On Luck

It's, um, frozen. I live in an icebound hell.



Sorry about the picture. I just hope the school sees it and puts her on the goddamn bus with no arguments. I get that you have to draw a line somewhere, but fuck them for making her walk.

EDIT: Apparently I've reached the anger phase. If anyone wants me to take down the picture, say the word and it's gone. Venting.

 

Place looks barren, like Virginiatown in McGarry County.

The photo could be a painting.

 

She fell in a very bad spot. Middle of a big long hill. School is at the top. Houses at the bottom. Just trees in between, where she was. The sidewalk ends on the north side of the street and picks up again on the south side. That's why she was crossing. But the melt from the previous day's thaw was running down the hill and then we had a flash freeze. Just fucking ice everywhere.

 

Not really close, but once during late 1980s or early 1990s, I was courier for a bank.
I was driving and saw some kids fishing in Haddonfield, NJ.
One kid had fishing hook stuck in his face. I took him to the ER, but I didn't stay with him.

 

Jesus, Lizzy bled like a stuck hog.

When I was a kid in St. Charles, Mo., we lived at the bottom of a fairly long, fairly steep hill, black asphalt surface from curb to curb. I was out shooting hoops in the driveway, and these two girls riding tandem on a bicycle came down the hill, the bike weaving and wobbling, getting closer and closer to the tipping point. I could see it coming, and right in front of our house, they were spit out onto the asphalt, bloody knees and elbows and moaning and crying.

I went and got my dad, who loaded them in our truck, put the bike in the bed and drove them to one of the kid's home.

I don't know if that would happen today, and if it did, would Dad be looked at as a potential child molester?

 

I once got stranded, out of gas, in a Wyoming snowstorm. A trucker stopped and helped, driving 60 miles one way so I could by gas. He was doing 100-110 mph on he highway, but I didn't say shit, just happy for the help. After buying gas, he took me back to the van I was driving, and then I followed him back to the gas station. A young first Gulf war veteran, he wouldn't take any money. He just told me to help out someone some day.

Years later, I saw a car stopped on the side of a highway in Illinois. Remembering the trucker, I pulled over in front of them and walked back to the car. I startled the three dudes in it and asked if they needed help. Uh, no, they said. It looked like they were sleeping off a drunk or trying to sober up, so I left them to their own devices. I'm glad I stopped, but I felt kind of foolish for the folks I happened upon.

 

Brother, that's maybe a quarter of it. The towels caught the rest. My super fancy, brand new, really absorbent towels.

 

The guy who teaches in the classroom in the period before me left his flash drive in the computer today. I was tempted to follow @typefitter’s lead and set it aside so he could find it ... then I realized that for the Xth fucking time in a row, A) the guy hadn’t erased the whiteboard after his class; and B) he’d not logged out of the computer so I had to reboot, etc.

Fuck him ... I’m holding his flash drive hostage.

 

Isn't there some kind of Canadian nanny-state program that provides you with fresh towels?

 

There is, but if you don't really need a fresh towel, you'll wait weeks for one.

 

What kind of crazy angle did you take this from to crop out the Tim Horton's?

 

This is some thread and that is some picture, Type. Looks like a Stephen King cover. Glad Lizzy is OK and I hope the two of you can stay in touch.

The opening to Type's post reminded me, in many ways micro and macro, of my Dad. On Thursday, he was driving home from a doctor's appointment in the early morning and saw an elderly man walking in the middle of a street. As my Dad approached, the man wobbled and fell. My Dad pulled over and asked if he was OK. The man was not very coherent--probably Alzheimer's or dementia--and my Dad called 9-1-1 but had no idea what else to do, other than stay on the side of the road to ensure no traffic hit the man, because my Dad has bad legs and can't stand for more than a couple minutes at a time. Fortunately, a man across the street came out, said he knew the man in the street and would take him inside. My Dad said this to the 9-1-1 operator and asked if the cops would still come. Of course, he was told. He was also asked for his phone number. "I have no idea, this is a cell phone, I never use it," he said. I think he said he left his home number with them and drove off once he saw the elderly man inside. But he wondered what would have happened if he'd driven up that street 30 seconds earlier. What would have happened to the elderly man?

The whole experience got me thinking about my Dad, who has not had an easy life. His parents died before he got married, he has some kind of undiagnosed nerve damage in his leg that has reduced his mobility to almost zilch over the last 15 years and he lost my previously perfectly healthy Mom to a motherfucker of a cancer within a seven-month span in 2008-09.

But...it could be worse. He has two kids, one in town and one a couple hours away, who check in on him constantly. Frankly, I have little doubt he is alive because of us. His grief was overwhelming when our Mom died, to the point where we really thought he'd be one of those spouses who dies from a broken heart immediately after his/her spouse died. I think us staying in constant touch with him kept him going. There's no doubt staying in constant touch kept him alive fewer than two years later, when he contracted meningitis and probably would have died at home if not for my sister barging into the house when he wouldn't answer the phone and calling an ambulance upon finding him basically unconscious in bed.

He has good benefits from my Mom's public school job, so he can afford to at least manage his pain. He fared well financially and has been ultra-careful with his money, so if he ever gets to the point where he mentally and/or physically can't care for himself, he can move into a senior citizen center or assisted living facility. It is hard to envision a scenario in which he is walking alone down the middle of a street in his bathrobe at 8:30 in the morning.

So it's not been easy for him, but it could be worse. It's important to remember that, as I think Type and my Dad realized this week.