Mountain climbers versus couch potatoes

I broke my coffee carafe this week, and spent a couple of distraught days going over my options. I finally narrowed the field to two: buy a used one at Goodwill, or a new one at Bi-Mart. After more agonizing, I decided on the latter. I went to the store like a kid getting out of bed on Christmas morning, selected a Hamilton Beach five-cupper for $15.97, failed to find one in a box, asked the clerk where they were, and was told they were sold out.

Naturally, I fell to the floor tearing at my hair and clothes while screaming, “This is the worst day of my life! How could you do this to me?” I expected an outpouring of sympathy, but the teenage clerk walked backwards until she bumped into a display of Valentine’s candy, then stood board-rigid with her hands over her mouth. So much for customer service.

When I got to the check-out with my other items, the clerk there inquired cheerfully, “Did you find everything alright?” I’m never sure whether this means, “Was everything in good condition?” or, “Did you find what you wanted without having to look for it?” Neither applied to what I had suffered, and I was too shattered to speak anyway. I merely handed her my credit card. She too looked at me strangely. Her lips began to move, and she finally made me understand that I had given her my library card. I thought that, yes, it is indeed a strange world when a man needs a different card everyplace he goes.

I sometimes think I would be better off if I went through life devoid of clothes or luggage, but am stumped by the problem of whether to carry my various cards in my mouth or my butt crack. I couldn’t talk the first way, and couldn’t sit the second, making it necessary to shift them back and forth.

On my drive home, I reflected that I had never heard of anyone wrecking a car unless he was in a car, and I decided that I would be safer if I quit driving, in fact quit going out altogether because, even if I’m not in a car, someone who is in a car might run me over.

I then remembered that most accidents happen at home, so I also questioned my safety there. Since I could hardly afford to stay in motels all the time, this only left the option of a tent, but then I wondered if whatever I lived in wouldn’t be counted as home. With this in mind, I decided that I should probably stay in my present home, but not move around much and certainly not climb ladders. I could sit in my chair and read or watch TV. Then I thought about the importance of exercise, and was stumped.
I’ve been reading a book by Beck Weathers, a mountain climber who lost his nose, one hand and part of that arm, and four fingers off his other hand while climbing Mt. Everest. I don’t mean that he misplaced his body parts, but that they froze and later fell off except for the arm, which had to be amputated due to the fact that big body parts don’t drop off cleanly the way small ones do. The big ones get infected, and the infection keeps moving higher until it becomes systemic, and that’s pretty much the end of the road unless your doctor stumbles across the right antibiotic in time, and this isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Beck Weathers was on one antibiotic or another for more than a year because even though he had his arm amputated, he kept getting infections.

Anyway, he said he was still glad he went to Everest, and that he would do it again even if he knew about all the body parts he would lose because, as he said, a risk free life isn’t worth living. I’ve read that a lot, but maybe this is because I read so many books by mountain climbers, and maybe my choice of books is influenced by the fact that mountain climbers have an easier time getting published than do people who spend their lives sitting in recliners. I have no idea why this is so, but I believe that my observation is accurate because I have never read a book about a man who did nothing but eat tuna sandwiches and watch soap operas.

I, for one, would prefer his life’s story to that of Beck Weathers because I like tuna sandwiches, whereas I’m not much on mountain climbing. Of course, tuna—especially albacore—contains high levels of mercury, so it’s better to switch over to sardines from time to time for health reasons, and to make life more exciting. The key to a good life seems to be getting some excitement but not too much.

Beck Weathers and I obviously differ on how much excitement is enough. I would never want to redo something that cost me even one part of my anatomy much less a sack full. My idea of a good time is to dig holes in the backyard just to see what’s down there. Unfortunately, Peggy is not supportive of my adventures just as Beck Weathers’ wife was not supportive of his, although I suspect that Peggy would change her tune if I were to mention climbing Everest as an alternative to digging holes in the yard. If she didn’t change her tune, I would assume she had a life insurance policy that I don’t know about, and that would bother me. I would wonder if all those accidents that happen in the home aren’t really murders committed by women with big insurance policies, women who knock their husbands’ ladders out from under them.

Still, I don’t know if I should play it safe by leaving Peggy because, if she hasn’t killed me yet, it’s probably a good sign that she won’t—or at least that she isn’t planning on it. Then there’s the possibility that I might need her to call 911 someday if I do fall off a ladder. I heard of a cat calling 911 by hitting speed dial, but I don’t know of any dogs having done so, dogs apparently preferring to carry notes in their mouths, the problem being that if I could get to pen and paper, I wouldn’t need a dog to deliver what I wrote. This makes the continuation of marriage an asset if not an actual necessity.

