My Brain Purchase

I've had some mild obsessions with particular human body parts off and on during my life.  Not my own body parts, but just the parts in general.  One of those body parts was the brain.  I felt like I just had to find one, aside from the one (or half o' one) I already had inside my head.

I remember as a small girl watching a 1962 movie called The Brain That Wouldn't Die.  My sister Colleen and I saw it on afternoon TV's Creature Feature while we were at Grandma Rose's house for the weekend.  It was a really stupid movie, and now rates about a 3 out of 10 on the "good review" scale.  But it effectively scared my 6-year-old self to death.  It disturbed me in some ways, like when the guy got his arm ripped off at the end of the movie.  It intrigued me, too.  Like when the lady's decapitated head was sittin' on that table, all wired up to some laboratory contraptions, and all of a sudden her eyes popped open and she started talking wickedly to passers-by in the lab. 

I wondered at the time if you could really keep a person's head alive with the right electrode wires and blood circulation tubes running in and out of it.  That got me to thinking about basic brain function in general, never mind the head that encased it.  As years progressed, I watched and was smitten by repeats of the 1931 James Whale/Carl Laemmle version of the movie Frankenstein, with Boris Karloff as the monster requiring home assembly.  The subsequent 1935 Karloff version Bride of Frankenstein rings in as my second favorite, although in that one the doc wasn't as interested in a brain as he was in finding a "young" heart.  Third favorite has to be the Mel Brooks' 1974 farce Young Frankenstein.  Then there have been strings of movies since, spin-offs and weird unrelated stories, that all had that one special mesmerizing prop in them:  A brain in a jar.

I guess that brain fascination business led me to take Psychology in college, and after the lectures and films on mental institutions' unsavory histories, and especially on the lobotomy procedures, my interest was further piqued.  All of it was casual interest in the sense that I never became a brain surgeon, or a psychotherapist, although I did later get a minor in Psychology.   

When VHS movies came out, I bought the Karloff Frankenstein and Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein.  I would sit and watch them repeatedly, especially enjoying the "brain" focus.  You know, where lab assistant turned thief Fritz/Igor scares himself and drops the jarred brain onto the floor, thus transforming it into a pile of busted glass and upchucked scrambled eggs.  Then, only trying to cover his error, he sneaks back to the castle-bound laboratory with the "abnormal/'Abby Normal'" jarred specimen.  I enjoyed these movies over and over.  But still, something was missing for me.  The brain "hard copy" as it were; a tangible specimen that I could have and hold as my very own.

Then I remembered a catalog that I had from which I had ordered insect pins, jars and insect display boxes (another hobby) a few years before.  It was the Carolina Biological Supply Company, and I recalled that you could order animal fetuses, human skin slides, disease in vitro dishes, human and animal innards, skulls and skeletons.  And yes, you could buy human brains--sliced, quartered, or whole--and by gosh I was going to get one, a whole one!  

I dug out the already old catalog--a 1982 version--and there it was, a human brain, and the description said I could buy the "Entire brain with most of the cranial nerves intact.  Mounted in a clear acrylic museum jar with a removable screw top".

The cost in that #52 Catalog was $194.50.  But by 1994, it was gonna' cost me $465.00 (dang the inflation!), so I had to save up for it.  I began putting money away every week into my "brain account", and when I had it all, I placed my order.  There was one drawback, but that didn't hinder me:  You weren't allowed as an individual to buy a human brain.  You had to be affiliated with an educational institution or a medical facility.  I wonder...Why do you reckon that was??  

So I got a doctor friend to order it for me in his name, and I just reimbursed him--it was that easy. 

I anxiously waited for the Arrival Alert call to come from the doc's office.  Then on the day it finally came--"I'm on my way!" I told them excitedly.  When I arrived, the doctor's office was all abuzz with excitement, too.  The brown cardboard box had been delivered by UPS, and marked "fragile" and "this side up".  I opened it very carefully while we held our breaths.  As I slipped the clear, brain-filled canister out of the box, we all heaved a big sigh of awe at the fresh, flesh-colored jewel inside. 

It was beautiful!

I knew from my layperson's studies I had done that, being without any smoothing out of the convolutions of the thing, this was not from a chronic alcoholic, nor from someone afflicted with Alzheimer's, nor any other major mental disability.  Other than that, I knew nothing else about its origin.  Gender, age, ethnicity, I.Q., etc. were all classified info--known only by the doctor who had removed it from it's skull casing, and by the records monitor of the Carolina Biological Supply Company. 

I took it home and placed it on top of my television set.

The next few times I watched the Frankenstein movies, I sat with it on the couch next to me.  I carried it to my son's school one day during the "pick-up-your-kid" hour, and drove around back to the gym where I knew his coach, a.k.a. science teacher, was at that moment.  "Look at what I've got," I lured with a coy "come here" head-jerk.  He walked over to peer into the driver's side of the pickup I was driving.  There I had it, in the seat right next to me.  He asked the questions, and I gladly, proudly gave him the story behind this prized possession--my brain.  I told him he could borrow it sometime for his science class, as long as I could deliver it personally and stay with it the whole time.  For some reason, he never did.

