The Past, Remembered

Here's an interesting little anecdote from my past (I know, I know, you're saying "I'll be the judge of that"). It has to do with my adventures a Naval hospital.

About 15 years ago, I was playing basketball at the Navy gym in Newport, Rhode Island. I had just recently moved back from attending high school in Athens Greece, and I had moved in with my brother. We were playing pickup 5-on-5 basketball, and had been going at it for a while - probably close to 3 hours. These types of marathon basketball sessions inevitably lead to some pretty sloppy play late in the day, and this day wasn't any exception. We were late in a game, and the other team had a steal and a two on none breakaway, with me being the closest player on my team trailing the play. For whatever reason (I still don't know to this day), I decided that I wasn't going to give up an easy layup, so I caught up with the guy with the basketball, who should have passed it to his teammate for the easy layup. Instead, he gave me a pretty good fake to his right. When I dodged that way, he brought the ball back across his (and my body) to his left. We were close enough to each other that he clipped me over my right eye with his right elbow. I went down like a fairly large sack of hammers with a large cut along the length of my right eyebrow.

If you've ever had a cut on your forehead, you'll know that it bleeds...ALOT. There are lots of blood vessels right there, and the skin is really thin. As I lay there, bleeding all over the court, my brother and friends ran up to me with a towel, which I pressed against the cut, hoping it would stop the bleeding - it didn't. My brother later told me that it looked from a distance like my eye had exploded when I got hit...I still have shivers about that thought...

At this point, my brother drove me to the Navy hospital which was only about 3 minutes away on the base. By the time I got through the emergency room admission procedures, the cut itself had stopped bleeding. I was expecting that they would throw a couple of stitches in there, and I'd be on my way, but I was wrong. They told me that since I had taken a blow to the head near the eye socket, they would have to X-ray it to make sure I hadn't fractured anything. The problem with this is that nothing ever really gets done quickly in a Navy hospital. I found myself waiting in the hallway with my brother and my friend while they prepped the X-Ray machine (whatever that entails), which took about 30 minutes. During this wait I had the opportunity to go into the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror...the cut was pretty bad, and the skin had parted far enough so that I could see my skull. Being 18 years old, I made sure to touch my skull with my finger so that I would have a cool anecdote at a party that I was going to that night, but that's not the worst part of the story.

The X-Ray procedure was pretty straight-forward. They pressed my face against a screen at four different angles and took a picture of each angle. After the X-Rays were taken, I went back out to sit in the hallway and wait for them to be developed. About 2 minutes later, the X-Ray technician came out of the room and told me: "I'm sorry to tell you this, but we forgot to load the film in the machine...we're gonna have to take the X-Rays again."

I was pretty groggy from the blow that I had taken, but I went back in and went through the four positions again, each time having a picture taken. When they were done, I went back out in the hallway to wait for them to be developed. About 15 minutes later, the same technician came out and said: "You're not gonna believe this, but two of the pictures didn't come out...we're gonna have to do those two again."

I was still groggy, but not so much that I didn't notice the heavy lead apron he was still wearing. I asked him: "How safe is it to have 10 X-Rays staight to the head in a matter of 20 minutes?" He didn't seem too worried about it, so I went back in and had the other two pictures retaken.

Like I said, this was 15 years or so ago, and in the meantime, I've gone on to get a B.A. in History, an M.S. in General Secondary Education and a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership, but if you notice anything odd about my posts, you'll understand why...you'll understand why...you'll understand why...you'll understand why...you'll understand why...you'll understand why...you'll understand why...you'll understand why...(sorry got caught in a loop)

Happy Valentine's Day

Here's hoping that everyone is having a great Valentine's day. I've got to admit, I'm not usually into this holiday as it seems fake, but since this will be the last holiday of any sort that I will be with my wife until May (at the earliest) or July (at the latest), I decided to do more than I would usually do (flowers and a card).

I had seriously thought about taking her on a trip for a couple days, but that ended up being too overboard. So, instead, I made all of the arrangments for our first "date night" since our anniversary trip to Paris in November. We left our son with some friends, went to see Ocean's Twelve (a good movie, but not as inventive as the original - I'm always a little bit worried when a movie depends on Deus ex Machina as a plot device) and then ate dinner at a great Italian restaurant in town. Overall, well worth the effort.

Anyway, here's hoping that you have a great day.

Outted On The Bus

Last night, as I was riding the bus home, I was outted as an American. Who knew that it would cause such a ruckus? Here's how it happened:

I have to walk to the bottom of the hill in front of the campus to catch the bus. There are buses that leave from the Campus, but they are almost exclusively headed into town, whereas I have to go away from town to get home. Every once in a while, a co-worker will also be taking the bus in the same direction. When this happens, we will talk until he gets off at his stop, which is about half-way home. This isn't normally too much of a problem as the bus is usually a double decker and will have plenty of seats available on the ground floor. The kids heading home from grammar and secondary school are too cool to sit on the ground floor, and will go to the second floor. Well, last night, the bus that came was a single decker bus, and so all of the "adults" and "kids" (I put these terms in quotation marks because it's not really that clear-cut) were mixed together. My coworker and I ended up sitting across the isle from each other surrounded by school children - probably between 13-15 years old.

I was talking with my friend about a planned trip that I will be taking to Spain at the end of March. As our conversation progressed, it dawned on the kids around us that I was a foreigner. This led to some pretty innocuous questions, but nothing too horrible as long as my coworker and I were talking. This all changed, however, when he got off at his stop. At this point, it was just me surrounded by sugar-enhanced gregarious 13 year olds, some of whom were fairly loud about asking me questions. This, of course, drew the attention of more ritalin-deprived kids, so before I knew it, I was surrounded by between 10-15 kids all of whom thought I took requests. I've taught that age student before, and know how energetic they can be, but I've never been a novelty item at the same time. They seemed enthralled by my accent, and so they pestered me to say things like "potato," "wanker," arsehole," and the alphabet (among many others), while also asking me questions like "Have you ever been to Chicago?", "How about Las Vegas?", "What do you think of George Bush?", and "Led Zeppelin or Queen?"

This doesn't sound too bad, but imagine being machine gunned by this type of request every few seconds for about 20 minutes. I thought my stop would never arrive. I got off the bus more tired than ever before...