Dari-Mart goddess

I saw a clerk in Dari-Mart this week who I took for a goddess. Her image has plagued me ever since, but she is no more than twenty while I am 55 and married and would be at a loss what to do with her if I had her. Ah, but she was beautiful. I can but grieve that the years have gotten by me. Sometimes, I wish that I had been more adventurous, although I cannot say that I would have been better off. I am content enough on my good days—those being the ones on which I am enjoying my work and am not obsessed by some woman I saw in a store.

Women have ever been the bane of my existence. If all the moments I spent lusting after one woman or another was added together, they would amount to years of pain and frustration from which absolutely nothing good has come.

When I ponder the nature of woman, of how frail she is and of how soon she loses her beauty and returns to the same dust from which I arose, I see that the esteem in which I have held her is a function of hormones and psychology rather than something innate to her being, yet it has taken me decades to reach this awareness, and even now I can scarcely believe it. I might liken myself to a man in the desert who is drawn to a mirage. Although he recognizes it for what it is, his desperate thirst makes it almost irresistible. He can but remind himself again and again that to expend energy on it would be disastrous.

The importance of subtle observances

My body jerks when I sleep. Last night, my jerkiness entered a dream. In the dream, I was at Jackie’s house for dinner and was being introduced to a roomful of people. I had expected to meet one or two, but was startled to find fifteen, all of whom were young adults that I had no interest in. I thought it ridiculous to even be told their names, but social formalities required that introductions be made and that I respond with feigned interest, so I gritted my teeth and smiled. I also began to jerk. I knew that this would mark me as either having a seizure problem or a psychological one, either of which would throw sand into the delicate bearings of the social mechanism and embarrass my hostess. I resolved to stifle the jerks. My resolution awakened me, and I lay in bed jerking almost out of control.

After the worst ended, I lay thinking—as if for the first time—about how set our social rituals are, both in form and range. For example, one could absolutely wreck an introduction simply by standing a foot too close, because unaccustomed proximity implies aggression, sexual interest, or insanity. To one from another planet, such customs might appear so subtle as to be unimportant, but satisfactory social relations apparently hinge upon the proper observance of subtleties more than upon grosser behaviors. I know very well that I wouldn’t sniff a new person’s genitals, but eliminating lust, nervousness, or boredom from my voice, demeanor, and sweat glands, is a far greater challenge.

The necessity of believing that we deserve to exist

When I think of those in Indonesia who lost their families, their possessions, and been themselves injured, the question is not whether they can survive but why they would want to survive. I can understand those in the Nazi camps who threw themselves upon electric fences, but am pressed to understand those who made every effort to live as long as possible no matter how miserable their condition or grim their prospects.

Can either choice be rationally defended, or does it simply come down to individual differences? Certainly the survivor-types are better able to carry on the species, but can even this be rationally defended? That is, can a case be made that our perpetuation is preferable to our extinction? I don’t believe it can, but this does not deter us from trying; as a species, we have no choice in the matter.

Is all happiness but an escape from pain?

Peggy is skiing with friends. The Willamette Pass temperature was nine degrees when she left, that alone being sufficient to make me glad to stay home. Add to that the $35 lift ticket, and I am very, very glad to stay home. Next, add my aversion to noisy ski lodges, my near phobia of snow, and my unwillingness to risk life and limb sliding down steep hills on slick planks, and I am practically apoplectic. It would appear that happiness can arise from what doesn’t occur as well as from what does.

Schopenhauer argued that all happiness is but a respite from pain. Eating sweets, having sex, and everything else we do in our pursuit of happiness aims to satisfy a hunger, therefore it isn’t sex or chocolate that makes us happy but rather the cessation of our craving.

I think his argument is well evidenced in addictive behavior. Drunkards don’t talk about how much they enjoy getting smashed but of how much they need a drink. Their enjoyment, such as it is, is like that of one who rubs himself to scratch an itch. I know of nothing more satisfying than a good long pee when I am desperate, but the degree of my satisfaction is directly related to the intensity of my need; and I consider it likely that all human behavior is so predicated. If it is, good would seem to lie in reducing our needs rather than in fulfilling them.

