July Flew By, but People are Still Batshit Crazy

Geez, what happened to July? Although the month went by faster than the Tamagotchi fad, I found out a lot of crazy shit about my family. Some things I found out at family parties, other tidbits came from the ramblings of senior citizens, or simply by being confronted with situations which remained latent for the first 21 years.

First off, my brother David is currently at Ft. Knox in Kentucky at an Army ROTC Leadership Training camp lasting a month (of which he has completed two weeks). If one had told me that someone in my family would be at Fort Knox, more than likely I would have figured some sort of gold heist would be involved but definitely not the military. I never had intentions of joining the military, while my sister is further from the military than Nicole Ritchie is to an optimum weight, so the notion of joining the military in the family was pretty much taboo. He is enjoying it though, except for the getting up at 3:45 A.M. part. As he told me, he is doing everything except getting lucky in Kentucky at the barracks…

On a completely different tangent, this past month I have witnessed the beauty of the U.S. healthcare system, and by that I mean its hideous inability to actually take care of people including administrators whose heads are so far up their asses their abs are smiling. That was actually just my opinion (which is fact), while my personal encounters with the industry this past month haven’t been too bad, but I have seen the ugly side. Why you ask? Well, basically I have been living in a hospital for the past 10 days since my mom has been there from complications of a “same day surgery.” She developed pancreatitis from the procedure and can’t really eat or drink, but is doing much better than early last week and hopefully should be home by the end of this week, but I don’t want to be a debbie so I’ll focus on the interesting things I’ve seen while there, mainly old geezers.

For the first few days, my mom had a roommate who was this 93 year old lady who had more come-and-go visitors than Jenna Jameson in her prime, and damn were these people loud. She also cursed shamelessly and had a tendency to forget the fact that gowns are meant to be worn, so frequently she experienced a Janet Jackson nipple slip (info relayed from the nurse which I luckily never witnessed or else I would be admitted for mental trauma). I did hear delightful quotes such as, “This soup was more disgusting than my ex-husband,” and, “Nurse, can you please give me a sponge bath, and remember to lift my breasts and scrub underneath since I’m not wearing a saddle.” or even a simple, “No, I can’t stop my diarrhea” in response to her son asking if he can come inside her curtain. She had a toilet next to her bed and sat on it constantly like the queen of her throne. If only everyday working people had that much dedication….. Thankfully my mom got switched to a private room, or else my appetite would have entered a deep abyss of no return.

My grandma who’s 94 is down at a nursing home in the Bronx, which is actually pretty nice, but I hate going to nursing homes. I always see it as a reminder of, “Damn, so that’s what it’ll all be like,” but then I snap back to reality due to the overwhelming smell of hand sanitizer. The best part though is hearing my grandma’s stories that she likes to repeat quite often, along with one of her neighbors insisting that I’m her grandson and that it’s my birthday. Stories that I often hear are about her family friend who died on the Titanic (True), or that she was at Yankee Stadium when Lou Gehrig made his “Luckiest Man in the World Speech” (False), and that she was at Don Larsen’s perfect game for the Yankees in the World Series (also false). One of them involving the Yankees which I just heard for the first time (and has been confirmed to be true by other family members) was that her cousin, in the late 1920s, was sitting on a sidewalk in New York outside a barbershop during the baseball offseason reading a sports article in the newspaper. He was daydreaming when all of a sudden Babe Ruth walked up to him and invited him to come into the shop as he was getting a haircut and talk baseball with him….. so he did obviously, and was in there for about 30 minutes, which I thought was pretty cool.

Other random things that I learned is that one of my cousins living in New York is very good friends with Chelsea Clinton since they live in the same apartment building and often go out to restaurants, etc….. Wouldn’t it be weird if she invited you to have dinner with her family???? That was my first thought when he told me, but I didn’t say it out loud at risk of sounding like a fool.

Hope you enjoyed July! Here’s to an unemployed August (of going to California, watching movies, and hopefully snagging a job)!