Contagiosum Idiosum

Some of the fondest memories of my career in the medical field have involved the couple of years I worked in a local emergency room. Our town has about a half million (a million, if you count the surrounding areas), so the hospitals have a broad range of humanity from which to draw. I worked the "graveyard" shift (11 p.m. to 7 a.m.), and it's my educated opinion that that's when the best of the worst come in.

Late one evening, a young couple (early 20s) came in. The woman was had excruciating pain in her abdomen, and was diagnosed and treated. The boyfriend came over to the desk. (Sidebar: Keep in mind that in this hospital (as in most), everyone wears the same color scrubs in the ER. Unless you look closely at a badge, it's not possible to tell a doctor from an x-ray technician, or a nurse from a desk clerk.)

So in this case, the boyfriend happened upon the desk clerk, a young man who happened to have already put in his two weeks' notice, and was serving out his last day of employment at the hospital. His name was Keefe, and one of his most interesting traits was that he only possessed one facial expression... a blank stare. He could get happy, sad, mad, or entertained, but always, he had that same blank look.

"Excuse me," the boyfriend said to Keefe, in hushed tones. "My girlfriend was just diagnosed with ovarian cysts." Keefe nodeed understandingly. "What I need to know," he continued, "is if I can catch those from her."

Keefe leaned over, with his Look intact, and calmly explained: "The only way you can catch them from her, my friend, is if you're doing it doggy style, and your ovaries rub up against hers."

The man politely thanked Keefe and left. Keefe went back to work, and the rest of us spasmed about in peals of laughter.

I really liked Keefe.

A friend http://www.xanga.com/ralf has inspired me to tell the tale of our own neighbor.  Thanks for the memories, Ralf!

Rick moved into our house before we married.  It was a brand new neighborhood; sod wasn't complete, privacy fences weren't yet installed, and it was more like a big cow pasture with houses strewn around on it.  Some houses are finished, some aren't.  Some have residents, some don't.  Rick's house did, as did the one directly south of him.  It was inhabited by a kind man who was in a perpetual state of Budweiser-induced numbness, and his wife, a hippie from way back, full of peace, love and hemp.

So one evening Rick comes home late.  The hippie-love woman (no spring chicken herself, remember how old the Grateful Dead are, after all) is doing something on the corner of her house.  Best as Rick can tell, she's throwing things in the air. As he gets closer, he notices that the floodlight on the corner of her home is shining down on her, in that "ooo-OOO-ooo" way that you see in the movies, when the strings start to play and something heavenly is about to happen.  And indeed, she was throwing something into the air.

Rick grew closer, and hippie-love saw him.  "LOOK, Rick!" she gushed, as she threw what was determined to be grass seed into the air.  Remember, we all had to plant grass seed or lay sod, as we had no lawns yet, so grass seed was an okay thing to be tossing around.  But still, at 11 p.m.?

"LOOK, Rick!" she exalted, as she tossed a handfull of seed into the air.  The light caught the seeds, and they glistened.  "It's STARDUST!" 

And to add to the special effect, hippie-love was wearing only a tee-shirt.  When she raised her arm to toss, the shirt went way up... a special evening to remember, indeed.

Rick mumbled something, walked into his house, and closed the blinds on that side of the living room.  They've been closed for five years.