Now, twenty years later, what used to be a fleshy-beige-colored brain is now a cloudy-gray-brown clump of a specimen.  And it rests thoughtlessly on my bookcase in my living room.  I have moved it around the room over the years to keep it as a focal point, but some time several years ago I had stopped placing it near any windows for fear that the sunlight was doing it harm.  The last 5-6 years I have been more aware of the discoloration of the formaldehyde in the container.  I also noticed the organ's dregs in the bottom of the canister becoming more numerous as the years go by.  Whenever I move it now, and that's rarely, I do it so slowly and carefully so as not to shake any more "matter" loose.  

Dead tissue does tend to deteriorate quicker than live.

I still have the receipt from my purchase of this donor/cadaver tissue.  And, despite that the canister has a threaded top that can be twisted open after the removal of three large screws, I have never opened it.  For some reason however, I worried that someone else would.  So, I always left threatening, forbidding notes taped to the thing, to make sure nobody tampered with it in my absence.  And I'd drape little hairs over the top of it to provide evidence of tampering, in case someone did.  

In truth, I never really had any problem with people wanting to handle it, open it, feel it, examine it, or otherwise fondle it, nor even shake it into cerebral smithereens.  Nobody really cared about its presence as much as I did, besides of course, its original owner.     

My other body part obsessions, and pursuits thereof, I will tell at a later date.  Some will be after certain statutes of limitation have run out.             

     

# # # 

 

Take All Day

Before you read the "take all day" post, put in your mind that I was 18 years of age at the time that the story started, and I had only been to Jasper, AL a couple of occasions before this.  I was not yet aware that there were organizations that catered to particular "groups" of people, or that those organizations utilized various health, recreation and well-being resources about town.  As I write this, I relive the ignorance I had then, and the humor that went with that ignorance.  I do not write it to make fun of another person.

Don't you know it has to be at least mildly interesting when the writer has to make "excuses" at the very beginning?    

Around 1977-78, I used to go just about everywhere with my older sister, Colleen, and her two toddler boys.  More than half the time, I would be the chauffeur for her errands around town, most often being trips to the grocery store and to the laundromat at Bruno's/Jack's parking lot in Dora, AL.   We also visited the county Health Department in Jasper fairly regularly.  We would go there for Colleen's checkups, which were provided at that time for low-income women, and we would also go for my nephews' required vaccinations.

Dora, I knew very well.  Jasper, I knew not.

One such occasion we went to the Health Department for the boys' shots.  After waiting in the crowded lobby for a little while, Colleen's name was called, and she and the kids went back with the nurse.  I stayed out in the lobby to wait.  Just after they went back, in came a large group of people--about ten or twelve in all.  This diverse assemblage of adults consisted of men and women, black and white, and young and old.  It seemed like one or two particular women were coordinating the seating arrangements for the group, and after some inconspicuous maneuvering, everybody was settled.  Although I was mildly curious about this eclectic-looking mix of people, I didn't pay a lot of attention to them because I didn't want to stare.  

After about ten relatively peaceful minutes of waiting went by, I heard someone say "take all day" in a low tone.  I immediately thought "oh great, a complainer in the crowd".  Three or four minutes more went by, and again "take all day".  Hmm......that time he was a bit more vocal.  

I knew by the voice that the speaker was African American and male, and I knew (or thought I knew) that we now had an agitator in the room.  You know, like those people who start vocally complaining to themselves in a bank or checkout line, and they hope the person in front of and behind them will join in on the malcontent, and next they can all gang up on the teller or cashier to "hurry up".  Yeah, that's what I mean by "agitator".  I also knew this "agitator" was one of that diverse group of newcomers that had come in.

Well, another 3-5 minutes went by and "take all day" again, and then  "take all DAY!" and "take ALL day" and  "TAKE ALL DAY" and so it went every 3-5 minutes.  I thought it odd that nobody in the lobby displayed any reaction to him one way or the other.  Nobody helped him "agitate", nobody told him to be quiet, nobody looked at him, ...nothing.  Nobody even seemed to hear him.  But for me, I tensed up with every "take all day" because I felt like he was peer-pressuring all of us to join in and rally with him against the implied slow service.  

Finally, a name was called and one of the "in charge" women in the diverse group got up and escorted two other women of her group into the back with the nurse.  As the women passed in front of me, I realized the situation--that this group was from a facility that served physically and mentally challenged individuals, and they were here for their checkups or vaccinations or whatever.

I felt quite a lot better about the fact that the vocal "take all day" man was not an agitator.  He was just a man who innocently liked making one particular verbal statement, and who just happened to have a mental impairment of some sort.  This was the first time I had seen this group of people, but I deduced that everybody else in the lobby who seemed oblivious to the "take all day" man had at least seen him before.

After a short time and several more "take all day" proclamations went by, Colleen and the kids came out and we left.  I didn't even mention the "agitated man" story to her, and I thought nothing more about it.

Nothing, that is, until about three years later.  

At 21 years of age, I was a fresh member of St. Cecilia Catholic Church in Jasper.  I am sitting in the Mass listening to Father Jerry Deasy's homily.  Father Deasy, an Irish priest with a soft-spoken manner and a great disposition, had gone on for a few minutes, when "take all day" came out from about two pews behind me.  I caught my breath and felt my whole body stiffen.

