Wednesday, April 7, 2010
The Plodder's Mile -- Chapter One
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The Plodder’s Mile
by Dane Allred
CHAPTER ONE
Tommy loomed over the bank teller; a giant compared to any other customer Judy had helped that day.
He was taller than anyone she had seen in a month or two, yet the innocent eyes and gentle demeanor softened the effect. Tommy looked like a big teddy bear, waiting for a hug, but today he stood filling the teller’s window with his massive frame. He held a note in his hand, and though he handed it to Judy without hesitation, the writing belied the intent of the transaction.
Judy had worked for the bank for several years now, putting her husband through college and waiting for the day when she could quit, follow him to his next chapter in life and… Do what? Probably get work at another bank, have children, build a home and settle into married life.
As she mechanically went through the motions of each day’s work, Judy didn’t really engage the mental powers of her business degree, and didn’t invest much emotion in the performance of her job. She wanted the paycheck, and wondered at times if this was all there really was to life. She read the note, and her life changed in an instant.
Tommy pushed back a shock of blond hair. He didn’t really understand what was going on, and had pushed the note to the teller under orders from Ray, his new best friend. Tommy usually did what other people told him to do, not thinking through the consequences. This gentle giant had been placed in state care early in his life by parents who couldn’t feed or care for someone with his needs. The state then placed him in several institutions trying to find the right fit for a massive man-child who wanted nothing more than to please. Ray had found the combination of trusting child-like passivity and Tommy’s massive frame irresistible as a partner in crime.
If Ray could only get Tommy to just pass the note without speaking.
Tommy spoke. “We’re going riding on a train.”
Judy looked up with fear in her eyes, never expecting this to happen to her, never expecting a man like Tommy to do something like this in a place so well protected with guards, cameras and secret alarms. She looked down at the note again. “Go to the vault and bring out one large package of 100 dollar bills. A gun is pointed at you to make sure you don’t cause no trouble.”
Judy looked at Tommy, and he looked blankly back.
She did a quick survey of the lobby, and there against the wall under one of the cameras was a short dirty looking man. He was looking directly into her eyes, and seemed to be poking the pocket of his jacket toward her. She glanced at the jacket, assumed there was a gun, and the man under the camera slowly shook his head up and down. Judy looked back at Tommy.
“We’re going on the train to Rockwood. Have you ever been to Rockwood?”
Judy was at once terrified and mystified. The giant in front of her was unaware of her agitation, but the man with the gun knew she faced a decision. One large package of 100 dollar bills meant the hundred thousand pack most banks receive from the federal reserve. She took a deep breath and tried to remember what she had been trained to do in this situation. She glanced once more at the pocketed gun and then slowly went to the safe.
Judy’s teller training had included several responses to just such an attempted robbery. She was to push the silent alarm button under her desk, or if prompted to go to the safe, to push the notification button in there. No alarms would sound, but the management would receive notification, and the guards would be put on alert.
Bank officials rarely lost any cash in robberies, and most companies worried about personal injury and the death of spectators, employees, or criminals more than the cash. The money that was lost was insured and could be replaced, but a life couldn’t be brought back. With the advanced technology available, robberies were usually a failure. Face recognition software, bank cameras, street cameras, and an alerted staff were usually all that was necessary for recovery of the cash.
But Judy was still unnerved. A threat had been made against her life, and the threat of the huge man at her window only drove the point home. She followed protocol and walked to the safe, pushed the button, grabbed the heavy package and walked back to the window.
Judy handed Tommy the money. She held it with both hands and placed it in his massive right hand. He palmed the package like a ball, and tossed it up in the air. A thousand one hundred dollar bills. The brown paper wrapping had official markings, but Tommy wasn’t impressed. He looked at Judy and only said one word.
“Football.”
One foot plodded after the other as the endless railroad ties passed under John Graham’s feet. The man whose breath cut a jagged path behind him as his feet thumped the ground liked to think of this type of running as plodding. Not really running, or even jogging, but more simply plodding along. He had even developed a name for this pace. He called it the plodder’s mile. One foot in front of the other. Plod on, mighty exercise king. Keep plodding and imagine that it is running, and tell everyone else it is jogging. But to yourself, never be ashamed to plod along this path. One foot, and then another.
