complications of envenomization from … a gila monster
I joke that I grew up in a family where I was told that Woody Hayes, the evil football coach at Ohio State, was under my bed and if I got up in the middle of the night, Woody would grab me and take me to Columbus.
That isn’t exactly true.
I was never told anything was under my bed when I was a kid.
I knew.
Gila Monsters were under my bed.
I knew Gila Monsters were under my bed and if I got out, they would get me.
For some reason, when I was growing up, the scariest thing for me in all of nature (after that thing on the wing in the Twilight Zone) were Gila Monsters.
And I have no idea why.
But I have an theory, an idea.
The reason I was scared of Gila Monsters was the TV show, The Wonderful World of Color from Walt Disney Studios.
It was on TV every Sunday night back in the day when 1) church started at 7PM and us little kids got to stay home (there was much politicking amongst my older brothers and sisters to ‘babysit’ and get of going to church) and 2) there were only three TV channels so we always, always watched The Wonderful World of Color.
“Color is on” or “It’s time for color!” we would yell and for the next hour, Mr. Disney would take us all over the world with shows about the Vienna Boys Choir or back in time with Davy Crockett.
One the regular stops would be the Natural World as amateur filmmakers around the world, the people who had the patience to film a prairie dog farm or make stop action films of flowers blooming, would send their film clips to Disney and Disney would crop all these clips together, add music and captivating narration and The Living Desert came to life on our TVs.
A Gila Monster from the actual Living Desert Preview by Disney Studios
One Living Desert episode had a short segment on the Gila Monster and the video was so scary it was burned in my brain.
The even paced, deep narration emphasized the awfulness of the Gila Monster and the terribleness of being bit by one.
I doubt I slept that night as somehow I knew, there were Gila Monsters under my bed.
The were probably every where.
The next day at Crestview Elementary in Grand Rapids, where I went school, what was the major topic of conversation?
Monday morning in the hallways at school, at recess and in class we all talked about Gila Monsters.
Because there were only three channels, everyone in my class watched the same show.
Out on the play ground, We all looked for likely places Gila Monsters could be hiding.
I wouldn’t go in the concrete barrels on the playground for weeks and never ever felt comfortable playing in the sandbox.
Those of us who could talk with authority on the subject (anyone who might have been to the Southwest United States or someone whose Dad might have been the desert) would assert that there was no more terrible way to die than to die from a Gila Monster bite.
These shows would get repeated and the conversations would be repeated and over the years it was Gila Monster dread that kept me from walks in the woods or from turning over rocks.
The funny part is that I don’t know that it was unique to me or my school but, much like Davy Crockett, it may have a national phenomena as Gila Monsters even got featured in a Charlie Brown comic strip in 1966.
Gila Monster Phobia doesn’t turn up in the google but …
Ms. Ortiz writes that: Mr. Ward endured a four-minute-long bite by the lizard to his right hand on the night of Feb. 12, the report said. He lapsed in and out of consciousness for about two hours before seeking medical attention, the report said.
Paramedics found Mr. Ward in a bed, minimally responsive and “in apparent severe distress,” the report said. He was taken to a hospital, where he was put on life support and “continued to decline throughout his hospitalization.”
“Minimally responsive and “in apparent severe distress” sounds pretty bad to me.
“Continued to decline throughout his hospitalization.” sounds even worse.
It was all my nightmares come true.
Then I read:
Kevin Torregrosa, the curator of herpetology at the Bronx Zoo, said that it’s rare to be bitten by a Gila monster and that “it’s also incredibly rare to die from one.”
“This is certainly the first one that I have firsthand knowledge of in my career,” he said on Saturday.
The Associated Press reported that it was believed to be the first death from a Gila monster bite in the United States in almost a century.
It was believed to be the first death from a Gila monster bite in the United States in almost a century.
brilliant sunny day cloudless December blue skies but can’t see the cold
We were out and about on Christmas Day in the Low Country of South Carolina, it was a brilliant sunny day.
