June 24-30, 2011
I have felt the love and thank you for
indulging my moment of insecurity. Many a starfish waved a paw in
response to my need for affirmation signaling that all my effort is not
in vain. So, in the words of my high school softball coach, who was one
of the first to respond, “Quit contemplating your navel and get back to
work!” On with the Great Greyhound Gagging saga!
If I recall
correctly, we left off in the Charlottesville bus station with my
proclamation that I would NOT get back on that bus!
Well, I did….
Between my declaration and my betrayal of it, the following happened:
The
driver flat out insulted me to my face. I stomped off to the bathroom
frantically dialing on the way my cousin who was to pick me up in
Norfolk. Once in the stall, I hung up before she could answer. Now that
my breathing had returned to normal and a decent receptacle was in front
of me, I didn’t know which end of my body was going to take advantage
of it first. I stood there a minute trying to decide if I needed to face
the toilet or the door. I hadn’t eaten since early morning, so my
stomach had nothing with which to express its feelings about the
situation, so I had a four hour pee, or so it seemed, and called my
cousin. She got a hysterical earful that ended with, “I’ll call you back
when I find out what time the next bus for Norfolk leaves.”
“1 o’clock tomorrow! The next bus doesn’t leave until 1 o’clock tomorrow!!” began the second hysterical phone call.
I
ran like O.J. through an airport to get my place in the reboard line.
Please, please, please, Power that Be, grant me the open seat up front
of someone whose final destination was Charlottesville! My prayer was
answered, on the third row, next to a woman suffering from
schizophrenia. To her it was obvious she already had a seatmate and if I
plopped my butt down there, I would squish him. I asked permission to
take the seat and she responded by pointing to him and conferring with
the window. I was very sorry, but I was not going back there, no
matter whose lap I had to sit on. Anything of mine that crossed the
dividing line of our seats sent her cringing to the point of melding her
body into the side of the bus. I felt like a leaper and wanted Jesus to
come cure me ASAP. I wanted to take her hand in mine and tell her I
understood and she didn’t have to fear me, but I knew if I moved even a
millimeter more into her space it could cause a total meltdown. So, I
tried to hug the aisle, send loving vibs and went back to writing.
Unbeknownst
to me, we had left in this portable gas chamber only a one hour ride to
Richmond where everybody had to change buses. I might not have made
such an ass out of myself had I known that. A 45 minute layover would be
plenty of time to get something to eat and recompose myself for the
final leg of the trip. I was hungrier than a bear sow stumbling out of
the cave in spring with three cubs hanging off her tits. Uncle Bo’s
Chicken Hut, or something like that, was the only eating establishment
in the station and looked decent enough from a distance, but once I saw
the selection of nothing but fried fowl parts under the greasy glass, I
did a 1-80 toward the vending machines.
All I had was a 20, so I
went to the arcade to use the change machine. To hang a “broken” sign on
it seemed redundant. Nobody in their right mind would believe that a
machine as abused as that one could possibly be in service. Back to
Bo’s, which now had a line as long as the bus x 4, and I was not going
to stand in it when all I wanted was change.
You may remember that
back in March under the influence of midlife crisis duress and
fulfilling a dream, I sold everything I owned, save my house and a few
boxes of sentimental junk. Thus, all my remaining possessions must go
where I go without a mule to haul it. Well, actually, I suppose I am my
own mule and thus looked like this: 5’0”, 98lb me with a bulging baby
blue 43 liter pack mounted on my back and a rolled up sleeping pad
strapped across the top of it (none of which I was about to take off
because it takes a village to get it back on). Hanging from my chest,
kangaroo style, I had a smaller backpack with my laptop, books, wallet,
essentials, etc. to offset the weight and at least maintain a three
steps forward, two stumbling back ratio. And behind me I was dragging a
suitcase full of camping equipment big enough for me to fit in, should
the need arise.
Not many years ago Richmond boasted sixth place on
the list of America’s most dangerous cities to live in and I would add
most creepy bus station to pass through. I’ve been in dozens of
stations in countries all over Latin-American, but I’ve never felt so
paranoid of being robbed as I was in Richmond. Point: I was not leaving
any of my stuff unattended for a second and it was staying as close to
me as white on rice no matter how small the space.
Back at Uncle Bo’s, I and my traveling getup bumped and excused our way up to the front of the line to ask for change.
“I ain’t giving you nothing less you buy something.”
“Well, can you sell me a bottle of water?”
“If you come through the line like everybody else.”
As
I swung around to go a woman’s voice spat at me from behind, “You best
be looking out where you going, gurl--you ‘bout knocked this drink out
of my hand! You need to be paying attention to what you doin’!’” My
sleeping pad had whacked her at boob level, just as she pulled her Coke
out of the drink fountain. Seven hours of aroma therapy topped off with
an hour of rejection had stirred up in me enough nasty sentiment to rip
somebody a new one. She was at least a foot taller and 50lbs heavier,
but I was in the mood to take her on. What was there to fear? I was
totally padded on all sides except for my face. If I turned the other
cheek I could mule kick her and take her out at the knees. The heavens
parted, however, and a holy hand reached down to hold my hoof. My
momma’s ghost intervened and whispered in my ear one of her wise
sayings, “Kill them with kindness.” Nice washed over me, Ms. Rude was
spared an ass-whoopin’ and I said sweetly, “I am so sorry, ma’m. Will
you please accept my apology?”
That changed her tune. “Well, baby, I’s just afraid you was gonna make me drop this drink.”
“Well, I didn’t,” I wanted to say and ask for a dollar for the vending machine in lieu of an apology.
Still
in the change predicament, I went to the ticket counter and before I
opened my mouth I could see by the agent’s chubby scowl that if I got a
ten, a five and 5 ones it was going to cost me. Too bad the vending
machine didn’t accept attitude. She handed me enough of that to buy the
thing empty.
I spied the healthiest product in there, Sunchips,
and my mouth gushed spit with anticipation. Clink, clink, look for the
code to push. What??!! No codes? What the hell kind of Russian Roulette
vending machine is this? I told myself to calm down and use my noggin.
The top row would be A, the next B, etc and the numbers would follow
suit. I press C6 and down falls a pack of Wriggle’s spearmint gum. O.K.
then, the letters run horizontally. F3-Lifesavors. D9 Little Debbie
chocolate cakes. E4-Tootsie Rolls. And so on I went, calling my own
Bingo numbers, but never yelling Bingo! Instead I shook the machine by
its shoulders and screamed, “I want my fuckin’ Sunchips you worthless
bucket-of-bolts! Now drop them before I mule kick you in the balls!!