Plodding along on the west side of town was always good for reducing stress, and John Graham liked the railroad tracks. He always thought back to the days of running through tires for the one year he played football, although the team probably didn’t really use tires, but was just a cultural imprint from all those football movies he had watched. Bill-paying stress was one of the usual causes of jogging on the tracks, and at least once a month out came the “plodding” shoes. He and his wife Reba had just finished the “you spend too much money” discussion which usually followed the monthly bill payment routine. Heated discussion. Argument. Battle. World War III. Funny how the person doing the accusing always said the other person spent too much, which was answered with, “No, you spend too much.”
Both of which were probably true. As a high school drama teacher, the money wasn’t bad now after 20 years, unless they had to live on only that money, which they didn’t. Reba was a high school administrator, and although they had spent the last 25 years wondering where all the money went, there was never enough even when they were making six figures between them. With part-time work, selling things on E-bay and extracurricular pay, they really didn’t have anything to complain about. But they both still complained. Loudly. Once a month.
It was probably a good thing they were only paid once at the end of the month, since this tended to limit the argument to the first few days of the next month. The rest of the time was spent in a truce where they both waited for the final days before payday, reconnoitering on just how to spend some of the money on an absolutely necessary item to which the other spouse could not possibly object. There were good days, and bad ones, and bad months, (especially August) but most of the other 365 days were spent monitoring each others borders like North and South Korea, waiting for an infraction.
“There’s no more money in the account,” had been one of his last salvos, which was followed by a broad shot by Reba, “Why do you keep writing checks when you say there is no money in the account?”
The strategy board after all these years now included five different checking or savings accounts – more places to hide money. They both had plenty, and there was no argument about the fact that there was plenty to go around. The war was only about “where does it all go”?
John crossed over the river and looked out at the fields which were white with the new snow. It had melted some as the afternoon snow had turned to rain, and the slush left in the fields looked like a freshly cut white alfalfa crop ready to winnow and then bale. The air was crisp and the temperature just right, cold enough to balance the heat created as he plodded along wondering why he felt so crummy. He really didn’t have anything to complain about, and if money was the biggest problem they faced this year, it would be a good year indeed. Breathing in the frosty air, John thought back ten years as he was sitting at Reba’s bedside in the hospital, where he had been telling her to keep breathing, to wake up, keep breathing and keep trying.
The cancer treatments and the pain medications had left her numb in the fingers and toes, but ten years out she was still “free and clear” of any recurring cancer. But those days back in the hospital had changed him forever, even to the point of welcoming her restless tossing and turning at night which kept him awake while she slept. Better to be kept awake by tossing and turning than sleeping alone. He was grateful to still have his wife and the mother of his children around.
So why the discontent? He looked at a perfectly contented horse eating out of a trough at the side of a field. As he jogged past, he noticed the light rain had again turned to snow. The back of the horse was steaming while the snow fell slowly. The horse’s dark coat contrasted with the light of the snow on its back helped him to summarize this train of thought — while there is life, there is opposition — and that’s what makes life worth living.
Even the exercise of jogging opposed the sensible idea of sitting in the house while the snow fell fed the thoughts of opposition. Gravity and weight versus the muscles, which would undoubtedly be sore tomorrow, would produce better health and flexibility. If the literature was to be believed, and John actually kept running during the year, and he completed a fourth marathon, his risks of heart attack would decrease over the next five years. But there was always the uncertainty. Jog on the railroad tracks, get lost in your thoughts, get hit by a train, and all that exercise was for nothing. He thought of a bumper sticker. “The light at the end of the tunnel is from the oncoming train.”
Which made John realize there was a train in the distance, and if he wanted the benefits of this particular cardio-vascular exercise, he would have to get off the tracks for a couple of minutes. He turned aside at another bridge and went under the tracks, jogging comfortably on a running trail which ran by the river. There was a water fountain at a park just half a mile ahead, and then, after a long cold drink, it would be time to jog back home.