The December sky was a deep blue.
And it was COLD!
I was standing on the bluff overlooking the May River, thinking of the hot hot hot days in the past that I have stood there.
I stood there in the Bluffton Breeze that is always blowing across the river to the Bluff.
It was for the Bluffton Breeze that people moved to Bluffton South Carolina in the first place with many of the area families building summer homes here to catch the refreshing breeze off the river.
Standing there on this brilliant sunny Christmas Day, I felt frozen.
I felt frozen and it came to me that, you can’t see cold.
Or can you?
I was reminded of the Weatherball of Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I grew up.
The Weatherball was this giant stainless steel ball on top of a bank building in downtown Grand Rapids.
It changed color with the weather.
And you could see it from all over the city.
There was a little rhyme that everyone in Grand Rapids could recite.
Weatherball red – warm weather ahead
Weatherball blue – cold weather in view
Weatherball green – no change foreseen
And it worked, though maybe not in the way the designers designed it.
I what I mean is, take for example, August in Grand Rapids, a soupy humid month.
80 degree days with 90% humidity is the norm.
When I was kid and my family would drive into Grand Rapids from the west on Lake Michigan Drive and get on the freeway that came across John Ball Park, the entire downtown would open up in front of us like a panorama.
The city would be hidden in a thick, humid haze.
And shining in this swampy morass was the Weatherball.
Glowing a smoky red in the haze, somehow the Weatherball made it seem warmer, stickier and more humid.
In the winter time, we would go sledding on a hill at Crestview School.
Nighttime the sky would be crystal clear and Orion would stretch over and all around us, from the top of the hill, we could see the lights of the city.
And shining above on the lights was the Weatherball.
Glowing a bright light blue, somehow the Weatherball made it seem colder, crisper and more freezing.
Perception drove reality and you could see warm and you could see cold.
At some point, the Michigan National Bank that owned the building where the Weatherball was located (the letter M N B blinked just below the Weatherball) made the decision that the Weatherball had to come down.
Somewhere along the line, I met someone who told me that it was their Dad, as a brand new-in-town Michigan National Bank Vice President, made the decision.
This person told me that their Dad was told that the giant tower on top of the building was starting to sway and when it rocked in high winds, the roof of the building was showing signs wear and tear and there was good chance the Weatherball could come crashing down.
This person said that their Dad made the decision to take down the Weatherball and spent the rest of his career with Bank being known as the ‘Man who wrecked the Weatherball.’
He may have been one of the most, well, I was going to say hated but that is a too strong term, yet anyone who heard the story did hate the guy so I will say, one of the most hated men who figured in the List of Great Things Grand Rapids Lost.
Other things on this list include the Grand Rapids City Hall which is almost more famous for an incident during its demolition when a young lady hand cuffed herself to a wrecking ball.
A lesser know incident that took place during the demolition was that two guys took sledgehammers and made their way up to the old bell town of City Hall and with the sledges, range the City Hall Bell one last time.
You can see this bell to this day outside the entrance to the Grand Rapids Public Museum and if you look closely you will the surface dotted with circles the size of 50 cent pieces where the sledge hammers made contact.
I had done some research on that bell when I worked for the Local History Collections of the Grand Rapids Public Library and I remember talking about to Bob, one of the security guards at the Library who was retired from the Grand Rapids Police Department.
I told Bob the story of the guys with the sledgehammers and he responded, “Do I remember that I night! I was the first cop on the scene and I had to make my way through the half demolished building and up the bell tower stair way with no railing using a flash light! It was crazy! I thought I was going to fall of the stairs or that the place was going to come down.”
I told my boss, then City Historian, L. Gordon Olson, that we had to make a oral history interview with Bob but nothing came of it.
And speaking of Gordon Olson, he WAS the most hated man who figured in the List of Great Things Grand Rapids Lost.