Who was talking to the window now, but with much less composure than my former seatmate?
The
passengers for my bus were lining up, so I took my armful of unwanted
loot and got in line. My blood sugar was so low by then that if I ate
any of the 100% pure sugar shit in my collection, I’d go into an insulin
coma and get robbed right down to my Hanes Her Ways. Gum was the best
bet to stave off starving.
Just for the record, the woman I
whacked in Uncle Bo’s got on the bus huffing, “It wasn’t there! Them
damn bitches done robbed me! Can’t trust nobody now-a-days!” A fine
case of evidence to support my belief that karma rules.
I took a
front seat by a sleeping blind man, sure that we’d get along just fine
and I could finally relax. A blind woman sat ahead of us and Mouthy Ms.
Rude behind. To my right an elderly woman, obviously wanting her space,
had walled herself in behind a suitcase, shopping bags and a purse big
enough for me to fit in, should the need arise. All I could see were her
knees on which rested a large print Bible open to a page in the book of
Job where the verses consist of nothing more than a genealogical
diatribe of Abraham’s descendents. She had highlighted all but one
sentence, which made me wonder who the black sheep of the family was.
What had he done to not merit a swipe of the holy marker? Did he bare
the same name of a son-in-law she hated? Too, I wanted to know why,
unless shopping for baby names, anyone would find inspiration in a list
of obsolete names, most of which are unpronounceable to the English
speaking tongue. Perhaps giving it a go is a mental exercise to ward
off brain atrophy. Who knows?
We hadn’t been on the road more than
fifteen minutes when I noticed a barely perceivable discomfort on the
cartilage part of my right ear. It wasn’t pain exactly, just a tickle. I
ran my finger around the loopy maze and felt a small bump smack dab in
the hard to reach center. Great, of all the times to be surrounded by
the visually impaired. I messed with it a minute, blindly trying to
identify it as wax, dirt, a pimple or punishment for gossip. On one
swipe it did a handstand with the help of my fingernail. I had a TICKle
alright, burrowed as deep in my flesh as a mongoose in its den. I was
sure of it, because just that morning what I mistook for underwear
elastic pulling on a public hair turned out to be a tick mooching off my
coochie. I finally got the one in my ear between thumb and forefinger,
pulled like hell and upon examination saw only the body of the headless
bastard. My ear began to throb and I thought of the worst. Limes
disease! Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever! We studied those in WFR. Both can
be fatal. Stress and toxic shock had so jeopardized my immune system
that I was sure to succumb.
My dear cousins met me at the station
with a water bottle full of chilled chardonnay, which I gulped down
between paragraphs of telling this same story. I wanted food, a shower,
medical attention and sympathy, and made those needs known with no bones
about it. Did they not love me so much they might have dumped my ass
out on the side of the road reneging their invitation to stay as long as
I wanted.
Priority: a shower. I stripped down, looked down and
saw buried in the soft flesh of my belly two 8-legged poppy seeds…and
then more brown spots on my thighs, my chest, my torso, my ankles!! They
were everywhere! Geezus, F’n, Christmas! Was there no curtain call to
this drama?
“Gwynne!! Come quick and bring tweezers! Bring needles! Bring knives! Bring alcohol, both kinds!”
By
the end of the extractions, we had removed two ticks and bloodied ten
moles. I was over it. I ate, drank, doctored the wounds and went to bed,
swearing I’d hitchhike before every going Greyhound again.
Otherwise
update: Marta’s bar is up and running and she has done/is doing
everything I thought I was going to get to help with during the two
months in Spain. She’s cleaned, painted, decorated and inaugurated the
space and now slides frothy mugs of beer down the bar, like I wanted to.
I
have made plans to see me through August. Stay with cousins in
Portsmouth until July 14, pass through Dallas for a brief three days,
attend a two-week course at the International Tour Management Institute
(and stay with a friend I taught English with in Ecuador in 1993--very
excited about that reunion!), head north to Albany, Oregon to visit
another friend I haven’t seen in 18 years, and then finish off the trip
with a stay in Portland with a high school friend. I keep a low-grade
anxiety about all of this instability and sporadic income and flat-out
uncertainty, but had I not uprooted myself the chances of seeing these
wonderful people from my past (all in one swoop) are slim. Faith is the
cure for my anxiety, but it doesn’t come easily to me. Perhaps that’s
the whole purpose for this journey.
As always, much love and many
thanks for reading. Were it not for you, I’d have little reason to write
and it would be ungrateful to not practice the gift Source gave me.
Peace, G
Monday, June 27, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
Travelogue 11, Virginia: Reflections from the Silence
June 20-24, 2011
Dear Friends and Family,
Putting all your heart into your writing and then letting people read it is like volunteering to host the Grammies stripped down to your skivvies. It’s a real knee-knocker. In the 10 years I’ve been sending them out, my travel missives have received at a minimum 5-10 responses per publication… until Go Greyhound and Leave the Gagging to Us broke the record, on the underside, with one hand clapping in the forest. I thought at least one person would exclaim, “Can’t wait for part II!” but alas even my most faithful followers who have been with me since Peru 2001 remain silent. Here I reflect on the experience.
No response is exactly the response I most needed! Emerson said, “Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain.” I asked my Diary the other day, just how would one go about facing the fear of opinions, or a lack of them? It’s not as easy as letting a cobra crawl on your back to overcome a fear of snakes or scaling a skyscraper to confront acrophobia. Diary answered, write and let people read it. Few things can make you feel as vulnerable.
I brought this testing of my courage upon myself two missives ago when I declared a Just fuck it! war on my midlife crisis. I quote myself as saying, “what’s ‘wrong’ with my life…what has kept me from fulfilling any of my dreams or my highest potential is worrying about what others might think.” The puddle of not knowing in which I dogpaddle at the moment is a gift, an opportunity to reflect on the dangers of assuming. Here’s what’s been going through my mind in the wake of the taciturnity this last missive provoked, followed by a just as feasible thought to replace it.
-Mom always said, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything
at all.” Nobody has said anything because they have nothing nice to say.
-I just read a blog entry that was amusing and touched me deeply, but
I didn’t send the woman a note saying so. Why am I assuming nobody
read it, or didn’t like it if they did?
-It (the missive)was offensive. People are thinking it was racist.
-I know I didn’t intend for it to be and that I practice do no harm to the best of my ability. I used dialectical dialogue that identified race and age, just like I use it to poke fun at the way we talk in the Holler. I did it to bring readers into the moment.
-It was too gross. People don’t want to read about pee and poop.