The Listeners by Walter de la Mare
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The Listeners
by Walter de la Mare
"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grass
Of the forest's ferny floor;
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
"Is there anybody there?" he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—
"Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word," he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
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“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”
By James Thurber
“We’re going through!”
The Commander’s voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye.
“We can’t make it, sir. It’s spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me.”
“I’m not asking you, Lieutenant Berg,” said the Commander. “Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8500! We’re going through!”
The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials.
“Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” he shouted.
“Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” repeated Lieutenant Berg.
“Full strength in No. 3 turret!” shouted the Commander.
“Full strength in No. 3 turret!”
The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned.
“The Old Man’ll get us through,” they said to one another. “The Old Man ain’t afraid of hell!” . . .
“Not so fast! You’re driving too fast!” said Mrs. Mitty. “What are you driving so fast for?”
“Hmm?” said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd
“You were up to fifty-five,” she said. “You know I don’t like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five.” Walter Mitty drove on toward Waterbury in silence, the roaring of the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying fading in the remote, intimate airways of his mind.
“You’re tensed up again,” said Mrs. Mitty. “It’s one of your days. I wish you’d let Dr. Renshaw look you over.”
Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the building where his wife went to have her hair done.
“Remember to get those overshoes while I’m having my hair done,” she said. “I don’t need overshoes,” said Mitty.
She put her mirror back into her bag. “We’ve been all through that,” she said, getting out of the car. “You’re not a young man any longer.”
He raced the engine a little. “Why don’t you wear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?” Walter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the gloves. He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he had driven on to a red light, he took them off again.
“Pick it up, brother!” snapped a cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and lurched ahead. He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the hospital on his way to the parking lot.
. . . “It’s the millionaire banker, Wellington McMillan,” said the pretty nurse.
“Yes?” said Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly. “Who has the case?”
“Dr. Renshaw and Dr. Benbow, but there are two specialists here, Dr. Remington from New York and Dr. Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew over.”
A door opened down a long, cool corridor and Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and haggard.
“Hello, Mitty,” he said. `’We’re having the devil’s own time with McMillan, the millionaire banker and close personal friend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish you’d take a look at him.”
“Glad to,” said Mitty.
In the operating room there were whispered introductions: “Dr. Remington, Dr. Mitty. Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty.”
“I’ve read your book on streptothricosis,” said Pritchard-Mitford, shaking hands. “A brilliant performance, sir.”
“Thank you,” said Walter Mitty.
“Didn’t know you were in the States, Mitty,” grumbled Remington. “Coals to Newcastle, bringing Mitford and me up here for a tertiary.”
“You are very kind,” said Mitty. A huge, complicated machine, connected to the operating table, with many tubes and wires, began at this moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa.
“The new anesthetizer is giving away!” shouted an intern. “There is no one in the East who knows how to fix it!”
“Quiet, man!” said Mitty, in a low, cool voice. He sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep. He began fingering delicately a row of glistening dials.
“Give me a fountain pen!” he snapped. Someone handed him a fountain pen. He pulled a faulty piston out of the machine and inserted the pen in its place.
“That will hold for ten minutes,” he said. “Get on with the operation. A nurse hurried over and whispered to Renshaw, and Mitty saw the man turn pale.
“Coreopsis has set in,” said Renshaw nervously. “If you would take over, Mitty?”
Mitty looked at him and at the craven figure of Benbow, who drank, and at the grave, uncertain faces of the two great specialists. “If you wish,” he said. They slipped a white gown on him, he adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves; nurses handed him shining . . .
“Back it up, Mac!! Look out for that Buick!” Walter Mitty jammed on the brakes.
“Wrong lane, Mac,” said the parking-lot attendant, looking at Mitty closely.
“Gee. Yeh,” muttered Mitty. He began cautiously to back out of the lane marked “Exit Only.” “Leave her sit there,” said the attendant. “I’ll put her away.” Mitty got out of the car.
“Hey, better leave the key.”