Now, if you don't know the Catholic Mass, it is a quiet affair, with a particular format.  It is a solemn, reverent service without any unscheduled audible "amens", "glories", or otherwise out of order shout-outs, unlike some other types of church services where it is allowed and even expected.  But at no church service is "take all day" expected, nor particularly enjoyed.

I hope Father Deasy didn't hear that!  Surely everyone around me did, but not one person looked around to see who complained.  Three tense minutes I waited, then "take all day" was louder.  Now I know everyone must have heard that!  But Father Deasy did not miss a beat with his homily, and nobody made a scene by turning around to stare at the vocal man.  

I was on edge with worry because I knew what was up with this guy--I knew he really was not an agitator, but I did not know if anybody else in the church knew it.  I held my breath through the rest of the homily, and through a few more "take all days".  The remainder of the Mass sort of drowned out the final "take all days", thanks to the congregation's songs and scripted vocal queues.

Evidently Father Deasy had seen these folks before, because after Mass I saw him shaking hands with them, including the "take all dayer", as they left the church.  Father had never once suspected that an "agitator" was at Mass, and even if he had, he would not have tensed up over it as I had.           

That has all been thirty-plus years ago, and I wonder what became of the "take all day" man.  I hope everything worked out with him, and that he has enjoyed a happy life all this time, despite his seemingly restless eagerness.  He wasn't really an impatient person, he wasn't trying to rush people or hurry-up life, he was "just sayin'..."

# # #

    

The Prank Calls

I learned how to make prank phone calls when I was nine years old.  That was in 1969, way before "Call Return" and "Caller ID".  That was back when phones were attached by a wire to the wall of your house.

I was living in my step-aunt Bobbie Nell's house in Graysville, AL, and when all adults were out of the house, my sister Colleen and my step-cousin Jack (we called him Jackie), both aged 14, would start with the calls.  I was allowed to observe these masters of prank, but only if I refrained from making background noise.

They would take turns picking random numbers out of the phone book, dial them, and give the poor recipients their anonymous treat of the day.  Colleen and Jackie both altered their voices to sound adult and authentic.  I remember their spills.  He did the now stale "is your refrigerator running?", and then told the party on the other end that they'd better go catch it before it get's away.  He also did the cliché call (although it was new to me at the time) to the drugstore to ask if they have Prince Albert in a can.  "You'd better let him out before he smothers!"

"Ha ha ha ha", we all laughed with delight. 

Colleen had a particular prank call that she used regularly.  She even had the script for it written out on a piece of lined notebook paper.  It was a telephone commercial for a non-existent cologne named Nothing.  She would start the call by asking if the lady of the house was home.  That was an OK and fairly typical question to ask in the 1960s, even though the answering party always knew there was to be a sales pitch following that question.

Colleen would begin her "nothing" cologne spill, while Jackie and I sat anxiously but quietly listening; our eyes intently focused on the fake saleslady.  Her act went something like this:

"When you wear 'nothing', your husband will not be able to keep his hands off of you.  Every man will love you if you are wearing 'nothing'.  Wearing 'nothing' gives you confidence.  Be assured that if you wear 'nothing', you will be appreciated as a modern woman.  Every man will simply love you if you wear 'nothing' at parties", and so forth it went, depending on the other party's responses.

OR, if the woman of the house was absent or non-existent:

"When you give 'nothing' to your wife/girlfriend, she will always remember you.  When she wears 'nothing', you will fall in love with her all over again."  Colleen even turned "nothing" into a man's cologne one time when she dialed a man who had no "lady of the house". 

And so on it went--you get the idea.

Now, Colleen never did well being in the limelight.  Anytime she was ever placed as the center of attention, as she was at that moment with our eyes and ears upon her, she would get embarrassed and sometimes even tear up to the point of crying.  She also would tear up when she got to laughing too hard.  Well, this was the moment for both.  She stumbled halfway through her first sales pitch, and had to abruptly hang up so that she could be free to burst out laughing along with Jackie and me.

Okay, she dialed another one with a determined seriousness, and she went through the whole spill to a patient man on the other end of the line.  Jackie and I had to put pillows over our faces so Colleen wouldn't see the twinkles in our eyes or hear the giggles we had to stifle.  She finished that one like a pro!  And, hanging up the phone, she beamed at our applause and loud bursts of previously contained laughter.

Jackie and Colleen went another round, each taking a turn, and each congratulating one another after their calls.  I was being left out of their club of mutual admiration.   

I wanted MY turn.

Since they were being kind enough to even permit me, a nine-year-old, to stay in the room while they worked, they had to discuss letting me make a call.  After an agreement, they allowed me to do one, however I had to demonstrate to them that I could lower my voice enough to sound like a grown-up.  I chose to sound like a man, and I auditioned for them.  They "ok'd" it, and I dialed the phone.  A man answered.

"Do you need your house painted?" I asked in a manly voice.  The split-second of silence was enough to make me think he was actually considering it.  He said "no".  I said "alright then", and we hung up.