-I can’t help it. The Austin genes carry a sense of humor that is often crude and if I am to be true to myself, my writing will be raw as well.
-It was boring. Why would anybody give a rat’s ass about my bus ride? My writing is at best mediocre.
-I amused the hell out of myself writing it and that’s what matters most.
Remember the story about the guy tossing beached starfish back into the sea?
Someone says to him that he is wasting his time and can’t possibly make a difference because there are thousands of starfish dying on the burning sand. He threw the one in his hand back to the ocean and replied, “It made a difference to that one.”
-It was too long. People are bombarded with stuff to read and my writing isn’t making the cut.
- My model at the moment is Bill Bryson’s 245 page travel memoir Neither Here Nor There. It’s all about making it real and that takes paint, or in other words, words. The goal is write so well the reader can’t put it down. If I’m
not there yet, so be it.
-I’m exaggerating too much and I’ve lost my credibility.
-I’ve told them over and over that my stories start with a true event and then my imagination takes over. That’s what makes them fun to write and amusing to read. It’s my trademark. Call it Magical Realism, if that makes it more acceptable.
In the end, these travel missives are but practice, not just of the art of writing, but the highs and lows of praise and criticism. Sometimes it’s as sweet as the smile of my great-niece, Rayna, and sometimes it stinks worse that an overflowing bus toilet. I’ll steal from Nike, who updated Emerson and conclude with Just Do It…and wait for my starfish to clamor for part II.
As always, many thanks for reading and much love for just being who you are in my life, G
Dear Friends and Family,
Putting all your heart into your writing and then letting people read it is like volunteering to host the Grammies stripped down to your skivvies. It’s a real knee-knocker. In the 10 years I’ve been sending them out, my travel missives have received at a minimum 5-10 responses per publication… until Go Greyhound and Leave the Gagging to Us broke the record, on the underside, with one hand clapping in the forest. I thought at least one person would exclaim, “Can’t wait for part II!” but alas even my most faithful followers who have been with me since Peru 2001 remain silent. Here I reflect on the experience.
No response is exactly the response I most needed! Emerson said, “Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain.” I asked my Diary the other day, just how would one go about facing the fear of opinions, or a lack of them? It’s not as easy as letting a cobra crawl on your back to overcome a fear of snakes or scaling a skyscraper to confront acrophobia. Diary answered, write and let people read it. Few things can make you feel as vulnerable.
I brought this testing of my courage upon myself two missives ago when I declared a Just fuck it! war on my midlife crisis. I quote myself as saying, “what’s ‘wrong’ with my life…what has kept me from fulfilling any of my dreams or my highest potential is worrying about what others might think.” The puddle of not knowing in which I dogpaddle at the moment is a gift, an opportunity to reflect on the dangers of assuming. Here’s what’s been going through my mind in the wake of the taciturnity this last missive provoked, followed by a just as feasible thought to replace it.
-Mom always said, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything
at all.” Nobody has said anything because they have nothing nice to say.
-I just read a blog entry that was amusing and touched me deeply, but
I didn’t send the woman a note saying so. Why am I assuming nobody
read it, or didn’t like it if they did?
-It (the missive)was offensive. People are thinking it was racist.
-I know I didn’t intend for it to be and that I practice do no harm to the best of my ability. I used dialectical dialogue that identified race and age, just like I use it to poke fun at the way we talk in the Holler. I did it to bring readers into the moment.
-It was too gross. People don’t want to read about pee and poop.
-I can’t help it. The Austin genes carry a sense of humor that is often crude and if I am to be true to myself, my writing will be raw as well.
-It was boring. Why would anybody give a rat’s ass about my bus ride? My writing is at best mediocre.
-I amused the hell out of myself writing it and that’s what matters most.
Remember the story about the guy tossing beached starfish back into the sea?
Someone says to him that he is wasting his time and can’t possibly make a difference because there are thousands of starfish dying on the burning sand. He threw the one in his hand back to the ocean and replied, “It made a difference to that one.”
-It was too long. People are bombarded with stuff to read and my writing isn’t making the cut.
- My model at the moment is Bill Bryson’s 245 page travel memoir Neither Here Nor There. It’s all about making it real and that takes paint, or in other words, words. The goal is write so well the reader can’t put it down. If I’m
not there yet, so be it.
-I’m exaggerating too much and I’ve lost my credibility.
-I’ve told them over and over that my stories start with a true event and then my imagination takes over. That’s what makes them fun to write and amusing to read. It’s my trademark. Call it Magical Realism, if that makes it more acceptable.
In the end, these travel missives are but practice, not just of the art of writing, but the highs and lows of praise and criticism. Sometimes it’s as sweet as the smile of my great-niece, Rayna, and sometimes it stinks worse that an overflowing bus toilet. I’ll steal from Nike, who updated Emerson and conclude with Just Do It…and wait for my starfish to clamor for part II.
As always, many thanks for reading and much love for just being who you are in my life, G
Monday, June 20, 2011
Travelogue 10, Virginia: Go Greyhound and Leaving the Gagging to Us
June 4-20,2011
My Dear Family and Friends,
Greetings from Portsmouth, Va. First, to answer the much asked question from the last missive, well, did you come down with poison ivy or not? Of course-not!! I’m a WoFeR now and trained to handle all wilderness-related, life-threatening emergencies, such as poison ivy. Here’s how I avoided an outbreak:
The arduous carryout of Sister Mary Elizabeth Dumbass and her broken pelvis costs us all sweat, time and patience since she had chosen to go way off the beaten path to a spot where a logging company really was cutting trees. The discarded limbs provided a lovely selection of poles to choose from for fashioning together her litter, but the excessive debris also made it a pain in the ass to get her ass to the trail leading back to camp. We had to lift her up and over downed trees and tromp through piles of leggy, wilting branches. It’s nothing short of a miracle that we didn’t piss off a copperhead for crashing its McMansion in the Brush and have a real, live snake bite to practice on.
My anxiety level was rising with every tick of the clock, because it really is true that if I do get a poison ivy rash, it overtakes my body like a wildfire takes a draughty forest in a 50 mph wind, and neither Calamine nor banana peels will stop it. An aside: [I know the banana peel raised an eyebrow or two. My dad swears that eating a banana and then wiping the inside of the peel over the affected area will clear up a rash quicker than a duck poot rises to sea level. (He has an imaginative way of measuring time, doesn’t he?) This is a man who also believes that he can eat whatever he wants and not gain weight as long as he chases his splurge with a SlimFast.] So, as soon as we were marching toward front country, I enlisted a victim with just one broken arm to take over my hold on the stretcher. Then I inconspicuously fell to the back of the troops, sloughed off into the woods and sprinted like hell for the lake. I and my sleeping pad (which was placed under Sis M. E. in the ivy patch so that she might have something comfy to rest upon--not my idea!), hit the water like a surfer and her board attacking a big wave to escape a swarm of bees. The skanky H20 of what is better called a bigass stagnate pond than a lake, coated my upper body with a skim of algae and exfoliated my legs with tangles of aquatic weeds. It was as effective as a spa Loofah sponge scrub at removing my epidermis and the PI oils along with it. That is a fine example of how a WoFeR’s uses the natural resources at hand in an emergency. Pretty slick, no itch.
