No Eating After Midnight
Just before gall bladder surgery, one of the two orderlies assigned to the task of wheeling my wife to the operating room asked her if there was anything she needed.
"How about something to eat?" my wife asked.
"Tell you what," laughed the orderly. "After your surgery you can go out for
a big juicy steak.""Are you buying?" inquired my wife.
The orderly replied, "It just so happens that my credit card is maxed out."
"I know how that is," said my wife. "Mines maxed out to."
"Here's what we'll do then," stated the orderly. "We'll go out to eat and after dinner, the slowest one out of the restaurant has to wash the dishes to pay for supper."
As my wife was wheeled down the hall on a gurney, One of the orderlies points at an unattended bed and says to his partner, "There's a full oxygen tank hanging on that bed frame."
The other orderly replied, "It's a brand new full one too." They pick it up and hide it underneath my wife's blanket.
My wife said, "Isn't that stealing?"
"No, not really. We're just moving it from one department to another," replied on of the orderlies.
"And besides," said the other. "Now I can pay for your steak dinner."
As my wife was wheeled into pre-op, we noticed that the dress of the day was surgical attire. That is except for one woman who was dressed to the nines. One of the nurses asked the woman why she was so dressed up but before the woman could reply, my wife chimed in with, "She has a job interview with the other hospital across town."
Many of the staff began to laugh.
My wife said, "You think I'm kidding? Wait and see if she takes a long lunch."
The staff laughed even louder. The orderly leaned over to my wife and said, "That's the chief surgical nurse. You just earned dessert too."
God's Skin
When my son was three-years-old, he would often sing a song entitled "God's Skin." He would sing, "What color is God's skin? What color is God's skin? It is black, brown, yellow, it is red and it's white. Everyone's the same in the good Lord's sight." It mattered not where we were nor did it matter who was around. He would proudly sing it at the top of his lungs.
When I was five-years-old, I found a bottle of my mother's finger nail polish and wrote my name in big bold blazon red letters on our brick hearth. I had tried to discreetly hide my artwork behind a chair so that my father wouldn't find it but, much to my dismay, he did.
"What did you think you were doing?" my father asked.
"Mum taught me how to write my name," I explained.
I was shocked when I failed to get a spanking for my misdeed.
I was reminded of this incident when I arrived home one day to find crayon scribblings on the wall. I immediately asked my son if he had done this.
"Yes," he calmly replied.
Sounding like my own father I said, "What did you think you were doing?"
"It's God's skin."
"I looked closer to see that he had used black, brown, yellow and red crayons on the white wall.
He didn't get a spanking and just like my name written in fingernail polish, "God's skin" remained on the wall, untouched.
Recycle
The age old tradition of giving birthday cards was one that my family faithfully observed when I was growing up. As a child I received those cutesy-cutesy kids cards that I never looked at longer than to inspect them for cold hard cash. As I got older, the tradition changed to include the giving of humorous cards. Instead of looking for cash on the inside, I looked for a punchline. It was a very delightful and fun tradition.
Once on my father's birthday, one of my brothers was having a hard time finding just the right card. None of the usual humor cards seemed quite funny enough so he decided to improvise. "Wishing you the best on your Bar Mitzvah," the card read. Not particularly humorous if you happen to be Jewish but but if you happen to be Presbyterian; well, I think you know what I mean.
My brother scratched out all references to Bar Mitzvah and replaced them with the word "Birthday." I think he had more fun making the card and with the anticipation of giving the card than he did in the actual giving. It was a big hit with our dad.
When my brothers birthday came around, my other brother had forgotten to get a card. The dilemma of what to do was quickly solved when he ran across the old Bar Mitzvah card that had been given to our dad. He simply scratched out our brothers signature and replaced it with his own. He then put it back in the original envelope while replacing "To Dad" with our brother's name. A little clear tape sealed the deal.
Thus began a tradition that lasted many years and fit right in with our Scottish heritage. The same Bar Mitzvah card was passed around until there was no longer any room another signature. Somewhere along the line the tradition was forgotten to the point where I haven't seen any reused birthday cards for many years. However, one of my brothers has a birthday coming up soon and I hope he isn't reading this. If he is, he knows what he's getting.
Blackboard
A friend of mine used to operate a government laboratory and needed to have a blackboard installed. He called the maintenance department, located at a different facility, to come out and hang the blackboard. The maintenance folks said they'd be out in a few days to take on the task.
Several days later, three maintenance workers arrived at the laboratory. The looked at the blackboard and then at the wall where it was slated to go. They gave my friend an estimate for doing the job and then left. The blackboard was still not on the wall.
My friend's father had been in charge of the maintenance department several years previous so my friend called him. "Dad," he said, "can you tell me why it takes three government workers to come out to my lab just to give me an estimate for hanging a blackboard."
"The answer is easy, son."
"What is it?"
"They couldn't get four guys in the front seat of the pickup truck."
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