Nobody thought it was funny, not even me, and nobody was laughing.  I felt satisfied though, that I had been granted a screen test, or in this case, a "receiver" test.  Next thing I knew I was being screened out of the prank session, and I had a feeling I would be granted no more chances to actively participate.  I had my go at it, and bombed out.  Colleen and Jackie worked on a few more victims for a bit, and when the adults came home, the prank party was over.

I had learned plenty though, for later.

A year or so after, I was living in Twilleytown and hanging around with my friend Teresa.  During one of our lull days when we had the house to ourselves, the telephone came into play.  I told her about "nothing" cologne, and how we could "sell" it.  We got the phone, which had a very long cord on it, and dragged it to the middle of the living room floor.  That was our stage for opening day and phone prank days to follow.  We did the "nothing" commercial for potential "customers" on the other end of the line; thus beginning a long audio acting career.

As the next couple of years went by, we honed our skills by asking weird questions of people ("can I borrow a cup of flour?"), making strange statements to people ("we are holding your cat for ransom"), and sometimes screaming out horror scenarios to people who subsequently stressed over how they could get help to some girl "being strangled" in the general area.  We even serenaded some poor folks with the break out of song as soon as they picked up their phones.  We were scaring, distressing, worrying, lullabying, etc. many unseen strangers.

In time, we even became brazen enough to call people we knew, and with much success, in that they never recognized our voices.  We discovered that it was more fun to call people we were acquainted with because, knowing what they looked like, we could envision their expressions and reactions, and therefore more thoroughly enjoy the moment.  It was a special thrill when we could picture the victims' faces as they heard the nonsense we dished out to them.  We got Aunt Bobbie one time, and Teresa's Aunt Birdie another time.  We got neighbors, we got Jack's Hamburgers a time or two, and I think we even got one of our teachers' houses once--Mr. Gann, maybe.

One day my parents brought home a crate of baby chicks.  There were, it seemed, about a hundred 3-day-old biddies (that's what we called them) in that box.  I can't say "a hundred" with absolute certainty, but there were a bunch of them.  My parents left the house again to go get chicken-raising supplies or something, and left me (and Teresa) in charge of biddie-watching.  Our stage, the living room floor, was set.  The cast?  A hundred funny, fuzzy, chirping biddies.

Not that the biddies didn't hold their own on entertainment value; they did, with their cute and comical appearance prompting us to laugh, to swoon, and to fondle them.  But we just had to carry it a step farther via telephone.  We made several anonymous phone calls to people to let them hear the melodious sound of a hundred chicks "peep peep peeping" into the receiver, while we held our breaths, silently listening to the people's responses.  Our rolling hysteria after the phone "slam" was our reward. 
 
We did the same with a small box--maybe a dozen in number--of ducklings about a month later.

It went like that off and on for a few years.  Then, at some point, I began to do the prank calls on my own.

I'd dial.  "Hello"
Me:  "Is Henry there?"
Them:  "You've got the wrong number."
Me:  "Well could I just leave him a message?"
Them:  Could develop into anything from a stern but patient "you've got the wrong number--there is no 'Henry' here" to an intense "YOU HAVE THE WRONG #@!x:%!! NUMBER!!" to a "slam" of their receiver.

Dial.  "Hello"
Me:  "This is the operator with your requested party. I have your long distance call on hold for you to Singapore" (or Cairo, or Tahiti, depending on my mood). "One moment please, while I make the connection."
Them:  "Whaaaa...?"  he fades as I scrape cardboard over the receiver's sound holes a few times to simulate transmission sounds.  I joyfully hold my breath and listen to him quizzing his wife and/or kids about "who have ya'll been calling??"

Dial.  "Hello"
Me:  (in a gum-chewing-smacking teen voice) "Where's Angie at?"
Them:  (tersely) "There is no 'Angie' here.  You have the wrong number."
Me:  (smacking gum) "How do I get 'hold of 'er?"
Them:  (not laughing) Slams down the receiver.

Dial.  "Hello"
Me:  Violently coughing and 'trying' to speak. A broken "s'cuse me" inserted a couple of times.
Them:  "Hello??"
Me:  "Just a minute" hack/cough ''s'cuse me"; clear my throat really really hard, ''alright then"....."who'd you need to talk to?"
Them:  "Do what?!" and/or "Who's this?!"
Me:  "Who's this?"  "You called me!"
Them:  SLAM

I knew how to entertain myself.

I got a part-time job when I was 16 and I had access to many names and numbers of people around Walker County, mostly on the east end.  I was left alone to "man the store" several times.  There was one customer of the place where I worked, and his name was Ollie.  I had never heard of a real person named Ollie before. I had heard of Kukla, Fran and Ollie, but never an actual Ollie person.  One day, I called this Ollie's house, and quickly inquired "Hey Ollie, where's Kukla and Fran?"  After hanging up really fast, not waiting for him to answer, I burst out in a rewarding hysterical laughter session that lasted me about five minutes.    

That unethical act would definitely be a firing offense in this day and age.  Would have been then too, but I got away with it.   