Poison ivy is old news, and given the delay in getting this update out, so is the following tale, yet it’s worth the telling. In the words of my big brother, “That story is some good fodder for your writing.”
Two weeks ago I left the Holler to travel east after having invited my homeless ass to stay with my cousins on the Virginia coast. My life is one big penny pinching adventure right now and in keeping with that I opted for a nine hour bus ride instead of a fifty minute flight.
I’ll eat peanut butter and white bread sandwiches three meals a day for a month to avoid ever making that mistake again.
I’ve traveled by bus in nine other countries over the past twenty years. I’ve traveled on top of the bus, on the bumper of the bus, hanging out the door of the bus….I’ve traveled first class, second class, goat class and chicken class…I’ve been seated by shameless Don Juans, demented Doñas, snot-nosed squinklings, squalling babes and hung-over, middle-aged men vomiting out the window--- but I have never had such a disagreeable bus ride as I did taking a Greyhound from Roanoke to Norfolk, Virginia.
My first error was in believing anything someone sporting an anorexic-looking dog on their shirt said. The ticket agent wrote a big 8 on my boarding pass and circled it in red. I gave him a puzzled look. I only saw two doors from which to exit the waiting area.
“Is that my gate number?” I asked.
“Naw, that be your number in line. You the eighth one to pick your seat after the reboarders get back on.”
Wrong. Big fat lie.
I know I give the appearance of being a hardass because I cuss a lot and tell it like it is, but when it comes to putting others first and minding my manners in social settings, especially with strangers, I always DWJWD. As people rudely cut in front of one another and kicked their suitcases into the heels of the person ahead of them, I stood to the side politely waiting for my number to be called. Of course, I let them go ahead of me, first because I’m nice, and second because I had inside info they obviously didn’t, or they would relax a little. I shared my secret with the nice lady who watched my bags while I was peeing, the very same bags she wanted to use to beat me over the head by the time we got to Richmond.
The ticket taker never called a single digit. He opened the floodgate and barked orders, “Come on, now! I got a schedule to keep! Get on ‘dis bus! Let’s go! I ain’t got time for your messing around!” By the time I topped the stairs and looked over the sea of occupied seats the pickins’ was slim and all in the back. I got to about row 25 and chose as a seatmate an oriental man with an inviting expression and whose gesturing more than speaking indicated that I could avoid conversation and labor over the travel log I was trying to finish. As the bus lurched out of the station, I booted up my laptop and settled in to work. My best writing happens while I’m literally on the move and I was looking forward to several solid hours of production. I reread what I had already written and was starting to slip into that creative trance when the girl behind me busts out with:
“…she said she like the boss, nigga, said she like a player.. She said she like it when I hit it from the back and pull her hair, girlfriend join in, she like it…..”
What the hell brought that on? I peeped between the seats to see a gangsta’ girl with headphones on and a metal rod running through her chin like Cupid’s arrow piercing a heart. She was swaying her head back and forth, with a hand out in front of her making that Italian gesture of animated explanation, minus the elegance. She seemed to have passed through her fit of sharing and was only mouthing the rap. All returned to quiet with the exception of the hum of the motor and a few muffled conversations. I again reread the two pages of text on my screen and start to type when…
"I don't even care... certified game spitting nigga and that's how I got it for real She like it, she like it, she like it. She like it soft, I like it hard. She like it when I sit on her back…”
There is no school to issue it, but I also hold a U-WoFeR’s certification and know how to handle urban wilderness emergencies. In this case, with earplugs. I advanced a few paragraphs when a strong wiff of hard liquor reached my row. Now what? Gangsta’ Girl was traveling with some of her homeboys (I acquired this vocabulary during my 11 years in Dallas Public Schools), but up until that point they were just talking noise, without making a disturbance. As soon as Jack and Coke joined the group the volume went up exponentially.
The issue was not that it was rap, nor that it was vulgar. The problem for me is the assumption that everybody else on the bus wants to hear an off-key cover of a song without a band backing it. She could be singing Streisand’s Don’t Rain On My Parade or Christmas carols in Chinese and it would still irritate the shit out of me.
We were not taking Interstate 81, the fasted and most direct route to the coast, but rather route 460, which I am guessing started out as the settler’s wagon trail and thus, logically passed through every Podunk town where goods were traded and a doctor could be found. Aside from an initial slathering of tar at the turn of the century, it hasn’t been maintained. Bump, swagger, stop, go, stop, go. This constant sloshing, not only stirred my innards, but also the contents of the toilet just a few rows behind me. At first it was just a urine smell that mixed with the vapors of liquor and I thought, oh great, I’ve picked a seat in the vicinity of incontinence. As the bus continued to cha-cha-cha with stop signs and traffic lights, I realized we weren’t dealing with an overactive bladder here. Pickled poop and T-5 (the chemical responsible for the unmistakable aroma of portapotty) were mingling with the mixed drink of Cuba libre spritzed with piss and the smell morphed into an all out gagging stench. It spread through the bus like a hefty splash of Pinesol slowly overtakes the toilet bowl in a bellowing cloud of white.
Gangsta’ Girl wrote her own rap of protest and performed:
“Gotdamn something be stinkin’. That shit be making me sick. I’m allergic to shit and piss. I’mo throw up. This fucked up. Somebody go up there and tell that drive to let us off this damn bus. I ain’t puttin’ up with this shit.”
Her lack of rhyme and rhythm birthed a new appreciation of rap in me. Maybe I underestimate the talent it takes to write a monotonous, repetitive string of lyrics posing as poetry.
My mute seatmate waved his hand under his nose in agreement. I nodded and added, “It’s terrible.” “Yes, terrible,” he repeated.
Of all the days to wear a v-neck! I had no collar to tuck my nose into, which is what I usually do in stinky situations, for example, the ill fortune of a one stall bathroom with no ventilation and the person before me did number 2. In a slow motion crowd wave, passengers covered their noses and mouths with anything they could find. I had at hand a polar fleece sweater. I covered all susceptible orifices with the chest of it and tied the sleeves tight on the back of my head. I looked like an Arab crossing the desert in a dust storm.
