Don’t you hate it when you lose your car? You think you know where you put it, but then when you go to get in it, it’s not there. And then you have to look all over an entire city, retrace your steps, curse yourself for not downloading that FIND MY CAR app and wonder how all the Alzheimer drug trials are going and how you can partake in the trials. Right? We’ve all been there, right?
A Pretend Conversation
I wish I could write stuff here about my kids, but they have this hang-up about something they like to call “privacy”, so I can’t tell you about how funny, charming and adorable they are.
But I can write about two hypothetical kids.
So imagine there’s a lady, let’s call her “Mom,” who knows these two young adults, we’ll call them Lisa and Drew. Let’s imagine, for a moment, that she shares a home occasionally with these young people, and due to a genetic link that binds them, the lady feels somewhat protective of them. Let’s also imagine that Lisa is approaching a birthday that not only marks 20 years on this earth, but also exactly five years of unrelenting sarcasm so that every conversation goes something like this:
How Am I? So Glad You Asked
At our last monthly Ambulance Association meeting, Bernie, our EMS chief, announced that flu shots were available to those members of the crew who wanted them. Apparently, EMTs are eligible for free flu shots or something. Actually, I’m not entirely sure what Bernie said about the shots because I felt that it was important to inform those around me that I’ve never had a flu shot. “I’ve never had the shot and I never get the flu,” I whispered to K, who was seated to my right. (I’ll protect the privacy of all EMTs in this story except Bernie). K whispered back, “Me neither. I don’t think I’ve ever had the flu in my life.” Then M, on my left, offered, “I’ve never had the shot either. I never really get sick.”
Watch Out
My body stops watches.
My body has stopped watches all my life. My mother has told me that she thinks it’s some kind of static electricity or electrical energy I emit, because it happened even when I was a little girl, with every watch I’ve ever worn. I was content to be watchless for most of my 30-odd years (that’s how old I will be for the rest of my life; 15 is an odd number) until last year, when I became an EMT. Now I need to wear a watch, so that I may take a person’s pulse on emergency calls, but the first three watches I bought died immediately. They were cheap, but were supposed to be waterproof, shatterproof, etc. Then I bought a pricier watch that you are supposed to be able to wear scuba diving. Completely stopped the second day I wore it.
Mercury, WTF?
I’ve never really believed in astrology. I mean, I like to carry on about being a Leo because that’s what we Leos do, carry on about ourselves, but I never really thought that there was anything to the whole idea that planets rule our lives and that their positioning alters what happens here on earth until these past two weeks when Mercury went into retrograde and all my electronics failed and all my efforts to communicate with other human beings have been weirdly thwarted, and my phone died because I carried it in the same bag with the aborted hard-drive that the Apple support team handed me with their condolences, and my horse went lame and my other horse stomped my toes until they were crushed, and I developed a tendency to write very long sentences that I don’t know how to end in a clever way so I just keep adding words…