I grew up (allegedly), being in my 30s, but continued on with the tradition.  I had a Motorola Bag Phone by now and carried it around in my truck.  Still no "Caller ID", not in my circles anyway.  I bought a Frankenstein doll in the middle of a workday from Walmart's Halloween aisle, and the doll would moan and groan when you flipped on his switch.  From my Bag Phone I called Colleen first, my prank-call guru, and anonymously let Frankenstein moan into the phone at her while I held my breath.  She hung up without a word.  "Of all the nerve!", I thought.  My mentor hanging up on me, not appreciating how much her 1969 student had progressed.  She didn't even allow herself a moment to savor a well-done prank call; just unemotionally hung up on me.  Me; the reigning master of prank!

I immediately called her back, laughing despite her snub, and told her it had been me.  "It sounded like a cow" she said.  Okay, she was right once I had thought about it.  But, where was her prank call spirit of the old days??

I then dialed my mom.  She listened silently for a while to the moaning and groaning of the animated Frankenstein.  I couldn't believe she listened into her receiver as long as she did.  I finally burst out laughing, thus identifying myself, and asked her what she thought.  She said she thought it sounded like a cow, too.

That was about the last prank phone call I made.  Not because I had so matured, but because of the kill-joy prevalence of "Caller ID", "Call Return", and other likewise "FBI" phone boxes that took away any anonymous phone fun you could have.  Then cell phones came around, totally displacing house phones, or land lines, and almost eliminating the classic "pay phones".  You can't even find a pay phone anymore to do anonymous prank calls.

If I could get away with it now, I would.  If I could find just one lone phone booth, I would have a field day of laughter.  I'd carry a bag lunch, and I'd spend the whole day calling, at least until my change ran out.  I don't even know how much it cost to make a pay phone call anymore, should a pay phone booth still exist.

All you people who think you're getting harassing phone calls now--with the "800-unknown caller/ad callers/scam callers/etc. callers"--you either don't remember or you are too young to even know about true prank calls.  The good old fashioned traditional prank telephone call.  It was a real art, and I was a deviant artist.

# # #          

Corpse "out of place"

It's 1974, and I am 14 years of age.  I had seen a couple of dead people before now, but they were where they were supposed to be.  What I mean by that is that they were in coffins.  

I had attended only two funerals by that time, and I remembered them clearly.  One was my Papaw Reno who had died on my 4th birthday, and I remember strolling beside the casket with my mother.  I had not been that emotionally close to Papaw, and being so young I guess I did not have the appreciation I should have had for the loss being felt by my Dad (his son) or by my Mamaw Reno. 

I also remember the funeral of toddler William, who was a step, or even a step-step, "cousin" of mine, once or twice removed, and I was about seven years of age at the time.  William really was not where he was supposed to be--in that coffin--because he was just an innocent little child who had wandered outside of his house and gone into the adjacent Florida canal and drowned.  Nope, he was technically "out of place".  But for the scope of this writing he is not "out of place".

Early one Saturday morning in Twilleytown, AL, a small hole in Walker County and the place that I lived, my best friend Teresa came running excitedly up the hill to, and into, my house.  "Amber! Amber!" she called.  "Come on!  There's a dead man down the road!"  I was thrown off guard at what I thought she had said.  I had not been awake long, and I do not function very well first thing in the morning.  Maybe I had not heard her correctly.  

"Huh?" 

"Get dressed!  Let's go...there's a dead man down the road!  A man dead sittin' in a car...at the stop sign in a car!"  I am already getting dressed--she, grabbing shirt, shoes, etc., and pushing them to me to hurry--as fast as I can trying to absorb what she's saying.  But at the same time I was also asking her for details like, "you sure 'bout this?", "how'd you find out?", "is it OK if we go down there?", and "who's the man?".  You know, that sort of stuff.  I honestly do not remember most of her answers clearly, because I was more focused on the fact that Teresa probably was right about there being a dead man in town. Teresa had the "scoop" on things.  

Teresa was always on top of finding out juice on folks--it kind of fell into her ears on a regular basis, sometimes without much effort on her part--and so I gave her information vault the benefit of the doubt.  I hurried.  As a matter of fact, by then I was feeling a strange, maybe even unnatural, urgency; I gotta' "step it up" before it gets taken away by the hearse or whatever. 

Adrenaline-charged, we ran hard.  Down the hill from my house, and west toward the day's point of interest.  That point was situated inside the fork of the road where our little side road, Twilley Loop, veered onto the main road, Flat Creek Road. The distance from my house was around three or four city blocks' worth, and we were panting.  Breathless, not from running, but rather from the excitement over what we were about to see.  

Upon our arrival, there were only two or three men standing around a dark green muscle car.  The "two or three men" part is really a blur, because at that point a heady sensation had come upon me due to the displaced corpse before me.  I am pretty sure that I was pleasantly surprised that there was not a crowd of people there to hinder us.  We had this almost all to ourselves!  I am also relatively sure that by then I was salivating.  

The bystanders were not authority figures, just locals, and they were discussing the situation amongst themselves.  They didn't pay much attention to Teresa and me, which was beneficial to us, since we were not bothering to hide how elated we were about this find.  We went over to the passenger side window of the car, which is where the dark haired, mustached dead man had ultimately rested his head.  We peered into the car, scanned for blood or other "nasty", and saw nothing of the sort.  I felt a sense of disappointment over that.  I would like to say that I felt a sense of relief at the same time, but I couldn't swear on that last part. 