Gangsta’ Girl sent a homeboy to talk to the driver. He returned with very bad news.
“He ain’t gonna do nothing. He don’t care. He said we had a stop soon and we could breathe then.”
By this time anybody seated in row 6 and higher was bellyaching and there seemed to be a conspiracy brewing. I rallied the troops knowing that if enough people complained, something would be done. Everybody agreed, we’re not putting up with this! I was to carry the message.
Remember how nice and polite I was in the station? Fuck that. Before the bus stopped rolling I was pushing my way to the front door and confronted the driver as soon as I got off. I looked over my shoulder expecting to see a mob with raised fists. Huh--not a damn one of them was supporting me. Screw them. I’ll lobby on my own. I told the driver this was absolutely unacceptable, it was a health hazard, something had to be done and I would not continue on in this bus. Homeboy was right. Mr. Driver didn’t care and he wasn’t gonna do nothing.
TBC….tune in next log for part II of Go Greyhound and Leave the Gagging to Us
My Dear Family and Friends,
Greetings from Portsmouth, Va. First, to answer the much asked question from the last missive, well, did you come down with poison ivy or not? Of course-not!! I’m a WoFeR now and trained to handle all wilderness-related, life-threatening emergencies, such as poison ivy. Here’s how I avoided an outbreak:
The arduous carryout of Sister Mary Elizabeth Dumbass and her broken pelvis costs us all sweat, time and patience since she had chosen to go way off the beaten path to a spot where a logging company really was cutting trees. The discarded limbs provided a lovely selection of poles to choose from for fashioning together her litter, but the excessive debris also made it a pain in the ass to get her ass to the trail leading back to camp. We had to lift her up and over downed trees and tromp through piles of leggy, wilting branches. It’s nothing short of a miracle that we didn’t piss off a copperhead for crashing its McMansion in the Brush and have a real, live snake bite to practice on.
My anxiety level was rising with every tick of the clock, because it really is true that if I do get a poison ivy rash, it overtakes my body like a wildfire takes a draughty forest in a 50 mph wind, and neither Calamine nor banana peels will stop it. An aside: [I know the banana peel raised an eyebrow or two. My dad swears that eating a banana and then wiping the inside of the peel over the affected area will clear up a rash quicker than a duck poot rises to sea level. (He has an imaginative way of measuring time, doesn’t he?) This is a man who also believes that he can eat whatever he wants and not gain weight as long as he chases his splurge with a SlimFast.] So, as soon as we were marching toward front country, I enlisted a victim with just one broken arm to take over my hold on the stretcher. Then I inconspicuously fell to the back of the troops, sloughed off into the woods and sprinted like hell for the lake. I and my sleeping pad (which was placed under Sis M. E. in the ivy patch so that she might have something comfy to rest upon--not my idea!), hit the water like a surfer and her board attacking a big wave to escape a swarm of bees. The skanky H20 of what is better called a bigass stagnate pond than a lake, coated my upper body with a skim of algae and exfoliated my legs with tangles of aquatic weeds. It was as effective as a spa Loofah sponge scrub at removing my epidermis and the PI oils along with it. That is a fine example of how a WoFeR’s uses the natural resources at hand in an emergency. Pretty slick, no itch.
Poison ivy is old news, and given the delay in getting this update out, so is the following tale, yet it’s worth the telling. In the words of my big brother, “That story is some good fodder for your writing.”
Two weeks ago I left the Holler to travel east after having invited my homeless ass to stay with my cousins on the Virginia coast. My life is one big penny pinching adventure right now and in keeping with that I opted for a nine hour bus ride instead of a fifty minute flight.
I’ll eat peanut butter and white bread sandwiches three meals a day for a month to avoid ever making that mistake again.
I’ve traveled by bus in nine other countries over the past twenty years. I’ve traveled on top of the bus, on the bumper of the bus, hanging out the door of the bus….I’ve traveled first class, second class, goat class and chicken class…I’ve been seated by shameless Don Juans, demented Doñas, snot-nosed squinklings, squalling babes and hung-over, middle-aged men vomiting out the window--- but I have never had such a disagreeable bus ride as I did taking a Greyhound from Roanoke to Norfolk, Virginia.
My first error was in believing anything someone sporting an anorexic-looking dog on their shirt said. The ticket agent wrote a big 8 on my boarding pass and circled it in red. I gave him a puzzled look. I only saw two doors from which to exit the waiting area.
“Is that my gate number?” I asked.
“Naw, that be your number in line. You the eighth one to pick your seat after the reboarders get back on.”
Wrong. Big fat lie.
I know I give the appearance of being a hardass because I cuss a lot and tell it like it is, but when it comes to putting others first and minding my manners in social settings, especially with strangers, I always DWJWD. As people rudely cut in front of one another and kicked their suitcases into the heels of the person ahead of them, I stood to the side politely waiting for my number to be called. Of course, I let them go ahead of me, first because I’m nice, and second because I had inside info they obviously didn’t, or they would relax a little. I shared my secret with the nice lady who watched my bags while I was peeing, the very same bags she wanted to use to beat me over the head by the time we got to Richmond.
The ticket taker never called a single digit. He opened the floodgate and barked orders, “Come on, now! I got a schedule to keep! Get on ‘dis bus! Let’s go! I ain’t got time for your messing around!” By the time I topped the stairs and looked over the sea of occupied seats the pickins’ was slim and all in the back. I got to about row 25 and chose as a seatmate an oriental man with an inviting expression and whose gesturing more than speaking indicated that I could avoid conversation and labor over the travel log I was trying to finish. As the bus lurched out of the station, I booted up my laptop and settled in to work. My best writing happens while I’m literally on the move and I was looking forward to several solid hours of production. I reread what I had already written and was starting to slip into that creative trance when the girl behind me busts out with:
“…she said she like the boss, nigga, said she like a player.. She said she like it when I hit it from the back and pull her hair, girlfriend join in, she like it…..”