“Oh,” said Mitty, handing the man the ignition key. The attendant vaulted into the car, backed it up with insolent skill, and put it where it belonged.
They’re so damn cocky, thought Walter Mitty, walking along Main Street; they think they know everything. Once he had tried to take his chains off, outside New Milford, and he had got them wound around the axles. A man had had to come out in a wrecking car and unwind them, a young, grinning garage man. Since then Mrs. Mitty always made him drive to a garage to have the chains taken off. The next time, he thought, I’ll wear my right arm in a sling; they won’t grin at me then. I’ll have my right arm in a sling and they’ll see I couldn’t possibly take the chains off myself. He kicked at the slush on the sidewalk.
“Overshoes,” he said to himself, and he began looking for a shoe store.
When he came out into the street again, with the overshoes in a box under his arm, Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other thing was his wife had told him to get. She had told him, twice before they set out from their house for Waterbury. In a way he hated these weekly trips to town — he was always getting something wrong. Kleenex, he thought, Squibb’s, razor blades? No. Tooth paste, toothbrush, bicarbonate, Carborundum, initiative and referendum? He gave it up. But she would remember it.
“Where’s the what’s-its- name?” she would ask. “Don’t tell me you forgot the what’s-its-name.” A newsboy went by shouting something about the Waterbury trial.
. . . “Perhaps this will refresh your memory.” The District Attorney suddenly thrust a heavy automatic at the quiet figure on the witness stand. “Have you ever seen this before?'’ Walter Mitty took the gun and examined it expertly. “This is my Webley-Vickers 50.80,” he said calmly.
An excited buzz ran around the courtroom. The Judge rapped for order.
“You are a crack shot with any sort of firearms, I believe?” said the District Attorney, insinuatingly.
“Objection!” shouted Mitty’s attorney. “We have shown that the defendant could not have fired the shot. We have shown that he wore his right arm in a sling on the night of the fourteenth of July.”
Walter Mitty raised his hand briefly and the bickering attorneys were stilled. “With any known make of gun,” he said evenly, “I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with my left hand.”
Pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom. A woman’s scream rose above the bedlam and suddenly a lovely, dark-haired girl was in Walter Mitty’s arms. The District Attorney struck at her savagely. Without rising from his chair, Mitty let the man have it on the point of the chin. “You miserable cur!” . . .
“Puppy biscuit,” said Walter Mitty. He stopped walking and the buildings of Waterbury rose up out of the misty courtroom and surrounded him again. A woman who was passing laughed.
“He said ‘Puppy biscuit,’” she said to her companion. “That man said ‘Puppy biscuit’ to himself.”
Walter Mitty hurried on. He went into an A. & P., not the first one he came to but a smaller one farther up the street. “I want some biscuit for small, young dogs,” he said to the clerk. “Any special brand, sir?” The greatest pistol shot in the world thought a moment. “It says ‘Puppies Bark for It’ on the box,” said Walter Mitty.
His wife would be through at the hairdresser’s in fifteen minutes’ Mitty saw in looking at his watch, unless they had trouble drying it; sometimes they had trouble drying it. She didn’t like to get to the hotel first, she would want him to be there waiting for her as usual. He found a big leather chair in the lobby, facing a window, and he put the overshoes and the puppy biscuit on the floor beside it. He picked up an old copy of Liberty and sank down into the chair. “Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?” Walter Mitty looked at the pictures of bombing planes and of ruined streets.
. . . “The cannonading has got the wind up in young Raleigh, sir,” said the sergeant. Captain Mitty looked up at him through tousled hair.
“Get him to bed,” he said wearily, “with the others. I’ll fly alone.”
“But you can’t, sir,” said the sergeant anxiously. “It takes two men to handle that bomber and the Archies are pounding hell out of the air. Von Richtman’s circus is between here and Saulier.” “Somebody’s got to get that ammunition dump,” said Mitty. “I’m going over. Spot of brandy?” He poured a drink for the sergeant and one for himself. War thundered and whined around the dugout and battered at the door. There was a rending of wood and splinters flew through the room.