We mashed our faces up to the glass, pressed our hands all over the door, and would have opened the thing if the men hadn't been standing around.  I was keen to the fact that we were putting fingerprints all over the car, but my excitement overrode any common sense I had.  Besides, I was sure I heard one of the men say that there was no foul play.  They said the man had died of carbon monoxide poisoning.  That's the first time I had ever heard of that.

Now as an adult, in retrospect, I know this scene had red flags all over it.  A lone dead man neatly sitting upright on the passenger side of his car.  Possibly a death at the hands of another, or at the very least, a deliberate self-offing.  

I really knew we shouldn't have been pawing at the car.  I guess though, after we heard the "no foul" thing from the intelligent-sounding bystander, we felt like it was fair game--this car--and we continued to peer through and smear onto the windows to make sure we got a view from every angle. 

I do remember being surprised that there weren't a bunch of cops around already, but back in the days before all the social networking tools, it took longer to get authorities on the scene.  Nowadays when somebody is found dead on the side of a road, the news spreads like wildfire and local Volunteer Fire Department personnel shows up as the First Responder "authorities" to keep everybody else away from the scene of any possible crime.  In this day and age, every dead body gets thoroughly investigated, whether it looks suspicious or not.  

But no, not back in the days before the existence of First Responders.  So it was a "free for all" here on a Twilleytown morn full of fingerprints and nose-mash spots on a dead man's car window.  

The crowd was building up by now, and cars were stopping to check it out.  Teresa and I were being displaced by other onlookers.  We were losing rank in the rubberneck pecking order.  At this point we faced the reality that we could no longer freely fondle the door handles in hopes that one would "accidentally" come open.  

Thoroughly edged out now, we backed away from the intrigue; still watching but in a "hands off" mode.  The ambulance arrived on the scene.  We watched the two ambulance men take out the rigor mortis-ridden corpse.  He was paralyzed in the sitting position, and when they placed him on their gurney, they laid him on his side where he remained a frozen sitter.  His arms were stuck fast to his sides.  His hands were stationed against his thighs in an innocent looking relaxed pose.  He had an "I'm going to sleep" look about him.  

They pulled the sheet over the dead man.

Teresa and I were through here.  Now walking towards home, we didn't go away empty-eared.  By the time we two noseys had left the scene, we knew the dead man's name, who his friends were, where he had been the day before, where he worked, and I think what time he had left his girlfriend's house last night.  Teresa and I had lot's to talk about for a while, and we were almost exhausted as we walked away from the big hubbub of activity behind us.   

This was the beginning of a fairly long stream of dead bodies I would come to encounter in my lifetime, expected and unexpected.  This was also the first of many that would induce adrenaline rush.  I'll elaborate on that at another time.  Reader, please rest assured that I am neither killer nor cannibal nor necrophile.

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Emergency Room Lobby

I decided a couple of years ago to go to area locations in order to do one of my favorite hobbies:  People-watching.  This writing is from my hospital Emergency Room (ER) observations.  The reason why I wrote down my people-watching experiences is mainly because I was taking an Anthropology class, and I had to do it for a grade.  It wasn't supposed to be of any entertainment value, but that's the way it came out for me.

Which ER days do I want?

It would seem that the most logical time to visit the ER for entertainment, or at least to see some action, would be on Friday nights and Saturdays.  Not always so.  Thursdays and Sundays, the days I picked, are quite busy.  

Thursdays are busy because a lot of people get paid on Thursday, so drug-deal beatings, barroom stabbings, and car wrecks at the Wal-Mart intersection occur more often.  

Sunday nights are good for domestic violence, because by then the payday money is all gone, and people have had enough of being with their families through the weekend.  Also, people who hurt themselves on Friday night or Saturday do not want to spend their off-time at an ER, so they wait until Sunday afternoon to get the (by then infected) injury treated.  Another angle there is that they get to miss at least Monday's work day while they heal. 

In addition to all that, I figure heart attacks and sports injuries happen a lot on Sundays because of the weekend warriors.  Those are the baby boomers who never exercise except on Sunday, when they try to catch up on all those days of the week they skipped.  
 

Who is allowed in the ER waiting room?

In my small town, anybody can enter the emergency room and sit in the lobby without actually needing medical help.  In big city ERs, you have to pass a security guard and go through an airport style weapons detector, but none of that here, so here is where I stayed.  I did however tell the receptionist behind the desk about the study I was doing, because I did not want her to think I was a homeless person setting up house.

The "Watching" Part

Thursday

       
There is a young woman standing out front of the automatic sliding doors, and she is smoking a cigarette and talking on her cell phone 90 miles a minute.  She has on Sponge Bob flannel pajama bottoms, flip flops, and a Roll Tide Alabama hoodie.   

Inside the lobby, a television is positioned high up on the wall, and it is tuned in to Law & Order.  Appropriate programming in an ER?  Maybe not.  I guess it could have been on something even less appropriate, like for instance, Dr. G Medical Examiner.  

I get myself seated down in a corner to get the best view of the room’s happenings. 
 