What the hell brought that on? I peeped between the seats to see a gangsta’ girl with headphones on and a metal rod running through her chin like Cupid’s arrow piercing a heart. She was swaying her head back and forth, with a hand out in front of her making that Italian gesture of animated explanation, minus the elegance. She seemed to have passed through her fit of sharing and was only mouthing the rap. All returned to quiet with the exception of the hum of the motor and a few muffled conversations. I again reread the two pages of text on my screen and start to type when…
"I don't even care... certified game spitting nigga and that's how I got it for real She like it, she like it, she like it. She like it soft, I like it hard. She like it when I sit on her back…”
There is no school to issue it, but I also hold a U-WoFeR’s certification and know how to handle urban wilderness emergencies. In this case, with earplugs. I advanced a few paragraphs when a strong wiff of hard liquor reached my row. Now what? Gangsta’ Girl was traveling with some of her homeboys (I acquired this vocabulary during my 11 years in Dallas Public Schools), but up until that point they were just talking noise, without making a disturbance. As soon as Jack and Coke joined the group the volume went up exponentially.
The issue was not that it was rap, nor that it was vulgar. The problem for me is the assumption that everybody else on the bus wants to hear an off-key cover of a song without a band backing it. She could be singing Streisand’s Don’t Rain On My Parade or Christmas carols in Chinese and it would still irritate the shit out of me.
We were not taking Interstate 81, the fasted and most direct route to the coast, but rather route 460, which I am guessing started out as the settler’s wagon trail and thus, logically passed through every Podunk town where goods were traded and a doctor could be found. Aside from an initial slathering of tar at the turn of the century, it hasn’t been maintained. Bump, swagger, stop, go, stop, go. This constant sloshing, not only stirred my innards, but also the contents of the toilet just a few rows behind me. At first it was just a urine smell that mixed with the vapors of liquor and I thought, oh great, I’ve picked a seat in the vicinity of incontinence. As the bus continued to cha-cha-cha with stop signs and traffic lights, I realized we weren’t dealing with an overactive bladder here. Pickled poop and T-5 (the chemical responsible for the unmistakable aroma of portapotty) were mingling with the mixed drink of Cuba libre spritzed with piss and the smell morphed into an all out gagging stench. It spread through the bus like a hefty splash of Pinesol slowly overtakes the toilet bowl in a bellowing cloud of white.
Gangsta’ Girl wrote her own rap of protest and performed:
“Gotdamn something be stinkin’. That shit be making me sick. I’m allergic to shit and piss. I’mo throw up. This fucked up. Somebody go up there and tell that drive to let us off this damn bus. I ain’t puttin’ up with this shit.”
Her lack of rhyme and rhythm birthed a new appreciation of rap in me. Maybe I underestimate the talent it takes to write a monotonous, repetitive string of lyrics posing as poetry.
My mute seatmate waved his hand under his nose in agreement. I nodded and added, “It’s terrible.” “Yes, terrible,” he repeated.
Of all the days to wear a v-neck! I had no collar to tuck my nose into, which is what I usually do in stinky situations, for example, the ill fortune of a one stall bathroom with no ventilation and the person before me did number 2. In a slow motion crowd wave, passengers covered their noses and mouths with anything they could find. I had at hand a polar fleece sweater. I covered all susceptible orifices with the chest of it and tied the sleeves tight on the back of my head. I looked like an Arab crossing the desert in a dust storm.
Gangsta’ Girl sent a homeboy to talk to the driver. He returned with very bad news.
“He ain’t gonna do nothing. He don’t care. He said we had a stop soon and we could breathe then.”
By this time anybody seated in row 6 and higher was bellyaching and there seemed to be a conspiracy brewing. I rallied the troops knowing that if enough people complained, something would be done. Everybody agreed, we’re not putting up with this! I was to carry the message.
Remember how nice and polite I was in the station? Fuck that. Before the bus stopped rolling I was pushing my way to the front door and confronted the driver as soon as I got off. I looked over my shoulder expecting to see a mob with raised fists. Huh--not a damn one of them was supporting me. Screw them. I’ll lobby on my own. I told the driver this was absolutely unacceptable, it was a health hazard, something had to be done and I would not continue on in this bus. Homeboy was right. Mr. Driver didn’t care and he wasn’t gonna do nothing.
TBC….tune in next log for part II of Go Greyhound and Leave the Gagging to Us
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Travelogue 9, North Carolina: I'm a WoFeR Now
May 26-June 2, 2011
My Dearest Family and Friends,
I’m in a much better space than the last time I wrote, both mentally and emotionally, so clichés in responses are now welcome. Physically, I wouldn’t mind still unzipping the tent window to mist lifting off the lake as we rise together toward being one with air and sun, but my stone was sprouting moss fuzz, so I had to keep rolling.
I’m officially a “WoFeR” (Wilderness First Responder) now and have some sort of permission to give initial care to medical emergencies in the wild. I’m hoping to never have to attend to more than a skinned knee or bee sting. The dislocated shoulders and compound fractures kinda grossed me out. Overall, taking the WFR course was an injection. A week in the woods did me much good. Peeing outdoors, sleeping with the stars in view and not running a grooming utensil through my hair for 7 days put me back in touch with my essense. It’s all so freeing, especially neglecting the scalp and what grows from its follicles, because it allows the brain cells to rest and recharge. Ever notice Einstein’s hair?
As for sleeping in a tent, if you recall from the last log, just to prove I could, I weathered out an electrical storm in mine. We studied the chapter on lightening the very next day and I had made a textbook choice of one of the most likely sites to get struck--near water, on a hill, in an open field, under a tall tree. Not one of my brighter decisions.
Aside from not getting fried, I consider my greatest accomplishment of the week avoiding the like virus that was running rampant amongst the whippersnappers. In case you don’t know much about it, like virus is highly contagious and seems to target the under 25 population. While not fatal, it is
excruciatingly painful, not for the infirmed, who is oblivious to having it (which is one of the primary symptoms), but to the listener.
“Like, I was like hiking up this trail when like I totally didn’t like see this snake and so I like almost stepped on it. I mean like nothing really happened because it wasn’t like even a real snake. It was a rope, about like this long and purple, pink and chartreuse, but still…..it like scared the shit out of me.”
The only known cure for it is electroshock therapy. A dog collar of the type that keeps Fido in the front yard is placed around the neck of the sick person and anytime they use “like” as anything except a verb, a jolt reminds them of their abusive behavior. It has a 92% success rate. The only thing more effective and that seems to work on the resistant strain is to confiscate the patient’s texting device--each like overage equals one hour without texts. Most prefer the shock collar.
So, the week of training went like this: the instructor gave us a lecture on the anatomy and physiology of a specific body area and explained the signs, symptoms and treatment of injuries to it that we might encounter in the back country. Then we would do a mock rescue. For the first five days I got stuck walking out the broken arms and sprained ankles, which meant that I got no practice for the important stuff like chest wounds and broken pelvises. They require lashing together a stretcher out of whatever is at hand to carry out the patient and that’s the fun part. I know they assigned me wimp duty because of my size. Was tenting out an electrical storm not enough to prove myself? It’s mind over muscle, you know.
