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Remember yesterday when I was telling you about Mr. Snotty Orderly? Well...while going back through my notes, I found another story. A few actually, but let's start with this one.
Before I get into it, though, I feel the need to explain something about me first. You may have already heard or gathered this about me, but I'm telling you anyway...
No matter where I am or what the circumstances are, I have this incessant need to make people laugh. I have to. Especially in situations such as this past weekend when I was in the position of needing someone's help...someone who isn't related to me; who isn't required to love me. Deep down, I cannot stand feeling like a burden. I don't like asking for help, even from hospital staff or my own husband. Perhaps it stems from insecurity...maybe in some warped way, I don't feel that I'm worth all the fuss, so I feel the need to do as much for myself and others as possible, requiring little effort on their part, and I also can't rest until I lighten things up and make jokes and be funny so they won't hate their job and time with me so much.
GOD...I know, right? Let's blame it on the bizarre drug cocktails I'm almost finished with, ho-kay? Okay.
Anyway, I've been like this forever and I like me and my humor now and I'm pretty good at the 'funny' so let's not mess with perfection and go tryin' to fix me, okay? Also, George picked up on this about me quite early on in our relationship and has (perhaps subconsciously, but still lovingly) silently agreed to be my straight man. He can always sense the timing and mood and lets me play off him. We still joke around together, but when someone else appears? I'm 'on' and he goes with me.
This weekend in the ER was just such an occasion, so once I realize that I'm not getting out of surgery and won't be getting my damned cigarette (ONE FREAKIN' PUFF...is that TOO MUCH TO ASK!?), I calmed down and immediately went back to Funny Gracie Mode. ...okay...maybe not immediately. The, uh, dilaudid and tora...something took the pain away and REALLY enhanced my mood.
So Mr. Snotty Orderly is wheeling me n' my gurney through the maze of corridors that lead us from the ER to the SO NOT PRIVATE room on the 5th floor where I will await my emergency gall bladder surgery (which was SO emergency that they made me wait nearly 36 hours for it). As we're gliding through the halls, I do my best not to fall into the trap of so many movie characters (like they do it on purpose, right? As though the director and camera-person aren't the true culprits) where they always show the fluorescent ceiling lights flashing past, showing 'us' what the patient is seeing as they wheel toward surgery and scary and which always fills me with the dread of uncertainty...of sickness and sadness and the possibility of death. *SHUDDER* And, as always, I'm cracking jokes. But Mr. O is being a jerk, as he's been all evening. He smirked once in awhile, but that was likely out of habit, to be polite, and/or to shut me up. (Ha...as IF.) I keep going with the humor, though, because it's all I know. And considering the fact that I will soon be knocked out in la-la land and cut open and possibly never waking up again, I choose instead to focus on other things like making jokes at any- and everything and continuously bitching about my lost cigarette, because that's something I can control.
He'd been mostly ignoring me and letting George and the other staff members toss me their obligatory chuckles, but since the 'other staff' were back in the ER and George, who was not allowed in these hallways, was deposited back at the public elevator? Un-Doctor-Ass-Clown was my captive. A captive who was likely counting the moments (and fluorescent lights) until he would be free of me, but suddenly...Mr. Orderly perks up. What's this? I twist my head around on my (hahahaha) 'pillow' to see what it is that has captured Dick Face's attention, and ....ahhhh, there it is. It's a gaggle of pretty girls (cause, you know, pretty travels in gaggles). Pretty medical students/residents/interns/whatever to be more precise, and they are on their way out the door, at the end of their shift. And Gracie, even through the haze of drugs, momentarily notices just how far from 'gaggle' she has traveled when she watches the orderly's transformation in their presence, as opposed to hers alone. Don't cly ford meee argentina, though, cause that depressing, old-lady thought happily drifts away as quickly as it occurred. He is so taken with one of them in particular that he stops our journey and leans on my gurney, trying, in his cartoon scrubs and goofy cap, to look cool. They chat for a few seconds, but she is clearly not as taken with him as he is with her, because she seems anxious to keep going. What makes this event worthy of all this babbling of mine is coming right up....
When he realizes that she won't be staying here to chat or joining us on our quest for non-private-room-dom (or wrapping her legs around his NECK while we WAIT), he leans down to begin pushing me again. I don't recall what they said to each other, but it was sarcastic and joking and he punctuated HIS part with...ME. Yes, he actually took my gurney and smacked it into her.
!??!?
Oh, that's right. Once again, Gracie = inanimate object, much like furniture being moved from room to room. I couldn't believe it. So, of course, I had to comment. And in my drug-induced haze, I wasn't nearly as offended and dumbstruck as I am now. At the time, I knew it was slightly 'off' but since I had already been in my Gracie Must Make Everyone Laugh costume and since they had just seconds before been trading barbs, I felt it not only appropriate to insert myself (especially since I was the tool he was using to get to her) but that I was somehow helping him...that by making her laugh, it was going to improve the situation all around.
Yeah...drugs'll do that to ya.
So after he smacks my gurney into her (oblivious to the pain that may have caused me, of course) I yell out (in what I THOUGHT sounded like not at all believable mock-irritation, but apparently she missed the whole 'mock' part) "Hey! I. am. NOT. a WEAPON!" and waited for everyone to laugh.
Um...they didn't.
Instead, she looked almost annoyed and slightly disgusted with me and looked at him, conspiratorially (so maybe I helped him after all), and said "My, how pleasant. Aren't YOU the lucky one tonight?"
Wait! No wait! I was being funny! I was participating in the humor! It's...it's my THING!
But I wasn't saying that, because she was gone and we were gone and the drugs were reeeeeally kicking in and suddenly we were upstairs and I was soon tapping along to the song of the Witch Who May or May Not Have Pneumonia and Who May or May Not Be Contagious.
Hospital Hallways = Tough Room.
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Clearly, the telling of this saga isn't going to be completed today. The pain is winning out, so I need to go. But I'll be back (hopefully tomorrow) with more, so don't stray too far, my Gaggle O' Peeps!
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Someone Arrived Here Searching For....
why are men so dumb
"pee in my ass" [would it KILL you people to get jobs and healthier hobbies???]
how do you pronounce heche [I've heard it's pronounced 'Haysh']
georgie porgie pie recipe [seriously? Betty Crocker holds so little joy for you anymore that you have to resort to recipes from nursery rhymes???]
is whiskey flammable [sigh. thank God that the people who stick around and read my site and become regulars are SO MUCH SMARTER than the search engine weirdos]
fucky girls [these almost always come from Pakistan. Please tell me that this is the exception to the rule...]
"if you remember where you came from" [you just might cry? Yeah...I remember that song, too.]
i wear paper hats [well. That's...that's...good news.]
"i lick my wife" [well. That's...that's...good news...for her]
why men have two hands
overchewing gum
american idol fart
"shopping note" humiliation [this will bother me for weeks...the HELL??]
very shiny pantyhose
goose poop lyrics [i don't EVEN want to know. Well...I mostly don't want to know.]
funny oktoberfest sayings
open disposable diaper [WHY??]
bling bling gun bullet [from France...it just cracks me up picturing some reserved and pompous frenchman looking for --and not realizing how out-of-date his slang is-- a bling bling gun bullet]
etiquette, pantyhose [Ooooohhhh, the rules are ENDLESS]
banana=in=ass [you=fucked=up]
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