“A bit of a near thing,” said Captain Mitty carelessly.
“The box barrage is closing in,” said the sergeant. “We only live once, Sergeant,” said Mitty, with his faint, fleeting smile. “Or do we?”
He poured another brandy and tossed it off. “I never see a man could hold his brandy like you, sir,” said the sergeant. “Begging your pardon, sir.”
Captain Mitty stood up and strapped on his huge Webley-Vickers automatic. “It’s forty kilometers through hell, sir,” said the sergeant.
Mitty finished one last brandy. “After all,” he said softly, “what isn’t?” The pounding of the cannon increased; there was the rat-tat-tatting of machine guns, and from somewhere came the menacing pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the new flame-throwers. Walter Mitty walked to the door of the dugout humming “Aupres de Ma Blonde.” He turned and waved to the sergeant.
“Cheerio!” he said. . . .
Something struck his shoulder. “I’ve been looking all over this hotel for you,” said Mrs. Mitty. “Why do you have to hide in this old chair? How did you expect me to find you?”
“Things close in,” said Walter Mitty vaguely.
“What?” Mrs. Mitty said. “Did you get the what’s-its-name? The puppy biscuit? What’s in that box?”
“Overshoes,” said Mitty. “Couldn’t you have put them on in the store?”
“I was thinking,” said Walter Mitty. “Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?” She looked at him. “I’m going to take your temperature when I get you home,” she said.
They went out through the revolving doors that made a faintly derisive whistling sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks to the parking lot.
At the drugstore on the corner she said, “Wait here for me. I forgot something. I won’t be a minute.” She was more than a minute.
Walter Mitty lighted a cigarette. It began to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up against the wall of the drugstore, smoking. . . .
He put his shoulders back and his heels together. “To hell with the handkerchief,” said Walter Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away.
Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.
This is another episode of "Literature Out Loud" from the weekly program "Abundance". As the host, Dane Allred reads selections from famous literature each week on www.k-talk.com from 7 to 8 pm Mountain Standard Time every Sunday.
United We Stand
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United We Stand
Do you remember back to a time when you were young and carefree? The time when all seemed right with the world, and nothing threatened your sense of security and safety? As children, we seemed not to have a care and didn’t worry about what was happening anywhere else but right where we were. We didn’t know about problems around the world, about problems in our country, or even problems in the neighborhood.
As we grew older, we were gradually introduced to the evil which can exist in the world, and we may have lost that wonder and awe we had back then. We also want to protect our children so they can have that same feeling of protection; that cocoon which helps them feel safe in their world.
Our bridge to the future is the upcoming generations. We are all getting older even though we don’t want to admit it. This is one of the reasons I like working with younger people. It gives me the impression I am much younger than I am, but that’s not a bad thing. Until I look in the mirror and the wrinkles betray all of the life experience I have been blessed to have.
What does it all mean? I’m glad for the time I have left to prepare this world to be a better place in the future, but that also means there will be a time I have to leave. Those who are the next leaders, movers and shakers are slowly filling the ranks and gently pushing us out. As they gain their confidence and move forward to own their own future, we may be relegated to the dustbins of history. I already feel some of this when I try to comprehend the new technologies, the myriad of things I need to know how to do I never imagined I would be able to master, and those things I choose to let pass by me and don’t bother to learn.
I’m not a good at texting, but I do text at times. We’re talking a couple of texts a month, compared with those with the dancing thumbs who can text 20 or 30 thousand text messages a month. I don’t want to be sending a thousand text messages a month. I don’t have that interesting of a life, and I don’t know a thousand people who would be interested. I know these massive totals are texts to a lot of the same people, but why would I want to keep reading text messages from someone who isn’t standing there with me, ignoring the people who are standing there with me.
I also don’t want to become an online gaming addict. I’ve already been through enough of the time wasting on video games in my past, and when my kids got their first Nintendo, I will admit I spent enough time to master the Loony Tunes game where you meet Max at the end. Sadly, some of you will also know what I’m talking about.