It was Gordon, you see, as Assistant Director of the Grand Rapids Public Museum, who had the whale removed from the original Museum building on Washington St.
Around 1900, the Public Museum acquired a complete whale skeleton (the origin of which is a little murky but chances are it was purchased from the State of Florida when Florida shut down their pavilion at the Great Columbian Exposition in Chicago).
The whale bones were on separate stands and the Museum would pack the whole thing off the Kent County Fair in Comstock Park and wrap the bones in canvas so you could take the Jonah experience and walk through the whale.
When a new building was built during the depression, the whale was proudly hung in the main gallery of the museum until the late 1970’s when Gordon had it taken down.
Gordon told me that if ever he spoke anywhere at any city function or gathering, and that fact that he was the guy who removed the whale was mentioned, he would get booed.
The boos might have toned down once the new museum was built and the whale skeleton was restored but for anyone who grew up with the old museum and pitching pennies on the whale’s tail from the 2nd floor gallery, Gordon was not well liked.
Gordon told me that he was caught in a bad spot and that the whale bones had started disintegrating and falling to the floor and it was only a matter of time before some one got hurt.
The funny part of the story is that Gordon told me how a giant scaffold had to be built at some expense to remove the skeleton.
Gordon said that about a month after the whale came down and the scaffold removed, he noticed a guy walking around the gallery, looking up at the ceiling.
Gordon knew what he was looking for but went up to him and asked anyway.
The man did indeed ask if there had been a whale hanging there at one time.
Gordon told him yes and that it had just recently been removed.
The man nodded and then asked how did they take it down?
It turned out the man was the guy who had hung the whale in the first place.
He pointed out some ring bolts still in the ceiling and showed Gordon how the skeleton had been suspended in such a way that had ropes been tied up through those bolts and PULLED UP, the entire frame was designed to then unlock and be lowered to the floor.
As I said, the whale was saved and can seen to this day at the new Grand Rapids Public Museum.
I am also happy to say that when I worked at WZZM, a co-worker did some research and found that the original Weatherball was sitting in a scrap metal yard and the station was able to buy the Weatherball, have the neon fixed and the restored Weatherball returned to the Grand Rapids skyline from a cell tower next to the WZZM station.
Maybe on brilliant sunny days in December in South Carolina you can’t see cold.
But I know what cold looks like.
It’s light blue and glows in a clear colder, crisper and more freezing way than you could have imagined it.
And because of that blue light, the coldness is clear and colder, crisper and more freezing way than you could have imagined it.
And if you are in Grand Rapids, Michigan in December, at night and you look west, you can see it too.
when the sessions of sweet silent thought summon up remembrance things past
Crestview Elementary 1967 Not the class in question – but the same kids, same gym, same Principal and note the Student Teacher on the far left
Shamelessly stolen from Big Bill’s Sonnet XXX:
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:
When sleep is hard to find, it is helpful to ease my mind into sessions of sweet thought and remembrance of things past and take up my time while hoping for sleep.
Hard to feel my time is dear or that time is dear to me, as the old woes crowd in on new ones.
And there is so much past to remember at this time of year.
Christmas time.
Remembrance of Christmas times past.
The remembrance that comes to mind is one of singing.
Singing at school.
A simple, sweet act of singing a Christmas carol with your class in front of a gym full of parents.
A simple act of pure terror.
I don’t know about things today, but my days at Crestview Elementary School in Grand Rapids, Michigan where I grew up, had a lot of singing.
Each day started with the class singing a patriotic song, America the Beautiful or My Country ‘Tis of Thee.
Then a couple of times a month, the Grand Rapids Public Schools Music Teacher assigned to Crestview would show up and talk about music and even, as I remember it, play current top records and teach us songs to sing.
And at Crestview, once a month of so, the entire school would get together for a gym sing in the gym where all the kids sat on the floor and sang.
