The sixth floor

   There is a free taxi service at the medical complex and in the van I listened to two guys razzing one another.

   “You keep doing that,” said one,” and they’ll send you to the sixth floor.”

   “Uh-uh,” said the other, “I ain’t never going there.”

   As I left the van, I turned and asked, “What’s up with the sixth floor?”

  The driver said: “That’s where they send the crazy people.”

   Once inside the lobby, since I could not decode my paperwork, I handed it over to the information person at the circular lobby carrel. She was a black woman with blade-length fingernails, purple with speckled stars. Her black hair was flattened to her head like a solid helmet held in place by a slick liquid substance of sorts. She had a phone in one ear, but motioned to me anyway. I gave her my papers.

   She took one look at my paperwork and her brown eyes came out of her head achieving cartoon-like amazement. She snapped loudly, in a Wal-mart shoppers’ voice, “Sixth Floor, blue elevator!”

   Her words rang out like a warning and I felt the entire room behind me come to a silent stop. As I turned around, I imagined the room watching me, but saw that most folks were going about their business except this one guy. He had long, thin hair and our eyes locked. As I approached him, he said: “Hello, Captain,” as if he had recognized a long lost friend. I quickened my mosey past him in the direction of the blue elevator.

    Having heard no screams or sounds of beatings, I checked in on the sixth floor and sat in the waiting area. A man took a seat nearby in my row carrying one of those Styrofoam take out boxes. After a great deal of motion spreading out his buffet and  moving things around—coffee cup on the edge of a chair, salt and pepper and butter on the magazine table, knapsack on the floor—I could deduce peripherally that he was finally cutting his meal. Thing is he continued—while clutching plastic knife and fork—cutting up his meal for several minutes with white-knuckled concentration. Then he lathered some toast, laying the stuff on as though painting a wall, getting into the corners and the edges. Then he lathered the lather for several more minutes with the concentration of a surgeon.

   As soon as he completed these tasks he stabbed some food and held it mid mouth when his name was apparently called. He cried, “I knew it,” shut up the box with great care, placed it on his chair. He stood at attention while a nurse discussed his case. I could see him nodding nervously and shuffling his feet and nodding and nodding.

   Finished, he sat back down, opened his carton, and began the motion of eating when the nurse returned. They discussed something and then she left.

   He began stabbing food and eating swiftly, as though his meal was in danger of disappearing. I took a moment to check out the meal, which looked like it had gone through a shredder, nothing really discernible, although I spotted an identifiable piece of potato I fancied.

    Meanwhile, a very thin guy wandered by us, head down, muttering, “Got to lose five pounds, got to lose five pounds.” He had just been weighed and received a blood pressure and temperature exam. Now he was making a spectacle of himself by speaking and walking around the waiting area, no doubt losing more weight with each pass around the room.

    I noticed another patient enter the men’s room for the third or fourth time since I had been sitting there and wondered if he was enjoying a bit of dope each visit. I thought about checking him out but feared losing my place.

   Every so often, someone in scrubs would appear and announce a name. Finally, a man wearing a white shirt, tie and suspenders and shaped like a pear came out and announced, “Mr. Rogers!”  I chuckled. Wouldn’t it be grand to see THE Mr. (Fred) Rogers on the sixth floor, I thought. I’d love to see him wearing a thin sweater and welcoming us to his “neighborhood.”  That would be a sight worth paying for. Or Elvis or Nixon. I’d pay to see that.

    “Mr. Rogers,” the pear man repeated. A thought occurred to me. Perhaps he meant me. Slowly, I rose and waved. I announced my name to him and he verbally chastised himself. “I’m so sorry, I meant you, just had the name wrong.”

   “That’s OK,” I said, wanting instead to make myself feel as though I finally fit into the culture of the sixth floor.

   “Would you be mine?” I might have said, “could you be mine, won't you be my neighbor?”

 

 

When to make stuff up

Our mothers taught us not to lie. So fantasy is a fine alternative, which hurts no one.

    I have a relative that tells anyone who will listen that he used to pitch so hard he could throw a strawberry through a locomotive. Makes him feel good.

    I believe it is healthy to tell people about personal qualities or to imagine skills if the notion makes you feel good.

    Yet, if we can’t brag about ourselves, who will? If you don’t let others know, they may never find out. A bit of exaggeration doesn’t hurt if it makes you feel good. You might be surprised to learn that among my many skills is an ability to detect by taste. I have a sort of CSI mouth.

     For example, I always taste the pool water for pee. I do not allow pee in my pool, so I was worked up the other day when I detected some. It turned out to be ant pee, but still …

    I claim this as proof that I have a sense that far exceeds the usual human dimension. My ability is superhuman. I wonder what kind of superhero costume I should wear.

   Sense of taste is not my only skill. I can detect most BS when I see, hear or smell it. I think there is a lot of it around these days, but it has always been around.

    The other day I was bemoaning the invented news stories we see every day on alleged news channels. Calling something a scandal does not make it so. I thought there is a lot of made up fantasy around these days. But it has always been so and a great deal of soap has been sold as a result. God Bless American capitalism, which sometimes stinks up a room.

