at Convalescent Care don’t show up for work until eight-thirty.

   The next order of business was to get away from the table and into my manual wheelchair. I disengaged the wheels and used my feet to push me and the chair backward until I ran into the bed. From there, a lengthy stretch enabled me to grab my walker, which enabled me to get up and pull my manual wheelchair from its place between the file cabinet and the bookcase. My mechanical ineptitude and physical limitations combined to make a ten-minute chore out of the thirty-second job of setting up the chair. With the chair in a ploppable shape, I plopped into it and waited until eight-thirty to call Convalescent Care again. Kevin said he’d send one of his lackeys over, probably around ten-thirty, with a new control unit.

   The lackey showed up shortly after eleven. In his late twenties or early thirties, and a pudgy five-eleven, he had the look of a man who’d been eschewing exercise since his career as a third-string lineman for his high school football team ended. And after two or three minutes of less-than-strenuous labor, he sounded like it too. He rasped, he gasped and he wheezed for a minute or more before announcing that he would take the chair to his van and replace the control unit. Had the NSA been listening to my breathing after I bumbled about getting the manual wheelchair and compared it to the lackey’s, it would have concluded that I am by far the superior physical specimen. But the lackey had a job to do, and he did it. The wheelchair is working again.

  

A Few Short Conversations

   “Al, the other night you said you said you were thinking of getting rid of your car and giving up driving. Have you decided yet?” Isabelle asked at dinner, Friday.

   “I went to my heart doctor – he’s my Chinese doctor – yesterday, and he asked me if I was still driving.”

   “What did you say?”

   “I told him I was.”

   “What did he say?”

   “Stop.”

   “That’s what he told you?”

   “He said, ‘stop.’”

   “What are you going to do?”

   “I told him I’d think about it,” Al said. “I really should stop driving. One of these times I’m going to kill someone. The other day, I was going along and then I couldn’t lift my foot. I almost ran into some guy. And all the idiots out there. I don’t what the hell I’m doing half the time. How am I supposed to figure out what they’re trying to do?”

   “So are you going stop driving?”

   “I probably should.”

   The conversation wended its desultory way through a few uninspiring topics before Al turned toward me and asked, “Do you have something other than that wheelchair to get around in?”

   “I’ve got a manual chair.”

   “Does it fold up?”

   “Yeah. When Russell carts me around, he folds up the chair and puts it in the trunk.”

   “And you can get in and out of the car OK?”

   “More or less.”

   “The wheelchair isn’t difficult to handle, is it?”

   “A couple of years ago, I was able to handle it.”

   “Well, if you need something and Russ can’t take you, why don’t you call me? I could take you.

   “Al, five minutes ago you said you ought to give up driving.”

   “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t do anything crazy with you in the car.”

  

   Louise fell a couple weeks ago and has had a difficult time getting around since. Wednesday, I saw her in the hall. She was in a wheelchair that was being pushed by her daughter.

   “Louise, it’s so nice to see you. How are you?” I asked.

   “I’m doing well.  I feel pretty good. And the doctor says I’ll be fine”

   “That’s wonderful.”

   “I only say that because otherwise my family would get all concerned and start asking all sorts of questions.”

  

   I’ve probably seen Catherine every day since I moved into Covenant Woods, but we hadn’t introduced ourselves, I didn’t even know her name until Monday evening, when she stopped me in the hall.

   “Do you ever see William?” she asked.

   “Sometimes, if he’s hanging around Richie’s room.”

   “Well, if you see him, would you ask him to give me a call? He said he’d help me hang some pictures.”

   “I’ll be glad to ask him, but I’m afraid I don’t know your name. I’m sorry.”

   “I’m Catherine. And don’t worry about it. I see you all the time, and I don’t know your name either.”

   “My name is Tom.”

   “It’s so nice to meet you, Tom,” Catherine said, as she bent down and gave me a hug. “I love everyone.”

   “My husband and I bought our duplex when this place was still condominiums,” Eleanor said, as we worked on the menus one evening. “I was president of the condo association. This place had a couple of different owners back then, and I managed to piss them all off. There was a five-acre tract out here one of the owners wanted to sell. That land didn’t belong to the corporation. It belonged to the condo association. We wouldn’t let them sell it. It got to the point they tapped my phone. I could hear it start to record the second someone started talking. I told them to keep their fucking hands off my phone.

   “I cuss too much,” Eleanor said. “My parents didn’t allow smoking, drinking or cussing in their house. I learned to cuss from my husband. He smoked, drank and cussed. I’ve never smoked, I’ve never had a sip of alcohol, but I do cuss. I’m a Christian lady, and I am very honest. I’m not mean, but I tell people what I think. And sometimes when I do, it sounds like I was raised by a bunch of sailors.”

