While wondering through the parking lot
Saturday morning, I met a Hispanic gentleman on his way to visit his aunt. A
good nephew, he was bringing her a cup of McDonald’s coffee. My sole complaint
with the food service at Covenant Woods is the anemic coffee it brews up. His
aunt feels the same way, the man said.
We talked about the weather for a minute,
and then he asked if I had been in the military. I told him about my short,
uninspiring stint as a draftee.
“I thought that might be a service-related
injury,” he said, pointing to my legs. “What happened?”
“Multiple sclerosis happened.”
“How long have you had it?”
“Since sometime in the early 1990s, I guess.
But until 2005 I thought I was just getting old.”
“You married?” he asked.
“Divorced.”
“Can you cope with women?” he said.
“What was that?” I asked, thinking I’d
misunderstood him.
“Can you cope with women?” he asked again.
Convinced that I was confused by his accent,
I answered with a puzzled look.
“Cope,” he said. “You know, cope: C-O-P-E.”
“I don’t know how well I cope,” I said.
“But, I manage to put up with them.”
He laughed, told me to have a good day, and
went on his way.
In April, a week or two after moving into
Covenant Woods, I called the Emory Clinic in Atlanta to make an appointment to
have my baclofen tank refilled. We made a date for July 18. A few weeks later,
Emory sent a medical history form for me to fill out and bring with me to the
appointment. Two weeks ago, Harold from the Emory Clinic called to ask some
questions about my condition and to get the name and number of the doctor I had
been seeing at the Cleveland Clinic.
Everything was proceeding smoothly, and Russ
had scheduled himself off on the 18th to drive me to Atlanta. Then there was a
change of plan. Thursday, while I was Skyping to writing class, the phone rang.
I didn’t recognize the number and ignored the call. After class ended, I picked
up the phone and debated whether I should return the call or wait to see if the
caller wanted to talk to me enough to call back. Then the phone rang. It was an
Emory Clinic scheduler. The clinic needed to reschedule my appointment; the
doctor I was to see would be out of town on the 18th. Would the 25th at 9:30 be
OK? she asked. I said it would be, and then I called Russ to make sure.
A quick look at my phone’s calls received
seemed to answer the question of who made the earlier call. The calls weren’t
from the same number, but the numbers were close enough that they probably came
from came from the same office. But they didn’t come from the same person, as I
discovered when the phone rang on Friday the 13th.
“Hello, this is Lisa from the Emory Clinic,
may I speak to Thomas Harris, please?” she said perfunctorily.
“This is he.”
“Oh, is this Mrs. Harris?”
“No, this is Mr. Harris.”
“Is Mr. Harris available?”
“This is Mr. Harris.”
“OK,” she said doubtfully, the way a person
says “OK” when she is sure she is being lied to but can’t prove it. I’m used to
callers mistaking me for a woman when they hear my voice, but all the others
were kind enough to hide their disbelief when I said they were speaking to Mr.
Harris. Lisa, though, was calling to confess, and that might have affected her
attitude.
“Harold called you a few weeks ago to get
the name and number of the doctor you were seeing at the Cleveland Clinic,” she
said. “He gave it to me, but I’ve misplaced it. Can you give me that
information?”
Without implying that I doubted her
competence, I gave her Dr. McKee’s name and telephone number. Later that
afternoon, she called back to say she had received my records. It’s amazing how
quickly large amounts of information can go from here to there with a few
clicks of the mouse.
Two weeks ago, a group of us from Covenant
Woods went to hear the Hotlanta Jazz Quartet. It is a Dixieland group, and a
very, very good one. The drummer is from New Orleans, the banjo player/vocalist
is from Montana, the clarinet/sax player is from Wisconsin and the horn player
is New England. But they all ended up in Atlanta and have been playing together
since the late 1990s. The fellow who did all the singing had a voice right out
of 1930s. It was great.
The concert took place at the Liberty
Theater. If there is an auditorium in the Liberty Theater, I didn’t see it. The
wheelchair access for the theater is through the kitchen, and from there I was
led into a room that looked like a church basement. There was a platform for
the band at one end, and the audience of seventy-five or eighty people sat at
tables. A caterer was set up in the kitchen, selling barbecue sandwiches, hot
dogs, French fries, soft drinks and beer.
Because of construction around the theater,
the Jazz Society will be meeting in the basement of a nearby Episcopal church
for the next year. There aren’t many Episcopalians down here, but the Jazz
Society has a beer license and is working on getting a wine license, which
would make it tough for them to find a home in one of the numerous Baptist
churches.
A week later, I got a nice reminder of that
evening of jazz. Russ and Karen let me hang out with them Sunday, and among
other things, they took me to a frozen yogurt place. While we were eating, the
piped-in music piped in “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” a terrific song I hadn’t heard
in years until the Hotlanta Jazz Quartet played it at the Liberty Theater.
Bethany called yesterday, and we talked for
over an hour. OK, she did most of the talking and I soaked up her enthusiasm,
excitement and joy for life. The developmental specialist told her Hayden is
ahead of where he should be in all areas for his adjusted age and ahead in most
areas for his actual age. Last week, Beth sent me a short video of Hayden
wearing her sunglasses. The kid is one cool dude.
Yesterday at supper, Sue – who used to sell
antiques and now does some writing – gave me some information about
winningwriters.com’s contest for essays or fiction involving sports. The site
also is also holding a contest for humorous poetry. They don’t accept
previously published material, which eliminates all my extant sports stuff.
Twenty-five or thirty of the best humorous poems from last year’s contest were
posted, and they are all considerably longer – I mean really, really longer –
than any I have written. But the contests don’t close until May 31, 2013. I
guess that eliminates all my excuses.
And one more thing in the
things-are-looking-up category: at 7:45 this morning I went out for my morning
constitutional, and for the first time since the middle of May it was cooler
outside than it was inside in the air conditioning. It will probably be another
couple of months before that happens again, but it was an oh-so-pleasant
surprise.