I remember that copies of a chorus book of some kind would be handed that had just the words of the songs, not bothering with the music as no one could read music.
We didn’t really need the chorus books either as we knew the words to most of the songs.
We sang mostly American Standards like Grand Old Flag and Yankee Doodle and Over Hill, Over Dale.
That one was a favorite for the line, “For its HIGH HIGH HEE in the FIELD ARTILLERY, COUNT OFF YOUR NUMBERS LOUD AND STRONG … and with one voice, everyone in that gym yelled out ONE – TWO.
We also loved a song about lunchtime that I had to search out just now.
The Google says the song is Today is Monday and the verses went:
Today is Monday, today is Monday. Monday bread and butter. All you hungry Soldiers, We wish the same to you …
Each line of the song was a different day and there was something different to eat.
As you sang through the song, you had to repeat all the days:
Today is Tuesday, Today is Tuesday, Tuesday string beans Monday bread and butter.
The highlight of this song was Wednesday because the line for Wednesday was:
Wednesday Soup.
But not soup.
But SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU – ooooooooooop with the ooooooop being a loud austrialian rising interrogative.
Maybe half the gym sang the song but everybody and I MEAN EVERYBODY hit the suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-ooooooooooooooooop-peh.
The sound made the gym floor vibrate.
I can still hear and feel it.
Now a bit of digression, I will end up back in the gym with this song, another thing that happened often or often enough at Crestview that we always talked about it was a Fruit Roll.
A day would be picked and the word would go out and everyone would bring a piece of fruit to class and hide it in their desk and a some point, someone would yell FRUIT ROLL and we would get our piece of fruit and roll it down the aisle to the front of the class.
Understand this meant as to be something nice for your teacher.
The teacher got to bring all the fruit home.
A Fruit Roll was supposed to be a surprise but as Crestview was a neighborhood school and most kids went home for lunch, the teachers had to notice either the fruit being smuggled into the room or the smell of ripe apples and bananas hidden in our desks.
A goofy thing about this is that the teachers bought the into the Fruit Roll as something that was a part of our school.
One year, as I remember it, there was a student teacher at Crestview that everyone liked and when her term finished up, a teacher came up with the idea that it would nice if the her class had a fruit roll for her on her last day.
This plan grew until it was decided to have a school wide fruit roll, in the gym, during a gym sing.
The teachers decided that signal to roll the fruit would be the Today is Monday song.
And the word went out to all the classes that when we got to the line about Friday, instead of singing:
Today is Friday, Today is Friday, Friday fish (and it was sung fiiiiiii-ISH)
We would sing:
Today is Friday, Today is Friday, Friday FRUITROLL
And then the whole school was supposed roll their fruit at this departing student teacher.
Whoever thought this one up did not think this one through.
There aren’t the words I need to describe what happened.
Because the entire thing went off just as it was planned.
We filed into the gym and sat on the floor.
The student teacher was introduced by the Principal who told the student teacher we wanted to sing her a song.
The student teacher stood in front of all of us.
Tears in her eyes.
We started singing Today is Monday, Today is …
I tell you, you could feel electricity build up like a thunderstorm in that gym as we went through each verse.
The suspense was Hitchcockian.
We got to line about Friday.
We sang, TODAY IS FRIDAY TODAY IS FRIDAY.
FRIDAY ….
FRUITROLL!
And some 300 kids threw a piece of fruit at this poor student teacher.
I think I was in third grade.
I loved it.
Organic planned chaos.
Had it been a prank it would have been in contention for greatest school prank ever.
But it wasn’t a prank.
It had been planned by my teachers.
The Principal was in on it.
I was so proud to live in a country where things like this could happen!
I remember standing in about the 4th row, fruit flying every where.
The student teacher and the Principal hid behind the piano.
The noise, I don’t mean screams or yells, it was just NOISE, a roar, was overwhelming.
Apples, oranges, bananas and bunches of grapes were everywhere.