As we cross the threshold together, there will come a time when we must let go and let those who will be running the world do it the way they want. Until that time comes, what can we do to help ensure a better tomorrow?
I believe it rests with our positive outlook, and on focusing on the abundance around us. We can’t inspire a new generation with negativity and pessimism. If all the younger generation hears from us in the older generation is how much better it was in the good old days, what kind of message do we send to those we want to trust with the future? Have you ever been given a task by someone who expected you to fail? It’s hard to be inspired when those who give you the job don’t think you can do it.
Think about it. The negativity and pessimism of the current generation could be our fault. If our attitude is things will never get better, but only worse, and we show our lack of faith in the younger generation by undermining their confidence, we may deserve what we get. It’s an interesting proposition. Can you continue in your complaining, and expect a better tomorrow?
Get on board and get positive. Those who want to make a difference in what tomorrow brings need to help the solutions appear by thinking solutions are possible. We need to encourage those who will follow us by telling them they can do it, not that they can’t. When we combine the energies of those who have seen better days with those who want a brighter future, the outcome will be amazing. We can do whatever we set our minds to do, and with positive expectations, we will get there together.
Artificial Me
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Artificial Me
Sitting in the dentist chair for two hours isn’t fun, but I do like having my teeth is good condition. I have the world’s worst teeth, but you may already know this. What amazes me is the incredible techniques that have been developed to help us stay well. I tried to pay attention to what was going on, but I have no idea what all the jargon and technical words meant. I just know they fixed my teeth, and the only thing that hurt the next day was where I had to get shots to numb up my mouth.
I don’t even want to consider what people had to endure just 100 years ago as dentists, doctors and barbers tried to fix people. That’s right. Barbers were an inexpensive doctor back in the day, especially if you needed blood-letting. The red and white barber pole was an advertisement to have your hair cut, or your blood let, which means taking out some of that bad, bad blood which must be making you sick. Many people died of blood-letting in the past. The explanation for the death must have been that not enough blood had been drained. Scary.
George the Second and George Washington both died after substantial blood-lettings. It has been largely discontinued, but recent research shows the iron build-up in blood may result in various diseases. The solution? Blood-letting.
Think about some other technologies I carry around on my own body. I have a bridge in my mouth. Someone in the past thought to themselves about how to cover up that big ugly gap where a tooth is missing. Why not build a dental device which bridges that gap, and attach it to the teeth around the gap? And think about the first patient this was tried on. Bridges in mouths are common today, but the first patient had to be convinced to have two good teeth ground down so the bridge could be attached. I would have loved to hear the dentist explain it. Maybe the first experiments were dentists who needed a bridge. It surprises me how many of the medical advances of the past were tried on the inventor first. Sometimes they experimented on their families.
It is thought Marie Curie may have died from her continued exposure to radium. Her fingertips produced so much radiation that her lab books showed fingerprints when photographic film was placed between the pages. From x-rays to casts to filled cavities in my mouth, the medical advances I’ve used seem commonplace today, and it makes me wonder what parts of me will be replaced in the future.
How much of me has to be replaced before more of me is artificial than real? What happens when scientists can transfer my mind into a computer? Is the computer me, or just me up to that point in my life?
It’s enough to make my poor human brain hurt. But I like to think about what people in the future will think when they find my dried out skull and notice most of the teeth are filled, drilled or fake. Will they even know what a bridge is by then? Think about this. Centuries ago people used to drill holes in people’s heads. We know because we have found skulls with holes drilled in them while the people were alive. I don’t know why they would drill a hole in someone’s head, but there are people who still do this, and let other people do it to them.
As we live in the bridge from our past to today, to whatever the future will bring, I expect there to be an abundance of discovery, adventure and experimentation. I just did a commercial for pain patch which places capsaicin directly on the skin as a patch to help with the pain from shingles. Think what makes peppers hot. Then concentrate it at eight percent. It has to hurt when it is put on, but apparently shingles hurts much, much more.
