Don't Join The Baby Seal Club

I think I have undergone a cuddly, Kafkaesque transformation. Unlike Gregor Samsa in Kafka's famous The Metamorphosis, I do not wake up and find that I have become a vile giant insect. I wake and am somewhat slow in realizing that I have changed into a precious Baby Seal.

Goddamn, but I am a cute bastard, I think as I look into the mirror. And it is true, for I am adorable. I'm a baby motherfuckin' seal!

Hello Mr. Bus Driver!

Hello My Favorite Passenger!

The driver grins and lowers the wheelchair access ramp for me so I can waddle aboard.
A disembarking gentleman gently lifts me into one of the front seats before stepping off onto the sidewalk. He waves goodbye.
I make a squeaking sound, pleased.

The entire bus erupts in cheers and applause, two dozen beaming smiles light the vehicle's interior with a warmth that would make roses bloom. I resist the urge to take a bow, a prudent caution given that I have no legs or waist with which to bow.

Instead, I wiggle my flippers in happy reply.

They love me, I think.

I love them back. It's a special feeling on the bus. This is the bus to happiness and I am it's happiest passenger.
We are riding on paradise and I'm the only one who knows it.
It shouldn't be a secret.
Who should I tell?
I tell everyone I see, and they all concur.
Some of the people even give me sardines.
Life is good. You don't have to be a baby seal to know that.

At lunchtime, I try to tell this to the Fur Trappers.
Using mallets, they bludgeon me to the edge of extinction.
Crimson stains blossom on my snow-white coat.

I escape their nets and somehow manage to make it back to my lodgings.
On my porch, someone has left a bucket of herring guts decorated with a ribbon. I nourish myself with this gift and my wounds quickly mend, my fur regains it's unsullied fuzzy whiteness.

Ahhh...

And that's how it's been the last two days. Everyone I meet either wants to cuddle and feed me or they want to beat me with blunt objects and flay me alive. That's how people react to baby seals. Cuddle or destroy. Compassion or cruelty.
There are no minor events, only the grandest of celebrations and the starkest of tragedies.

Ahhh...*ahem*

Dude. Don't you think that just maybe you are getting a bit worked up over a few bills and petty aggravations? Why don't you change back into a human and start over, and try making sense this time, eh?

Um. Ok.

Well, yesterday sucked. But I can't go into that here because it involves 150 other people.

So...good news!

Today I finally got my raise! It's only a few cents an hour, but it's retroactive to the beginning of the year- I am suddenly two hundred dollars ahead!

When I got home, my mailbox was jammed with bills. First I open my power bill.

Good news! The power company has issued me a credit for nearly $175! I had been over-charged last summer, something I thought was a lost cause, but someone must have filed a class action or something...I dunno, all I know is I won't have a power bill for months!

Hot Buttery Damn! How often do you open the power bill and do a Snoopy Dance?
First, a retroactive raise and then a credit from the Electric. Now I'm $375 ahead!

Keep on rollin'...

The cable bill is exactly what it should be. The last one.
I have canceled my cable and decided to save the money for better things: fifty bucks a month = $600 a year. That's airfare to London, that's what.

This makes me pause and think of other good news- today I got confirmation from the State Department that I will have my Passport within three weeks. Application approved! Anyway...

That leaves the phone bill, which is always the same.

Except it's not. It's $375 more than it should be. I have let my guard down and Verizon has shafted me to the tune of ninety cents a minute- for 400+ minutes! After sifting through the gobbledegook, I find that next month my DSL goes up from $15 to $40. Injury! Insult!


Screw that. I had to work my ass off to get that $15 price- years ago, Verizon had tacked me with $400 of long-distance that I contested-and won.
After they cleared my account , I was so mad I told them to cancel me, I was switching. To appease me and keep me on-board, they offered me ultra-cheap DSL and a cheap long-distance plan that was subject to change.
Frickin' fine print. Damn me for missing it.

I called the competition and got my services switched- at about half the price. The slight increase in my new DSL is offset by the savings on the phone, so I feel pretty good about it- I'll save about twenty bucks a month...

Hmmm...for twenty bucks extra, the new company will add digital cable w/ a year of HBO.

Sold!

Dude. So after all that kvetching and gnashing, you are basically even, money-wise, as well as being a few steps closer to travel? Things have evened out and as a bonus you also get cable TV again . Is that what you mean? Is it?

Uh...yeah. I guess it is. Balance is maintained and all that. Harmony, y'know?

So have you learned anything from this?

Um...it's better to act like a man than to feel like a seal?

Welcome to the world. Have a sardine.

The Doctor's Office

I have only mentioned this to a few people and never in public, but I've been feeling poorly lately.
Fatigued at mid-day.
Out of breath for no reason- jog up several flights of stairs, carry heavy loads etc, no problem...get up in the middle of the night to pee? I'm winded.
No pattern to it. I have a not-so hidden fear of illness, and heart disease is near the top of my list of medical phobias. I am so afraid of it that I have only mentioned my recent poor health to a few people- knock wood.

I have likewise been keeping mostly mum on my insurance woes - but today I finally got my health insurance. I called my doc right away.

When I mentioned shortness of breath, he said he wanted me to come directly in. So I did.

There was a new receptionist on duty, a middle-aged woman with a very sad face...as she weaved her way through my new insurance info she muttered something about insurance carriers. There was a peculiar, intense edge to her mumbled words that caused me to do a double-take:

"Pardon?"

"I said you've had quite a few carriers in the last several years, Mr. C.," she said, her voice now heavy with weary compassion.