Someone hippie type threw a green pepper that exploded marvelously on the wall.
I want to say an entire pineapple went flying by.
I was hugging myself hard and jumping up and down and laughing so hard I thought I was going wet my pants.
And it went on and on.
The teachers, worried about low turn out I guess, had brought grocery bags of apples and the big sixth graders in the back row of the gym found the fresh ammunition and they kept the fruit flying.
It went off so perfectly wrong that the grown ups were caught off guard and didn’t move in time to try and stop it and by the time they did try, it was too late.
In the middle of all this, and this is as clear to me as any part of this memory, my teacher, my 3rd grade teacher, Miss Reynolds, who always had an eye on me, walked up to me.
She kind of understood that this fruit roll, on the whole, appealed to my nature about what higher education was all about.
It was like she wanted to say, you’re really enjoying this aren’t you, except she didn’t have to say it.
We looked at each other and we knew.
And then she handed me one last great big shiny apple.
And she looked me in the eye and said, “JUST MAKE SURE YOU ROLL IT.”
I really wanted to throw it as hard as I could, but this, I felt, was a matter and moment of trust and I rolled that apple down the gym floor.
It was the last piece of fruit in the great Friday Fruit Roll.
Some teacher came in with a box and all the fruit was picked.
The Janitor came and looked at the wall and started wiping up the green pepper.
And, I think, the Principal called for the next song.
I went to that same school for the next 3 grades.
Nothing like that ever happened again.
It was in that same gym that the school held the school programs for Parents.
Each December the Music Teacher would assign each class a Christmas Carol.
Each class would spend a month learning that song.
I was always envious of any class that got We Three Kings because they seemed to have so much fun hitting the OOOOOOO on OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH-OOOOOO Star of Wonder.
It happened every winter.
There was no escape.
No one asked if you could sing.
No one asked if you wanted to be in a choir.
Each class, each and everyone in each class, sang.
I have seen TV shows and Movies that have scenes of a locker room where a football team is getting ready for their game.
The moody silence.
The anxiety.
The focus.
The fears.
Those scenes in those locker rooms were nothing like what we went through in those classrooms waiting for our turn to file down the hallway and enter the gym from a side door and line up on the stage in front of row upon row of parents.
What I remember thinking is how come no asked me if I WANTED to do this.
One year I did ask raise my hand in class and asked WHY we had to this.
I remember that the answer was our parents wanted to see us.
We were doing this for them.
But I was 8th of 11 kids.
I knew what my Dad was saying at home about having to go to another school program.
At least for my parents, they had a good shot of having 4 of 5 different kids in different classes up there singing.
It was full night of entertainment for them.
They got to see a lot of performers.
And I wasn’t so sure that my Parents wanted to see me up in front of a couple hundred other parents.
Things just happened to me.
Or things seemed to happen because of me.
I never really felt responsible for these things either.
That’s why I enjoyed the Fruit Roll so much,
It REALLY WASN’T MY FAULT for once.
As it had to, our turn came.
We walked single file out in the hall.
The class that sang before us would file past with faces full of light and relief.
We had to pass another class that had taken seats on the benches in the hallway to wait their turn on the stage after us.
It was like walking past a bunch of paratroopers waiting to bail out over Normandy.
And then it was out turn.
Through the door and into the gym that somehow was brighter than it was during the day.
The music teacher would be at the piano playing a soft introduction to the carol we were about to sing.
It was warmer than usual as the gym was filled with people and most of us boys had on Christmas sweaters.
For some reason, I always seemed to be in the front row.
I think one year I was in the back and managed to fall down the side stairs behind the stage.
And then we sang.
There was the magic of 25 little kids, on the three steps of a small stage in a small gym, singing Silent Night.
It had to be magic.
Once we stated singing, we started forgetting.
Forgetting how hot my sweater was.
Forgetting the crowd.
Forgetting the green pepper stain on the wall.
And we sang.