Sitting with their backs to the wall is a young Hispanic couple with two little kids; they look about two and three years of age.  The smallest one looks very sick. Both the kids are quiet, and the couple speaks to each other in really low tones, as if to avoid drawing attention.  In the center of the room is seated a woman, 60-something, and wearing nice dress pants and a jacket.  She is reading a book.  Closer to the TV is a woman about thirty or so, with a boy about 13.  He has one shoe on and his other foot is wrapped up in that beige gauze that sticks to itself.  I think the mom likes Law & Order. 
  

Out of the bathroom come two teenage girls heading towards the vending machines.  Both girls are chatting to each other, and at the same time both are also texting.  One of them gets a bag of Fritos and a Dr. Pepper.  These girls are chopping up some unseen third party pretty good.  They “can’t stan' bein’ 'round her” because she is “skank” and she was “flashin’ it around” the other night at Kenesha’s.  What is “kenesha”?  All the time they carry this on they also text.  How do they multi-task like that?  They go sit against the wall hunched together so they can gossip some more.  Surely neither one of them is waiting to see an ER doctor.

The receptionist calls for Ms. Somebody to come to the desk.  The nicely-dressed reading lady goes over and they whisper some things back and forth.  Reading lady sits back down.  I hear the ambulance outside.  The really gory or otherwise bad ones on gurneys have to be wheeled into another door just to the side of the sliding door, so the lobby-dwellers do not see them.  The nurse calls for Ms. Somebody the book reader, and this time she goes through the treatment door.  She looks alright, so maybe she’s waiting for someone else who is getting treatment. 

   
The nurse comes back out in a bit and calls out a Hispanic name.  The couple with kids goes through the treatment door.  A young fellow with his hand bandaged up comes out of the treatment doors.  He calls out the sliding doors to “Sherry”, the badly-dressed chatty young cigarette-smoking girl, and she comes in to help him listen to the lady behind the desk.  Gossiping girls are still texting.  The 30-something mom is still watching TV, and her teen's head is tilted back like he’s nodding off.  

I hear the rumble of the helicopter coming onto the rooftop.  There is no trauma center here, so it must be picking up the ambulance rider that came in a while ago—a rider who should have been helicoptered directly from his traumatic incident to the big city in the first place.

In come some winners!  

This group of folks has a heavily tattooed guy with his arm completely wrapped up from hand to above the elbow.  It is in a makeshift sling.  Most of his other hand is likewise wrapped up, except for a couple of protruding fingers.  His face has some cuts on it and it looks severely sunburned.  His people include a girl with piercings on her face, two other tattoo guys, and a woman with a very gravelly voice who looks much older than she probably is.  She is extremely skinny, with a face like leather, and her hair is long and scraggly.  She is in charge of the group.  

Everybody hears her mailing address announcement, her smoker’s coughs, and everything else we didn’t want to hear.  What I did not catch is what the injured guy said had happened to himself.  I wonder if whatever he told the receptionist was the whole truth.  I have heard about illegal methamphetamine-concocting contraptions (meth labs) exploding and this looks sort of like the kind of injury one would sustain if that were to happen. 

I should not stereotype people.     

They all go sit down for about three minutes, when Ms. Cough, the injured guy, and one Tattoo go outside to smoke.  So that’s why the hurt guy left a couple of fingers sticking out of his bandage--to hold a cigarette.  I hear another ambulance coming in. 

Nurse calls for the teenage boy with the foot problem.  He hobbles and his mom walks beside him through the treatment door.  After a few minutes, the nurse calls the name of the Cough/Tatoo group, and the pierced girl goes to the sliding door to get the injured guy.  He comes in and goes through the treatment door.  Ms. Cough is behind him griping about something, and coughing quite loudly.
    
That’s all for me today--I'm gone.

    

Sunday 

Three people, a 50-ish couple and 30-ish man, are standing outside the sliding doors, and smoking cigarettes.  

Inside, I sit in a row seat in the middle of the waiting room; there are rows behind and in front of me.  I am facing the treatment doors again but closer in from the wall so I can hear the whole room better.  Not much going on, I guess because it’s too early in the afternoon.  Noisy, heavy 30-something woman with three very loud and misbehaving kids sit behind me.  None appear sick, so I deduce theirs is a routine doctor visit disguised as an emergency due to a lack of insurance (don't stereotype, Reno!).  With an extremely southern drawl, the woman issues criticisms and warnings to her out-of-control kids. 

In front of me the row of chairs are back to back, one row facing me and the other facing away from me and toward the treatment doors.  A blonde girl, about 18-20 and wearing blue jeans, is seated on her knees backward in the chair.  Her back is to me, and she is anxiously facing the treatment doors.  She sniffles softly (I guess, since I can’t hear her over the noisy people behind me) as she brings a tissue to her nose every so often.  Somebody very beloved to her must be in the treatment area.   

Seated at the side wall are a young man and woman, and he has a rag on his eye.  He takes it off and rearranges it some as he keeps his eye squinted.  Other than that, the lobby is empty, so it looks like a short visit for me.  Besides, I do not know how long I can stand the rowdy kiddie crowd behind me.  If the mom has told them once to “be quaiyt!” she has told them fifty times.  She has bribed them with vending machine treats, she has swatted them, she has threatened them, she has cajoled them, and all to no avail.  I felt so bad for the anxious girl in front of me, as I’m sure the racket was not helping her feelings.