It was a statement, not a judgement , but my reaction was defensive.

"Well, I've had a lot of jobs...and the ones I keep usually change insurance carriers every year. To save money, they say."

"Honey, we see this all the time ...all day...it's terrible. Do your premiums ever go down when they "save money?"

Aha. This woman had some sort of issue with The System, not with me. I felt like I could talk to her, so I did.

"No, of course my premiums never go down. I can barely afford my share, in fact. I've felt like hell for a month and haven't been able to afford a visit until today. It's absolutely shameful how our country refuses to care for it's citizens."

"If you were in prison, you'd get free medical."

Prison? Huh? Where is this headed?

"Excuse me?"

" The bastard -pardon my French- who killed my son. He gets free medical care. For life. He had an appendectomy last month and I was praying that he would die. He didn't. He killed my boy. My boy was only 23."

"I...."

"Your new co-pay is $20. It was ten. They need the extra money so they can give free medicine to the man who killed my son. They plan on keeping that man alive forever. In prison."

As she said this it was clear that she considered the murderer's incarceration to be her own, that her life would always be stalled at that moment , the moment that she learned her son was dead. In her heart, as long as her child's killer had a future, she herself did not.


"I...I think I know...," I stammered, but I don't know, so I shut up and listened. This woman's anguish was compelling.
I am strong.
I am powerful.
I am helpless in the face of a mother's grief for her murdered child.

I have been told a little about this sort of justice and how it feels.
Told by someone who wasn't quite murdered and by someone who was.
But that's all I can know.
Because I wasn't there. It didn't happen to me.

It wasn't my son who was killed.

It wasn't my son who grew up wanting to be a soldier just like his Daddy, only to drop out of West Point because he was broken-hearted over what had happened to our military. It wasn't my child that returned home without any dreams left, and it wasn't my kid who lost his life just because he wanted to help his mom by taking out the trash.

It was her son who wanted to be a soldier and it was her son who was shot in the heart while dumping the garbage for his mom. He died in the alley a few seconds after his parents heard the shot.

He was murdered as part of a gang initiation. When apprehended, the killer explained that it was nothing personal, just that "somebody had to die that night and he was there"...as the woman told me this story, I could picture this inhuman creature as it calmly explained how sure, "it wasn't personal - we just murdered your son because it's better than being bored..." and I KNEW that this animal would never, not once, have even the slightest touch of remorse over what it had done.
In fact, the creature didn't seem to think it was treated fairly.
After all, someone had to die. It wasn't personal- why was everyone so upset?

That is how the animal thinks. It wasn't my son in her story , but I have met the animal.
I know others who have and not a single one of us is better for the meeting, but we have survived the encounters, with varying degrees of success.
Nietzche was wrong.
Not everything that fails to kill you makes you stronger.

I managed to choke out a few words about two friends of mine who fight this animal war every day but I couldn't get it out properly. I could tell from my voice that I was about to burst into tears and I wasn't sure I would be able to stop if I did.

"I'm sorry...I'm not used to talking about this. I didn't mean to bring all that up...", words that could have been spoken by either one of us, but in this case it was her to me.
And I'm not used to it. I'm used to writing about my feelings; I am not used to talking about them.
There is a huge difference.

" No," I said, " it's OK. Most people don't talk about this sort of thing. We hold it in until it kills us because that is easier than talking about it."

She reached through the sliding glass window and squeezed my hand.

"People should talk more often," she said and handed my paperwork back to me.

By the time the doctor saw me I had almost finished crying.




My doctor is an extraordinarily kind man and I've been seeing him for almost ten years. He has seen me through a (temporarily) crippling neurological illness; my first panic attacks and a nearly fatal addiction.

He has never seen me cry.

But he understood.

Now. What seems to be the matter?

I described my symptoms.

Hmmm...I haven't started smoking cigarettes have I?

No sir, just marijuana.

No alcohol?

Not a drop.

Mind if I look?

Go ahead, please.

(Note to alcoholics who think that they can fool their doctor: You can't. He can look down your throat and tell if you are a drunk. If he can't , you need a new doctor- not that drunks practice much preventive health care. It's almost always a sudden ER trip that gets them)

My doctor is very proud of my sobriety. He tells me that the chances of me doing what I have done are almost impossible, yet here I am.
I am not ashamed to admit that I needed to hear that.
That I do need to hear it from time to time.
That I will probably always need to hear it.

He used his ears and a stethoscope- still one of Medicine's finest tools- I took breaths until I nearly hyperventilated. Through the nose. Now the mouth. Nose. Mouth.
Dizzy.


Well. I was sent to have some precautionary X-rays, but the doctor seems to think that I have developed an allergy- my heart and lungs sound fine, but my sinuses are draining and seem obstructed.

He believes that I have developed an allergy or twelve and it is causing mild asthmatic attacks. This , I was told, is not nearly as bad as a heart attack.
Cool.

So I was given an inhaler.
I have to laugh.
It fits.

See, despite all the hype, I'm really just a nerd who likes Dungeons and Dragons, comic books and record collections.
I'm not even cool enough to wear horn-rimmed glasses- only cool geeks get those...but now I do have an inhaler!

I'll keep it in my Pocket-Protector, next to my Bic pens, my d20 and my Texas Instruments math machine.

Right above my heart, which seems to doing fine.

Man, I was really worried and was afraid I'd have a stroke any second or something...asthma?
The inhaler seems to work.

I am literally breathing easier!

Now, will my new sleeping pills be enough to counter the speedy feeling from the inhaler?