We all survived.
It was Christmas time.
And the sweet remembrance of time past takes the bad part out of most memories.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.
PS: The entire sonnet XXX
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste: Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow, For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night, And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe, And moan th’ expense of many a vanish’d sight; Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before. But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.
“Julio can play,” Bucs coach Todd Bowles trumpeted on Sunday night, echoing the tone he expressed during training camp. “We keep saying it all along. He got in shape. He got healthy. He’s a warrior. He’s one of those guys that’s going to come out every week and compete.”
He’s also a guy with a new ID.
Jones is wearing No. 6 for the Bucs. It’s nothing sentimental, nothing superstitious.
“It’s just a number, man,” he said. “I didn’t want to take nobody out of their number. It was, ‘Whatever’s available, I’m going to take it.’ No significance.”
Brady’s backup, Blaine Gabbert, wears No. 11 for the Bucs. Third-string quarterback Kyle Trask is No. 2, the jersey number Jones had last year with the Tennessee Titans.
“I always had a motto, man: I make the number, the number don’t make me,” Jones declared. “That’s how I go about it
I liked that.
I always had a motto, man: I make the number, the number don’t make me.
I am reminded of being back in High School at Grand Rapids Creston in the late 1970’s.
This was in the OLD GYM Creston before they built the new gym and way before the decision was made to close the school.
The OLD GYM was so small that in winter months gym class took turns between the boys and girls and who got to use the gym and who had an alternative class.
Alternative meant a movie or maybe a Gym Teacher led lecture class on some topic.
One teacher I had like to give a quiz on sports rules to see what we didn’t know about sports.
He would call on individual students one at a time.
One time, I got this this question.
What are the limits on numbers on basketball uniforms and why?
I did not understand the question.
The teacher rephrased it as what numbers can you have on a basketball uniform and why?
That didn’t help.
The teacher, Don Edwards, who really was pretty cool but thought I was one of the oddest people he had ever had in class, stared at me and said, “Come on Hoffman.”
I felt out of place in gym class often but rarely did I feel stupid and at that moment I felt really dumb.
I stared right back and said, “Okay, I give up. What numbers CAN you have in basketball and why.”
Coach Edwards shook his head and said, “Oh come on. You can only have combinations of 1 thru 5.”
That was the dumbest thing I had ever heard.
“You know, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 or 51, 52, 53, 54, 55 … 31,32, 33, 34, 35 … only combinations of 1 through 5.”
My eyes must have glazed over as I listened but I did manage to say, “Why?”
“So the ref can signal the scorer with the number of any player with two hands.”
Coach Edwards them demonstrated, “Foul on number 15.”
And he held up 1 finger on the left hand and 5 fingers on the right.
“Basket by number 33” and he help up three and three.
At once I was struck by the meaning and the simple magic in it.
Basketball numbers had limits.
Limits created by the five fingers on our hands.
I understood.
That made 33 THE number to have.
Think of the great 33’s (starting the list with Cazzie Russell)
I understood.
And in that moment I suddenly understood the magic involved in the silent protest and statement of using an illegal number.
they did not value resources, communities historic nature
Today’s haiku is adapted from a quote from US Representative Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico when she made a statement about the US Forest Service and that they made multiple miscalculations, used inaccurate models and underestimated how dry conditions were in the south-west, causing a planned burn to reduce the threat of wildfires to explode into the largest blaze in New Mexico’s recorded history.
Representative Fernández said, “These are complex issues. Starting a prescribed burn in an area where there are homes and watersheds and communities should be something that you take incredibly seriously because those are high value assets. They did not value the resources, the communities, the historic nature of these communities and so they went forward allowing more risk than they should have.”
She was speaking about forest management.
You could easily think she was talking about any number of things in the news right now.
When talking about right now I must be talking about rights.
Right to vote.
Right to have your vote counted.
Curious how right and right are the some word.