As we discover more and more about how and why the body works, there will be more and more amazing cures and advances. The amazing pace of change seems to get faster and faster. We may experience a time when something earth-shattering will happen every day. As the amount of information available continues to increase, how can we hope to keep up? Maybe that is your assignment. Invent the next technology which coordinates the light-speed developments so we can connect point A with point B and get the real solutions we need in the future. Sponsor someone who is innovating; contribute to those who are trying to get us to that better tomorrow.
I hope to see you in that brilliant, creative, innovative tomorrow, and maybe I may have some real parts left.
Another 800 word - 5 minute podcast by Dane Allred as he hosts “Abundance”. These episodes are broadcast live every Sunday on www.k-talk.com from 7 to 8 p.m. (Mountain Standard Time), and are also available at daneallred.podcast.com and www.daneallred.com. Watch for his upcoming book, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Dane Allred”.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Double Preparation
Click on the player above to hear a podcast of this blog.
Double preparation
It’s kind of scary when the doctor tells you to get a colonoscopy, not just because of your age, but because he saw a freckle in your eye. That may take some explanation. A regular eye exam showed a spot on my retina. The optician casually mentioned this type of spot might be cancerous. That’s a jolt to hear. I was really worried, and continued to worry until I saw another doctor and he told me it was benign – just a freckle that should be checked every year. Then he casually remarked I needed to get a colonoscopy since this type of spot was associated with colon polyps. I began to worry again.
It’s a strange thing to be uncertain. It’s a reminder of our mortality, and most of us aren’t ready to get off the ride. In the second before the doctor says I’m okay I’m exactly the same as the second after. So why do I feel so much better just because the doctor says I’m okay? It’s a strange thing.
We put our trust in doctors. We pay them to tell us how we are. We hope they will find a pill to fix what we are feeling, and when they tell us what to do, we usually do it. I’m not sure why we have such faith, but we do. Maybe it’s a placebo effect – we want to feel better, so we get checked out by a doctor, and then we feel better because we did something. Anything. Well, almost anything.
There are other professionals we trust. Lawyers, judges, teachers, law enforcement, airline pilots and others are called professionals. What does the word mean? We “profess” we have a skill. Others believe in our “professions”. But we all know some people are better at their jobs than others. I once had a dentist who was not the best. I wound up getting all of the fillings he did replaced by someone else. I’ve been to another dentist who gave me enough laughing gas that I had an out-of-body experience and was floating in the corner of the room watching him work on me.
But now I have a dentist I trust. How do we eventually find where we are comfortable? I’ve had opticians I trusted, but when one of them told me I had old eyes, he never saw me again. I was really impressed my current eye doctor found this freckle in my eye when others had missed it. I even kept going to him when he left to start his own practice.
And why do they call it practice? I don’t want to be “practiced on”. I want my professionals to have practiced on someone else, and get to me when they have finished practicing and become an expert. We have a strange list of words we use to describe some of this practice.
Aseptic – it means clean.
A procedure – this usually involves removing a part of me.
Prescription – here’s my best guess at what will fix you.
Symptoms – another word for problems.
Developments – something we didn’t expect to happen.
Effects – usually something bad.
Abberation – something really bad we didn’t expect to happen.
It makes me stop and think about those who consider me a professional at what I do, and it’s a reminder to stop and think if I am doing things which are unprofessional, if I am undercutting the belief of others in what I do. It’s a good check-up for us to do on ourselves every once in a while.
So when someone tells you to get ready for a colonoscopy, there are some interesting preparations. You get to be cleaned out, and I won’t go into the details. So I got the phone call and someone said to get ready, I got ready. I showed up at the hospital at the appointed time, and tried to find someone to give me a colonoscopy. It was a Saturday morning and the place was deserted. My wife and I wandered to the front of the hospital to see if anyone knew what was going on. Someone helped us figure out that no colonoscopies were performed on Saturdays, but I was welcome to come back on Monday to get one. Which meant another round of what is affectionately called “colonoscopy prep”. Yep. I had to do it again on Sunday to be ready for Monday. I was extra clean.