At first the teacher told the victims what injuries and illnesses to fake, but after a while he let the students come up with their own ill fates. We learned as much about each other as we did wilderness medicine.
For example, Adam. I come across him on the side of the trail, playing the victim, face-down, with the front of his feet hung over a log. A liquid mix of Kayro syrup and red food coloring is running down his shins and smeared across his forehead, indicating, obviously, that the fallen tree up and tripped him. There is a small puddle of a gooey, yellow substance beside his mouth.
He tells me he is unconscious and not breathing.
At that moment all we had learned goes in the blender for me. Do a jaw thrust first? No, check for a pulse. No, no, there is something before that. Vitals? No, that comes later. Check the spine? Hold the head still? Yell for help? Run for help? Pass out myself?.... so I can be a victim too and not have to deal with this stress of not knowing what to do?!
Now I remember! Gloves on! BSI-body substance isolation or in layman’s terms, protect yourself from human cooty juice. Maybe I should do CPR. Is it 3 compressions and 4 breathes or the other way around? Or is it 2:1? No, that’s water to rice. Hell, I don’t know. I decide to take his pulse, and he’s got one, much to his benefit. The book says the chest must indent 2 inches and then recoil after each compression. I don’t have the arm strength for that (obviously, if I can’t help with the stretcher) and thus, would have to make lofty jumps on his torso with both feet, as if it were a trampoline.
As for the “P” part of CPR, I make the executive decision to skip that all together. I am not doing mouth to mouth on a set of chops oozing yellow pusy- looking shit. About that time he comes to and I do a LOC check (level of conscience). The book says to ask the person their name, the date and where they are. That seems way too easy of a test to me. So I change the questions a bit. The first one that comes to mind is, do you think pedophilia is grounds for the death penalty? I second guess that one since it’s yes or no and he might just be shaking his head to get a gnat off his nose and I would mistake it for a gesture of negation and write in my medical report that the patient shows signs of being conscientious when really he’s not.
I rack my brain for a good one while he continues to groan and bleed toward death. Then I come up with a short essay question, “What would you do if you got your 14-year-old, very catholic girlfriend pregnant?” His face wrinkles which means he responds to verbal stimuli and is thus A&O X 1. I write that down in my notebook. He opens his eyes, rolls over and gestures that he is choking. Oh great. I haven’t cleared his spine, which means I can’t just jerk him up and do the Heimlich thingy, so I’ll have to stick my finger in his mouth and clear the airway. I know I have gloves on, but still……
I stall hoping he will swallow the blockage.
“Are you choking?” I ask.
He nods yes.
“Are you sure?”
Another nod.
“Double Dutch sure? Have you tried looking up at the light and swallowing? That always does the trick for hiccups.”
A glob of yellow oral snot comes hurling out of his mouth and onto me. He begins to gasp, “My friend fell in the water. He, he, he can’t swim. I, I, I was running for help and, and choked on the banana I was eating and tripped over a log.”
Say what? Did I hear him right? Has this kid got attachment issues or what? Didn’t his mama teach him not to run with bananas? Like, dude, drop the ‘naner. The ants and dirt will wash off. I question the wattage of his bulb. He’s one of those who would probably set up his tent beside the only tree in an open field under rumbling skies.
Another get-to-know opportunity: On day 7, slender and fair Mary Elizabeth had her turn at creating a scenario. I arrive first on the scene and find her skinny butt in nothing but flip-flops, running shorts and a sports bra sprawled out in a bed of poison ivy thick as Dorothy’s field of poppies. I kid you not. She invented that she and her friends were out in the woods doing ‘shrooms and cutting down trees. (In that attire???????) Somehow the tree she was cutting fell on her (Did she throw herself under it as it started down?????????) and broke her pelvis.
Finally, I have a chance to be a big girl WoFeR and my victim has to throw herself down in one of the few things I am highly allergic to. The past two times I got poison ivy I ended up in the doctor’s office. I stand there for a minute surveying the scene and thinking about the fact that I have no health insurance. Maybe I should let her scrawny ass pass on to the next life. No, can’t do that. I’ve invested too much money in this course to fail and without it I won’t get a job, which means I can never afford health insurance. I try to pick out the least PI infested path to her and mumble to myself, “Dumbass.” I pull up my socks as high as they will go, pull down my shorts ‘til my crack is showing and hopscotch out to her.
Since I’m there first, my job is to stabilize the head until we know she has no spinal injury, unless I break her neck first. I should wipe the sweat off her face with some of these leaves, I think to myself as I plunge my hands into the sea of green to cup her skull. For her LOC check I ask her if she knows she is lying in poison ivy. That question brought her out of her role-played fungal stupor very fast.
“Like, Oh My God! Really?”
“Like, OMG, yes.”
Another dim bulb who would probably weather out a lightning storm in a tent, near a lake shore, under a solitary pine, in an open field. The world is full of them.
I could tell more tales from the WoFeR week at Camp Pennicle, NC, but I must pack. I’m off to the VA coast now to spend an indefinite amount of time (i.e. until I find a job) with my best friend and cousin, who to my good fortune, is the same person. Saves on stamps and the phone bill to not have two people to keep up with.
Hope you are all well.
Much love, G
My Dearest Family and Friends,
I’m in a much better space than the last time I wrote, both mentally and emotionally, so clichés in responses are now welcome. Physically, I wouldn’t mind still unzipping the tent window to mist lifting off the lake as we rise together toward being one with air and sun, but my stone was sprouting moss fuzz, so I had to keep rolling.
I’m officially a “WoFeR” (Wilderness First Responder) now and have some sort of permission to give initial care to medical emergencies in the wild. I’m hoping to never have to attend to more than a skinned knee or bee sting. The dislocated shoulders and compound fractures kinda grossed me out. Overall, taking the WFR course was an injection. A week in the woods did me much good. Peeing outdoors, sleeping with the stars in view and not running a grooming utensil through my hair for 7 days put me back in touch with my essense. It’s all so freeing, especially neglecting the scalp and what grows from its follicles, because it allows the brain cells to rest and recharge. Ever notice Einstein’s hair?
As for sleeping in a tent, if you recall from the last log, just to prove I could, I weathered out an electrical storm in mine. We studied the chapter on lightening the very next day and I had made a textbook choice of one of the most likely sites to get struck--near water, on a hill, in an open field, under a tall tree. Not one of my brighter decisions.