The online Merriam-Webster defines the words like this:
>Something to which one has a just claim.
>Conforming to facts or truth.
>Being in accordance with what is just, good, or proper.
>Qualities (such as adherence to duty or obedience to lawful authority) that together constitute the ideal of moral propriety or merit moral approval.
My thought this morning was to write about how difficult it has been of late to construct a daily haiku and write some commentary in a light hearted way when I am feeling anything but lighthearted.
I saw this quote of Representative Fernández’s and thought how easy it would be to use the words in a commentary on how so many decisions and actions are being taken today without any consideration to the value the resources, the communities, the historic nature of these communities and so they went forward allowing more risk than they should have.
Then by chance I hit that word right.
Seems there has been a major disconnect on the importance of this word.
Right.
Rights.
Right rights.
I am reminded of Proverbs 21:3 (NIV) –
To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.
It was a long time ago but I had to take a class in school to learn how to drive a car.
It was a free class offered by the Grand Rapids Public Schools, all you had to do was sign up.
The only restriction was that you had to turn 16 years old, legal driving age, either before the class started or by the time it finished to sign up.
In the winter of 1976, for reasons I have never understood, my Dad was interested in my getting a drivers license.
At the same time he also took a life insurance policy out of me.
Maybe he thought it was a good investment.
It was January and my birthday was in July and I knew that I couldn’t sign up until then but he kept after me to sign up for drivers ed.
Maybe he just wanted to avoid another summer of having a kid in drivers ed instead of during the school year.
To make him happy I went into the office and asked for a registration card and filled it out and dropped it in the office inbox and forgot about it.
I can’t say I have had many you-could-knock-me-over-with-a-feather shocks in my life but a week later, this would have been January still, I was walking home from school in the snow with my buddies when my Dad pulled up next to us in his car, rolled down the window and said, “get in.”
This NEVER HAPPENED.
The first thing that went through my mind was to examine my conscience to figure out what I done wrong.
Truthfully, the list was so long I most likely didn’t know where to start.
My buddies all looked at me with that oh-are-you-in-trouble look and they all moved away from me to get away from any possible shrapnel.
Very slowly and tentatively I opened the car door and got in my Dad’s car.
My Dad’s car was one of the pleasures’ he allowed himself to indulge in.
My Dad had driven a Thunderbird convertible in the early 1960’s when there might not have been a more coveted car in America.
He updated that to the Buick Riviera, which in the late ’60s had POWER EVERYTHING.
From the Riviera, he got a 1976 two door navy blue Mercury Cougar.
It was this car I was now sitting in.
15 years old and I learned how to drive in this car
Sitting in the front seat and waiting to find out what I had done.
My stomach was doing all kinds of calisthenics and I kept my mouth shut.
My Dad drove pulled away from the curb and said, “We are going to the park so I can show you have to drive. School called and you have Driver’s Ed at 4 o’clock!”
HUhhhhhhhhhhhhhh whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?
Talk about you-could-knock-me-over-with-a-feather!
We got to the nearby Riverside Park and I was put in the drivers seat of my Dad’s Cougar and on a snow covered park road, I got a quick lesson in how to start a car, put it in gear and drive.
While I drove, my Dad explained that School had called and said that due to a cancellation there was an opening in the Drivers Ed class that started that day.
As it happened, my card was sitting out on the desk and the school was calling to see if I was eligible for the class.
See, when I filled out the card, I put my birthday as being in July, 1976!
The current year.
The school was calling to check if was old enough.
In other words, had I been born in 1959 (when I had been born in 1960).
My Dad said that my Mom had taken the call and she looked at Dad and asked what to say.
“TELL THEM YES!,” my Dad said.
About an hour later, I was dropped off back at school and found the Drivers Ed class where the teacher had my card in his hand.
“You Hoffman?” he asked.
I said yes and the class started.
The teacher started talking to the class about driving and getting a drivers license.
No Haiku For You 