The colonoscopy found no polyps, but I was told to come back in five years for another checkup. I’ve had the follow-up, and now I don’t have to go back for ten years. It was like a reprieve on a death sentence. If you’ve done a colonoscopy prep, you know what I mean.
Especially if you’ve done it twice in a weekend.
Another 800 word/ 5 minute podcast by Dane Allred as he hosts “Abundance”. These episodes are broadcast live every Sunday on www.k-talk.com from 7 to 8 p.m. (Mountain Standard Time), and are also available at daneallred.podcast.com and www.daneallred.com. Watch for his upcoming book, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Dane Allred”.
Advanced Placement
Click on the player above to hear a podcast of this blog.
Advanced Placement
Sometimes barriers are placed in our way to test our resolve. Obstacles are clearly meant to be overcome, but how we overcome some of the obstructions in our world depends on our own creativity and convictions.
After taking the ASVAB, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, which tests to see if you know which nut belongs to which bolt and other things, I found out I could be a lawyer. The interest survey included with this test lets students choose the kinds of work they think they would like based on questions about their strengths, hobbies and desires. I think my category told me I was socially oriented, and in that category were teachers, social workers, and lawyers. For no other reason than I wanted to make lots of money and I thought being a lawyer sounded cool, I decided I would be a lawyer. I had no other interest in law before that, and luckily, I ended up as a teacher. I love my job and wouldn’t trade it for all the cash in China. But to get to be a teacher, I had to think I was going to be a lawyer first.
I checked to see what kind of education was necessary for lawyers, and noticed I was not enrolled in the right classes. Tracking is a way schools channel students into various classes, and even though it is technically not supposed to exist, the tracking of students takes place every day. I was a trouble maker in school, so I didn’t really belong in the advanced classes. But to be a lawyer I had to go to college, and I could get college credit while still in high school by taking advanced placement classes. I would have to pass the AP test at the end of the year, but I have always been a good test taker.
Getting into AP history was easy enough, and once I was signed up for one AP class I wanted another. AP English. But I had to take a test to see if I really could be an AP student, when really, it should have been up to me to try and fail on my own. But the entrance test showed I should be able to handle the class, or they just wanted to shut me up, so I was enrolled.
I was a busy senior, acting in plays, doing the morning announcements, even speaking at graduation. But this meant I was not always in class receiving the precious words of wisdom from my teachers, which meant there was no way I would be able to pass the test at the end of the year. Both of my AP teachers told me not to waste my money by taking the test. This only strengthened my resolve.
Think about the benefits of passing the test. If I could get a passing score, I could have 24 college credits on my transcript before my first day at the university. Back then, you didn’t even have to pay to get the college credit; they just added it to your total. Today, most colleges charge what the tuition would have cost for those credits, but at least you don’t have to spend the time. I would get a double free-ride if I passed!
I’m not sure why we discourage people from trying to achieve. Maybe we think the specter of failure will permanently disfigure them. What really happens is most people who are knocked down and get up again gain a valuable lesson. They learn how to get back up again when they are knocked down. It’s really not so bad on the ground, unless that’s where you stay.
I’m sure both of these teachers thought they had my best interests in mind when they told me not to take the tests. But I don’t take that kind of obstruction seriously. Easily overcome, I marched into the tests with my head held high, knowing I was the master of my destiny, and if I failed the tests, I would only be out a hundred dollars or so. But if I passed the tests, I would save myself thousands of dollars and cut time off my degree.
I passed both tests and had 24 credits. After I took some other College Level Examination Program tests, I had tested out of a year of college. I finished a four year degree in three years. If I had listened to the nay-sayers who were sure I wasn’t college material, I would have missed out on all the fun I’ve had since then.
But then again, I was in the work force full-time by the age of twenty-one. Maybe I should have overcome those obstructions at a slower pace. I must really love my work.
Another 800 word/ 5 minute podcast by Dane Allred as he hosts “Abundance”. These episodes are broadcast live every Sunday on www.k-talk.com from 7 to 8 p.m. (Mountain Standard Time), and are also available at daneallred.podcast.com and www.daneallred.com. Watch for his upcoming book, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Dane Allred”.
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