A Sure Sign You're About To Be Pulled Into A One-Sided Conversation

There is a difference between saying "I'm interested in other people's opinions" and using that phrase as an excuse to not only disagree, but ramble on incessantly about your own opinion.

Dinner Conversation

In celebration of Veteran's Day, Golden Corral Buffet offered free meals for veterans as a token of appreciation. It has become a yearly tradition for my parents to wait in line for up to an hour or two with all of the other veteran's, but my dad is not one to pass up a free meal. The thought occurred to me, I wonder how many coronary conditions are exasperated in these (mostly) WWII, Korea, and Viet Nam era veterans by eating at Golden Corral for free. You think that's a cell phone ringing? No, it's just someone's pacemaker going off.

Always one for good conversation, my dad started off with this exchange:

Dad: Deep within the bowels of my mind....
Me: Wait. Did you just say you have bowels in your mind? Are you admitting to being full of crap?
Dad: Well, I have been known to pull ideas out of my butt...

Touche', Dad. Touche'.

On A More Personal Note

This weekend didn't seem to come fast enough. When the folks in staffing put out the new schedule, they grouped my days off last week in such a way that put me working 10 out of 11 straight days. Monday night as I lay in bed thinking about the prospects of going to work on Tuesday, I realized for the first time I was no longer feeling the excitement to go to work that I did before. I was tired, yes; but this was beyond tired. I realized that after two months and being in the middle of a 10 day-straight stint, I was feeling the onset of burn out.

I've been open about the more amusing things that occur while I'm at work: doctors with open flies, being able to wear scrubs and the such. Just this past week, we wrestled the phone away from a lady who was making an unauthorized call to one of the doctors. Once we got the phone away from her, she proceeded to stick her finger in the phone jack, call out a series of numbers, and ask to speak to so-and-so doctor, thus becoming the phone herself. Her medication came quickly that morning. The doctor she called cussed the nurse out for letting it happen.

What I'm more reluctant to talk about, though, are the less-amusing parts to my job, the reason why I usually need to drive home in near silence just to decompress and process everything I've just witnessed at work. Like the 20 year old guy I did a safety search on and nonchalantly asked why he had dried blood on his ear. He replied, "that's why I'm here. I shot myself." The bullet, although a very small caliber, went through his ear and missed his head. Or the 74 year old lady who sucker-punched me in the head while we were giving her medications. I had a headache for three days. Verbal and physical assaults on staff are becoming more and more commonplace. Last week I had to watch behind me as a 19 year old girl (with scars running the length of her forearm) walked by. She was holding a pencil had expressed earlier that she wasn't afraid to use it. On my first day on the unit, I made the remark that I expected everything except what actually happened. That seems about right.

The truth is that I am surrounded by so much ugliness and hopelessness throughout my day. Some people go to work and are energized by what they do. More often than not, I go to work and leave emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually drained. After ten straight days of that without a day off, I was about ready to hand in my badge and check myself in. Thank God for weekends.

I don't want to fill this space up with a bunch of war stories from work. Neither do I want to come to the point where people ask me "...And how does that make you feel?" It comes with the territory to some extent. This time I just felt it necessary to give the less pretty things about my job some exposure. I'm not ready to throw in the towel yet, however. I'm beginning the application process for the clinical psychology program at ODU. Let the grad school proceedings begin!

Reaching The Point Of Diminishing Returns

Last week in the mail I received a free sample of the Gillette Fusion razor. Over the years I've been impressed by the advancement of razor technology, but part of me felt like the new technology had passed me by. I imagined what it must be like for my grandmother to sit down and try to figure out how to "plug in" to the "internets." I wasn't sure I'd be able to figure it out. This thing has five--count 'em--five blades on one side! And, just for good measure, an extra blade on the reverse side for "precision trimming." To look at it, it seems like "precision trimming" is a fancy way of saying "we're about to lay your face on the butcher's block." I can imagine the meeting in the boardroom at Gillette, the marketing department on one side of the table, the engineers on the other side.

Marketing Dept: The prototype looks great, you guys really outdid yourselves on this one. But is there any way we can add a sixth blade?

Engineers: Impossible! It can't be done!

Marketing Dept: Are you sure? A sixth blade would really give us the edge on our competition.

[chuckles heard all around the table]

Those engineers really came through, did the impossible and found an inconspicuous hiding place for that sixth blade--on the BACK side of the razor so it won't get in the way of anything. I used it for the first time yesterday. I had used the same razor since high school: a simple, two blade Gillette Sensor Excel. So the prospect of tripling my whisker cutting capacity left me almost daunted. I imagined gaining the freedom of not having to shave for weeks at a time. I could sleep in later. People would comment on how neat and smooth my face appeared. It seemed to me a virtual baby's butt utopia.

So you can imagine my utter disgust and disappointment when I looked in my rear view mirror as I was driving home from work and saw the beginnings of a 3 o'clock shadow. Apparently, those extra blades are just along for the ride because they don't do a damn thing to make your shave any closer. Bloody hell. At least I didn't pay for it.

Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid

I sat in Barnes & Noble this afternoon and engaged in one of my favorite past times: reading a book without buying it while enjoying a cup of gourmet coffee. It's not that I'm totally opposed to purchasing books, I just want to know how good the book is before I buy it. And I usually have to read the entire book before I come to a consensus. It has saved me tons of money over the years on what, more often than not, turns out to be mediocre literature. The suits at corporate headquarters should have known this would be the case when they added a coffee shop and over-stuffed chairs to what is essentially a pay-as-you-go library. Leave it to me to find the cracks in the system. Let the record show, however, that I have never pulled a Costanza and taken reading materials into the men's room.

As I'm sitting in the cafe being drawn into a book about bipolar disorder, the man at the table next to me asks me what time it is.

"Uhhh...about 3:30," I replied as I pulled out my phone and then returned to my reading. I thought we were done. We weren't. He wanted to keep talking. Something about how that was within 5 minutes of what his clock said and that a 5 minute difference is acceptable enough. I nodded without making eye contact, trying to return to my reading. If this conversation was a car engine trying to be started, it was badly out of tune and he was trying to pump the gas as it sputtered. I simply just let him flood the engine that was our conversation until it died so I could go on reading the book I should be paying for first in peace.

Some time later my coffee caught up with me and I had to visit the men's room. As I approached the urinal, my former cafe neighbor was approaching the sink to wash his hands.

"Well, I feel about ten pounds lighter," he said as he dried his hands. He said this to no one in particular, and to me especially. I guess he felt like we had built up some sort of rapport in our last ill-fated attempt at conversation. As if this environment was somehow more conducive.

The urge to urinate left me momentarily. Did he just say what I think he just said? I turned my head slightly in his direction, but did not make eye contact. I decided to let it go. Wow. I had to regroup. It took me a second to remember why I was standing in front of the urinal. Life has thrown many things at me over the years. Being completely blind-sided and forgetting that I had to pee had not been one of them until today. It was like trying to re-start a flooded engine.

Honestly, how would you have responded?

Allowing odd conversation starters to sputter, flood, and die always leaves me feeling like I have just thwarted an attempt at proselytizing for some brain-washing cult. He was, after all, reading a book called The Fall Of Lucifer.