Aside from not getting fried, I consider my greatest accomplishment of the week avoiding the like virus that was running rampant amongst the whippersnappers. In case you don’t know much about it, like virus is highly contagious and seems to target the under 25 population. While not fatal, it is
excruciatingly painful, not for the infirmed, who is oblivious to having it (which is one of the primary symptoms), but to the listener.
“Like, I was like hiking up this trail when like I totally didn’t like see this snake and so I like almost stepped on it. I mean like nothing really happened because it wasn’t like even a real snake. It was a rope, about like this long and purple, pink and chartreuse, but still…..it like scared the shit out of me.”
The only known cure for it is electroshock therapy. A dog collar of the type that keeps Fido in the front yard is placed around the neck of the sick person and anytime they use “like” as anything except a verb, a jolt reminds them of their abusive behavior. It has a 92% success rate. The only thing more effective and that seems to work on the resistant strain is to confiscate the patient’s texting device--each like overage equals one hour without texts. Most prefer the shock collar.
So, the week of training went like this: the instructor gave us a lecture on the anatomy and physiology of a specific body area and explained the signs, symptoms and treatment of injuries to it that we might encounter in the back country. Then we would do a mock rescue. For the first five days I got stuck walking out the broken arms and sprained ankles, which meant that I got no practice for the important stuff like chest wounds and broken pelvises. They require lashing together a stretcher out of whatever is at hand to carry out the patient and that’s the fun part. I know they assigned me wimp duty because of my size. Was tenting out an electrical storm not enough to prove myself? It’s mind over muscle, you know.
At first the teacher told the victims what injuries and illnesses to fake, but after a while he let the students come up with their own ill fates. We learned as much about each other as we did wilderness medicine.
For example, Adam. I come across him on the side of the trail, playing the victim, face-down, with the front of his feet hung over a log. A liquid mix of Kayro syrup and red food coloring is running down his shins and smeared across his forehead, indicating, obviously, that the fallen tree up and tripped him. There is a small puddle of a gooey, yellow substance beside his mouth.
He tells me he is unconscious and not breathing.
At that moment all we had learned goes in the blender for me. Do a jaw thrust first? No, check for a pulse. No, no, there is something before that. Vitals? No, that comes later. Check the spine? Hold the head still? Yell for help? Run for help? Pass out myself?.... so I can be a victim too and not have to deal with this stress of not knowing what to do?!
Now I remember! Gloves on! BSI-body substance isolation or in layman’s terms, protect yourself from human cooty juice. Maybe I should do CPR. Is it 3 compressions and 4 breathes or the other way around? Or is it 2:1? No, that’s water to rice. Hell, I don’t know. I decide to take his pulse, and he’s got one, much to his benefit. The book says the chest must indent 2 inches and then recoil after each compression. I don’t have the arm strength for that (obviously, if I can’t help with the stretcher) and thus, would have to make lofty jumps on his torso with both feet, as if it were a trampoline.
As for the “P” part of CPR, I make the executive decision to skip that all together. I am not doing mouth to mouth on a set of chops oozing yellow pusy- looking shit. About that time he comes to and I do a LOC check (level of conscience). The book says to ask the person their name, the date and where they are. That seems way too easy of a test to me. So I change the questions a bit. The first one that comes to mind is, do you think pedophilia is grounds for the death penalty? I second guess that one since it’s yes or no and he might just be shaking his head to get a gnat off his nose and I would mistake it for a gesture of negation and write in my medical report that the patient shows signs of being conscientious when really he’s not.
I rack my brain for a good one while he continues to groan and bleed toward death. Then I come up with a short essay question, “What would you do if you got your 14-year-old, very catholic girlfriend pregnant?” His face wrinkles which means he responds to verbal stimuli and is thus A&O X 1. I write that down in my notebook. He opens his eyes, rolls over and gestures that he is choking. Oh great. I haven’t cleared his spine, which means I can’t just jerk him up and do the Heimlich thingy, so I’ll have to stick my finger in his mouth and clear the airway. I know I have gloves on, but still……
I stall hoping he will swallow the blockage.
“Are you choking?” I ask.
He nods yes.
“Are you sure?”
Another nod.
“Double Dutch sure? Have you tried looking up at the light and swallowing? That always does the trick for hiccups.”
A glob of yellow oral snot comes hurling out of his mouth and onto me. He begins to gasp, “My friend fell in the water. He, he, he can’t swim. I, I, I was running for help and, and choked on the banana I was eating and tripped over a log.”
Say what? Did I hear him right? Has this kid got attachment issues or what? Didn’t his mama teach him not to run with bananas? Like, dude, drop the ‘naner. The ants and dirt will wash off. I question the wattage of his bulb. He’s one of those who would probably set up his tent beside the only tree in an open field under rumbling skies.
Another get-to-know opportunity: On day 7, slender and fair Mary Elizabeth had her turn at creating a scenario. I arrive first on the scene and find her skinny butt in nothing but flip-flops, running shorts and a sports bra sprawled out in a bed of poison ivy thick as Dorothy’s field of poppies. I kid you not. She invented that she and her friends were out in the woods doing ‘shrooms and cutting down trees. (In that attire???????) Somehow the tree she was cutting fell on her (Did she throw herself under it as it started down?????????) and broke her pelvis.
Finally, I have a chance to be a big girl WoFeR and my victim has to throw herself down in one of the few things I am highly allergic to. The past two times I got poison ivy I ended up in the doctor’s office. I stand there for a minute surveying the scene and thinking about the fact that I have no health insurance. Maybe I should let her scrawny ass pass on to the next life. No, can’t do that. I’ve invested too much money in this course to fail and without it I won’t get a job, which means I can never afford health insurance. I try to pick out the least PI infested path to her and mumble to myself, “Dumbass.” I pull up my socks as high as they will go, pull down my shorts ‘til my crack is showing and hopscotch out to her.
Since I’m there first, my job is to stabilize the head until we know she has no spinal injury, unless I break her neck first. I should wipe the sweat off her face with some of these leaves, I think to myself as I plunge my hands into the sea of green to cup her skull. For her LOC check I ask her if she knows she is lying in poison ivy. That question brought her out of her role-played fungal stupor very fast.
“Like, Oh My God! Really?”
“Like, OMG, yes.”
Another dim bulb who would probably weather out a lightning storm in a tent, near a lake shore, under a solitary pine, in an open field. The world is full of them.
I could tell more tales from the WoFeR week at Camp Pennicle, NC, but I must pack. I’m off to the VA coast now to spend an indefinite amount of time (i.e. until I find a job) with my best friend and cousin, who to my good fortune, is the same person. Saves on stamps and the phone bill to not have two people to keep up with.
Hope you are all well.
Much love, G
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