Blog #428                                May 22, 2025

 

I have a question to ask you.  Have you ever spent a night in a hospital?  There’s not much worse, I think, than a night in the hospital when you’re sick and alone.  When your only companions are things that beep.  When your night nurse has the brains of a house slipper. When the simple act of going to the bathroom requires as much engineering as the digging of the Panama Canal.  When you are wrapped in mankind’s most annoying invention – the hospital gown.  And when you may or may not have a fever.

 

My wife, my daughters and I are in North Carolina now on our Island Vacation, and I’m always a bit nervous in North Carolina, for it is in that lovely state that I have three times had extended hospital visits.  The last time was for pneumonia.  The nurses would come to take my temp several times a day.  It was always 37 or 39.  Now I knew that was in Centigrade, but I wondered why.  Was I in France, Guatemala, Abu Dhabi?  No, I was in the USA, where the meteorologists tell us the forecast in Fahrenheit.  Where every recipe, every oven, every toaster contraption is calibrated in Fahrenheit.  Where water freezes at 32 and boils at 212.  So why is my nurse trying to confuse me?  If the medical community wants to conduct their affairs in the Wonderful World of Metric, great.  I don’t care.  But I would like to know what my temperature is.  Being a math nerd, I knew the conversion, but what if I didn’t or if I made a mistake?  When she told me my temperature was 39, I did the calculation and got 103.  I’m dying!  But just to make sure, I asked feverishly and politely, “What’s that in Fahrenheit?”  She didn’t know.  I asked the other nurse.  She didn’t know either.  I was too sick to yell, but really – is that nuts?  Either train the nurse or put a chart on the wall.  This isn’t the Peace Corps; it’s North Carolina.  Tell me what my temperature is!  One night they told me my weight was 75.  Now that I didn’t mind.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well.  We are feeling sunny and sandy and achy here on Bald Head Island.  We have been eating and wassailing, playing pickleball and taking the dogs to the beach and asking a bunch of silly questions, the kind of pointless wastes of cranial energy we call Carol Questions.  Like -- “Would you rather be an ugly tall-person or a beautiful midget?”  That one kept me up at night.  Another was, “What famous couple do you and your partner most resemble?”

 

What famous couple do Carol and I resemble?  Let’s see.  George and Gracie?  I hate cigars.  Lucy and Desi?  My wife doesn’t have red hair.  Bill and Hillary?  Carol would never be caught in a pants suit.  Taylor and Travis?  Who am I kidding?  I finally decided we most resemble Rocky and Bullwinkle.  Carol would be Rocky of course.  Rocky was small and fast and smart and made all the decisions.  Bullwinkle was loyal and steady and goofy, always getting it wrong, always getting in trouble, always getting lost.  What does a moose eat?

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Fools are as like husbands (Twelfth Night). What about Shakespeare and Bullwinkle?  I agree he’s goofy and lost, but he’s such a good Pops, and we make a great couple.  I’ll give him a big schnoogle when he gets back.  Purr.

 

Our Weekly Word today is wassailing.  To wassail is to drink lots of alcohol and have fun.  Try it!  I don’t drink, of course, not even a beer at a baseball game.

 

And speaking of baseball.  Were we speaking of baseball?  Well, we are now.  I’m a Cardinals fan.  The St. Louis Cardinals, not the Vatican Cardinals, although they might have a baseball team too.  After all, Pope Leo XIV is a White Sox fan. Who knows?  Wouldn’t it be fun to have the two teams play each other?  The Pope, could throw out the first pitch, bless the umpires and sell Pope-Corn and indulgences in the stands.  I think the Pontifical Cardinals would be pretty certain of victory:

 

The St. Louis Cardinals? Who cares!

They sin and they make lots of errors.

They don’t have a hope

Cause we play for the Pope:

Lots of hits, lots of runs, lots of prayers.

 

That was a tough limerick.  Sometimes, when I’m writing and looking for the right word or phrase, I get up and begin to pace forth and back.  It’s impossible, of course, to pace back and forth.  To go back, you must already have left the place you are going back to.  And that act of leaving is what is called going forth.  So, you have to go forth first.  In a similar vein, no-one can jump up and down.  Once you jump up, you cannot jump down – you can only fall down.  So people, when excited, are actually jumping up and falling down.  Or running forth and back.  Got it?

 

Ok, this is the time for my apologia.  I used the word “midget” before.  Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I just don’t have the energy to keep up with all the political correctness in the universe.  By now you know I bear no ill will to any human or beast (other than nurses who can’t change Centigrade to Fahrenheit).  I would have said “man or beast” just now but then I would be in trouble for that.  It’s too much for one poor old moose to remember.  Hate me, if you must.

 

And speaking of this poor old moose’s ability to remember, I do not remember where I ate dinner last Saturday night.  I certainly cannot remember what I ordered or what I was wearing.  I can only sometimes remember where I parked.  But ask me the words to any song by The Coasters, The Four Tops or The Beatles – I’m all over it.  Why is that?  “Take out the papers and the trash or you don’t get no spending cash.”  Go on, finish it.  I’ll wait.  Oops, I forgot, it’s time to end for this week.  Stay well, count your blessings and come back next week.  Or forth.

 

Bullwinkle J. Moose       Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com