Notes from the Home - August 9, 2013

   A few Mondays ago, with Russ at the wheel, Karen in the backseat with Molly, me in the co-pilot’s seat, and TomTom doing the navigating, we made the trek to the Emory Clinic to have my Baclofen pump refilled and the dosage adjusted. Baclofen is a muscle relaxer. It isn’t a cure for what ails me, but it does make it a little easier to deal with the spasticity and stiffness that comes with multiple sclerosis. The secret, according to Dr. McKee, whom I used to see at the Cleveland Clinic, is to set the dosage high enough to ease the stiffness and make moving a little easier while not making it so easy that the patient becomes a jellyfish.

   Sometime in the next few weeks I’ll find out how much the good doctor at the Emory Clinic is charging the insurance company and me for his services. I will deem it exorbitant. Every time I went to the Cleveland Clinic to be refilled, Dr. McKee had me walk a short distance, asked me a lengthy list of questions, held my knee and pumped my leg to gauge the stiffness and then said something like, “I’d recommend a ten-percent increase.”

   I’ve been to Emory three times, and each time the doctors have reminded me of gas station attendants; those guys who once came up to your car and said, “Fill ’er up?”  The doctor asks, “How you doing?” and “Do you think we should increase the dose?” Then, without bothering to assess my condition, he fills the tank and resets the dosage. It should be noted, however, that the woman who fetched me from the waiting room and took my blood pressure and checked my pulse had “Sexy Red” tattooed in fancy script from her elbow to her wrist on her arm.

   I did ask the doctor for a referral to a neurologist, and the Emory Clinic called yesterday to set up an appointment. We’ll see what happens.

  

   It has been my personal policy is to stay out of the Covenant Woods’ laundry room between the hours of 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. But, as with all personal policies, there came that moment – 1:37, Tuesday afternoon, to be exact – when I thought, “Oh, what the hell.”  With a basket of dirty clothes on my lap, I set off to the laundry room and ended up in another world. The accents in the other world were all wrong, but otherwise it was as if I were on the set of one of those Britcoms, this one involving three daft octogenarian women.

   With the sound of washers agitating in the background, Helen discussed the washday transgressions of other residents. The infractions are many and varied, but Helen encounters nothing but frustration when she tries to enlighten the washing masses.

   “It doesn’t do any good to tell her,” Helen would say after pointing out this or that person’s deficiency. “She just keeps on doing it. She doesn’t understand.”

   Frances, as far as I could tell, wasn’t doing her laundry, but every few minutes she’d pop in to check on things.

   “Whose stuff is this?” she asked after lifting the lid of an idle washer.

   “That’s Mary’s,” Helen said. “I told her she should stay in here when she’s doing her laundry. But doesn’t do any good; she doesn’t listen.”

   “Is that middle dryer empty?” Frances asked.

   “Yeah, one of housekeepers had some rags in it, but she was just in here and got them,” Helen said. “I wish they wouldn’t wash their rags in here. But it doesn’t do any good to say anything”

   “Well, I’ll put Mary’s things in that dryer,” Frances said. And she did.

   Frances wandered out, and Margie wandered in. In the manner of a mother waiting for her teenaged child to do as he was told, Margie drummed her fingers on the washer in which she had put some things ten minutes earlier.

   “There’s something wrong with this washer,” she said, lifting the lid.

   “No there isn’t,” Helen said. “See that light? It’s on rinse.”

   Margie put the lid down, and the washer resumed rinsing. But only for a minute, then Margie opened the lid again.

   “Every time you do that, the machine resets,” Helen said. “Just leave it alone.” Then turning to me, Helen added, “It doesn’t do any good to tell her.”

   Margie put the lid back down and let the washer run for a minute and then announced that the washer must be broken. She pulled the few items she’d been washing from the machine, wrung them out by hand, dropped them into an unoccupied washer and set it on the spin cycle. That done, she closed the lid on the machine she had been using, and it immediately went into the spin cycle.

   “All that for three pairs of panties,” Helen, who had obviously been paying close attention, said. “But you can’t tell her anything. She won’t listen.”

   Changing washers didn’t do anything for Margie’s patience, and after just a few minutes she took her stuff out of the washer and put it in a dryer. Helen shook her head in disgust as Margie retired to her apartment.

   In a bit, Frances was back.

   “That your stuff in there?” she asked me, pointing to a dryer.

   “No, his things are still in the washer,” Helen said. “Margie is using that one. She put three pairs of panties in it, set if for an hour and left. She shouldn’t do that. There’s no reason to set the dryer for an hour for three pairs of panties. But it doesn’t do any good to tell her. She doesn’t understand.”

   “Do you think they’re dry?” Frances asked.

   “Probably,” Helen told her.

   Frances checked, found Margie’s panties to be dry, took them out, folded them and put them on top of the dryer.

   And so it went.