      
The nurse comes out and calls a name.  The anxious sniffling girl backs out of her chair and starts walking to the treatment doors.  That’s when I saw the flash.  Sticking out of her right buttock is a shiny crochet needle!  

Now, I know nothing about the art of crocheting, but I do recognize the purplish stick that protrudes out against the blue denim-covered derrière.  It could be a knitting needle, but they are pointed and that would have been easy enough to pull out at home.  That’s why I deduce this to be a crochet needle, with a hooked end that is going to have to be surgically removed.  She has not been worried about another person, she has been crying from embarrassment. 

I wonder how it came to be there, in her buttock that is.  And hey, I wonder how she got here.  Because she could not have driven herself.  She would have had to sit on her side in the passenger seat, and there was no one with her in the waiting room.  I will continue to ponder that--the crochet needle incident--which made this ER trip worthwhile for me.

I have to get away from these noisy kids and their noisy mother.  I'm outta' here.       

      
About the Anthropology assignment:  I didn't get a 100% on this observation--the professor said I had too much fun with it.  She told me to remember that I was not supposed to make a comedy out of it, and that I should keep my snarky opinions to myself.  I did however end up with an overall A in the class--for the record to any interested person reading this.

       

DISCLAIMER

To any readers who think they recognize themselves, or think these descriptions remind them of themselves, or think there is an inkling of a resemblance to themselves:  Know that you are totally mistaken.  If you or any reader claims otherwise, be it known that your claims are bogus.       

  

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Dwell on Chill

I am sitting at a makeshift desk, a.k.a. a rolling food tray, by the covered window of a hospital room.  I am waiting for my mother to be released after the outpatient procedure she had today, and I brought my laptop with me so I could keep up with the rest of the world while I wait. 

This window next to me, covered with heavy grade putty-colored curtains, cannot be enjoyed as a window.  You cannot look through it to the vast outside, to the busy traffic below, or to the hustle of people running quickly to and fro in the parking lot.  

I am in a hospital meant to nurture, but alas, this visitor is uncomfortably cold next to that "no-use" window--the window with inadequate weather stripping.  It is a window with a sill that would solidify melted butter within seconds.  It is a window that, as soon as you pull those drab and heavy curtains aside, allows the hand of the outside bitter cold to slap you.  The slap orders you to "back away and close the curtains quick"; pull away with a violent shiver. 

So I did try. Truly I tried to look out a couple of times, but couldn't stand the chill. Instead of seeing the view, I am now crouched here in the only available chair, my knees drawn up against the feel of cool denim jeans, my nose hovering over a steamy cup of coffee, my fingers still stiff from this morning's trek to "here", and my feet feeling a need to soak in a pan of hot dishwater.  

Yesterday's high was 19° Fahrenheit.  Heading out to work, I felt my hands freeze painfully to the steering wheel of my car, after almost breaking the frozen door handle upon entry.  The heater began working well only upon my arrival at work--by then it was time to exit the vehicle.  To beat the cold outside, I ran everywhere; from Car to In, from In to Car, from Car to Store, from Store to Car, and so on. You can't outrun it. My body was tense all day long, waiting to relax to a warmth that did not happen until I immersed myself in a scalding hot bubble bath last night.

My body is tense again today beside this blanketed yet ice cold window to the stiff outdoors.   

The day before yesterday it never rose above freezing, and there was a stingy dusting of snow on the ground early that morning.  I sat at home looking through the living room window at what I deemed "inaccessible" outdoors. I looked at the yard I love to work in--the world I love to play in, and I thought about the day when it would be warm enough again to go outside without needing to run to beat the cold; without the cold need for speed.  

With arms clenched tight to my side and legs pressed tight together, my body instinctively tries to keep my own warmth to myself.

I long for the warmth of the sun on my body.  I yearn for the pleasures of a summer day.  I want to barbeque burgers after a day of mowing the lawn.  I want to sun-bleach my fine white hand-washables on the clothing rack. I want to hear the melodious buzz of the mud dauber wasp as she constructs her nest.  I want to see the locusts jump in front of me as I make may way through the grass.     

As I sit here at the hospital window, I feel the cold creep out from under this blanket of curtains and swirl around my lower extremities, linger on my nose and over my hands on these laptop keys.  It was 7°F this morning when I headed out of my house, and the high today is an expected 26°F, which will never be realized.  Tonight we are looking for a low of 14.  

I want to feel the heat on my sun-baked shoulders.  I want to be in south Florida once again--Florida, the Sunshine State and my birthplace.  I want to walk in the scrubby forested flatland where scorpions dwell underneath the leaf litter, and where robust roaches scurry noisily from the shedding husks of palmetto trees.  I want to walk barefoot in the Florida sand--sand that is laden with the nuisance prickly sand spur grasses.  I want to step on those sand spurs full force and feel Florida terrain pain.  There is a glowing warmth associated with this déjà vu; the sand spur in my foot.   

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