   People were able to see, taste and smell Joe McCarthy’s BS when he held hearings to out Communists in our country, a forum that was really about elevating Joe M. to sainted status. We could see through his BS, yet he was so scary he got away with it for years.       

    Nowadays, even shame does little to encourage liars and idiots to calm the hell down and just tell the truth. If people truly believed half the hype they spew as absolute truth they ought to seek counseling. Also, their mothers should wash out their mouths. They need less harmful skills concerning fabrication.

    If you want to make believe to survive, I get that. The United Nations reports that 70 percent of Afghanis suffer from mental illnesses that run the gamut from depression to schizophrenia. There are only six psychiatrists for the whole country. The only alternative to the absence of meds or counseling in Afghanistan would be a good supply of make believe as a coping mechanism.

    As long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else, whatever fantasies you require to get through the night is OK by me. Lying that hurts others is vile and evil, especially if it is only used to advance one’s station in life. Earn a mother’s respect. Try learning to distinguish ant pee in a pool. That works for me.

 

   

 

 

A patriot act

See something. Say something.

   The problem with this little anti-crime, anti-terrorist ditty is that some of us see something in everything.

   There was, for instance, that big ass truck parked under the highway overpass I eyed for the greater part of a week. This truck was a dead giveaway. It had terrorism written all over it. By the time I got to work every morning I looked up the FBI’s phone number and as I began to dial my finger hovered over the button first like a waving flag then like a decapitated digit. After all, what was I getting myself into?

   Sure, I could call the feds and tell them about the truck. About the Chinese writing on the outside of the truck cab, a dead giveaway, the sloppiness of the parking the way impolite and irresponsible terrorists do, how the truck’s cargo was not color coordinated, being a mix of light pinks and dull greens, a definite clash. Sure, I could tell them all about this terrorist act waiting to happen and they might even dangle a reward in front of me, which, truth be told, I could really use about now, but I feared being placed on the lie detector.

   I would be forced to admit that there have been times that I and many like me have thought that an act of God would be doing us all a favor blowing the hell out of the stop-and-go Katy Freeway, which is a despicable highway, one of the most crowded commuter roads in the world.  Blowing up a piece of it would give us all a respite from work for weeks, perhaps months, a well-earned chance to sit back and smell the roses a little and regain our physical and mental health.

    The feds might sweat me to learn my true feelings and beat the hell out of me with a telephone book, which is a pretty cumbersome tool, but preferable to their routine water boarding, which is the usual response to whistleblowers if you believe TV sources like Homeland and Saturday Night Live. Apparently, bringing news events to the attention of the law always ends in pain. So I decided to forego tipping off the feds and before long the truck disappeared and the Katy Freeway was saved and I continued to serve my sentence commuting on that dirty rotten road.

    But the other day, as I was patrolling the neighborhood looking for trouble I walked the dog over to the slough, which the realtors hereabouts call a bayou for the sake of property values. There, in a dead end cul-de-sac, sat two Mercedes Benz (Benzes?) in the dwarfed driveway of a home worth less than one hundred K. These were two brand-new automobiles – and both were black, the favored color of all terrorists. If you don’t believe me, look it up.

   There is no way a respectable and patriotic American family would live in a house worth less that $100K and park two Mercedes out there. In America, here in Texas, our driveways only harbor arrogant Chevy or Ford pick ups. It was obvious to me that I was on to something.

   I could barely stand it. I had no pen or pad to jot down the license plates or models of the vehicles and since short term memory is one of my failings, I could not get the information down in great detail.

   All I knew was that I had come across the lair of some Osama Bin Anybody and it was time to tip off the feds. As soon as I got home I announced a pending phone call to the FBI. Before I could get to a phone I was interrogated at length, warned off contacting the feds and told in no uncertain terms that calling the government was the silliest idea the lady of the house had ever heard and I was not to go anywhere near a phone the rest of the day.

   “If you think I’m inviting feds into our hovel you’ve got another thing coming,” she may have said.

   “There may be a reward,” I said. “Remember, if you see something, say something.”

   “Well,” she may have said, “I saw something in the kitchen sink. So I’m saying something. Quit leaving your crap all over the house. Clean up after yourself.”

   I can’t say I appreciated that treatment. Here I am trying to be a patriot and all I get is grief. But I am not finished. I noticed a neighbor down the block flying his flag every day. Most folks hereabout fly flags only on federal holidays and pay Boy Scouts a yearly fee to put the flags up early in the morning and take them down every night so every patriot can spend the day hands free to grope a beer and a cigarette while burning a steak on the barby.

    This questionable neighbor with the daily flag ritual is starting to get under my skin. Flying the flag every day isn’t normal. In fact, it’s downright suspect. What’s he trying to prove? Obviously, he’s trying too hard. This is obvious terrorist behavior. Believe me, you can look it up. The FBI ought to hear about it.

    Hope somebody gives them a ring.