About the Old Man

I often reminisce about my relationship with my father and about what he was doing at my current age. The year was 1964, and he had a 15-year-old son and a 10-year-old daughter. He worked 55 hours a week as a carpenter, and before and after he went to his regular job he spent a few hours each day building a house for his family. He was profane, bad tempered, verbally abusive, morbidly shy, disorganized, unhygienic, intolerant, unempathetic, and thought that being a good father simply meant keeping your family out of the poorhouse and not making your children work as hard as you did when you were a kid. He also identified as a transsexual and wore women’s clothes under his striped overalls.

He fluctuated between atheism and Church of Christ fundamentalism. During the latter periods, he read his red-lettered King James Bible each night, using his finger as a pointer and mouthing the words. He rarely drank and had quit Camel Cigarettes and Beech-Nut Chewing Tobacco cold turkey when I was three. He voted faithfully and sent money to political parties but rarely talked politics.

He displayed little interest in the Civil Rights’ era, although he told the churchmen who asked him to join with them in barring the door against blacks that, “The church belongs to God, and if God doesn’t want niggers to come inside, let God keep them out.” He didn’t think that blacks were as intelligent as whites, but he held many black people in high ethical esteem. He had no close friends, although he expressed respect and fondness for certain individuals and made several poorly rewarded overtures. He expressed feelings of shock, hurt, and betrayal to his family when his affection wasn’t returned or when men he liked would be friendly for awhile and then withdraw.

He worked for Gerald Kees who owned the local Buick dealership as well as a house in town, a ranch, and considerable commercial and residential property. He addressed my father as Tom or Tom Cat, and Dad called him Gerald. Gerald was a dull and devout Southern Baptist who wore gray pants and a gray jacket, and only bought one new car that I remember. He tithed to the church and did volunteer work for the Lions while underpaying and overworking his employees. When the owner of a hardware store offered Dad kickbacks for throwing business his way, Dad reported the matter to Gerald and never shopped there again Yet, he gave me little if any ethical or religious instruction.

He adored me when I was a child, but lost interest as I aged. I was allowed to do pretty much as I pleased and was never spanked or otherwise punished. This held true even when I began failing grades—three in all—and drinking heavily. When I was twelve, I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a book that inspired me to do some foolish things. I cut myself seriously with a razor blade after talking my friends into starting a club and signing our names in blood. They then signed their names in my blood, and the incident found its way into the newspaper.

That same year, I decided to run away from home with my friend Grady, and accordingly filled my closet with items to take along—including all my underwear and a Bible. The railroad was but a block away, so we decided to hop a freight to wherever it might take us. We wouldn’t have really gone, but when my mother discovered my cache, she reported it to my father.

That night, I happened to stay out later than usual (having gone to Wednesday night Bible study with Grady), and when I finally returned home, my mother and sister were in tears and the police had been called. Mother immediately took me to my father, who was asleep. He raised up on one elbow and told me with great anger that he had given me a good home, and that, by god, if I wanted to run away, I didn’t need to sneak around because he would help me pack. I was hurt, but reflected that I didn’t see him much anyway except at supper. He was gone before I awakened each morning, and he went to his solitary room at the back of the house when he got home.

My biggest boyhood problems with my father were my embarrassment that he was a generation older than my friends’ parents; that people feared him; that he was morbidly shy and grievously lacking in social skills; and that his anger was extreme and unpredictable. He would curse loud and long without regard to where he was or who was listening. He would curse God, curse the “whore” who gave him birth, threaten suicide, call my mother a slut and blame her for trapping him into marriage and bearing him children that never should have been born, and so forth. People would look at him as if he had lost his mind, and then they would look at me as if I must be like him, or that I was to blame for his behavior (or such was my belief at the time).

I lived around him rather than with him, and this continued until I grew into my upper teens and began working with him. I can’t explain why I worked with him, other than to say that I wasn’t motivated to look for opportunities beyond those that fell into my lap, and to offer that he seldom directed his anger at me. When he was mad at me, he would say maybe a half dozen sentences about how stupid or irresponsible I was (sentiments that made sense given my behavior), and that was that. He never raved at me, and he never hit me, although I never stopped thinking that he might.

Another day, another surgery

I was in surgery at this time yesterday, and was still on my way home fifteen minutes ago. Peggy is unloading, but I’ve already learned that the doctor wasn’t kidding when he told me not to bend over or lift anything. Here I sit spacey from Vicodin, drowsy from having been too happy and excited to sleep, and wary of even walking across the room quickly—I am dripping blood even now. The words on the screen look to be floating at an indeterminate distance, and I feel as if I last sat at this keyboard in another lifetime.

We drove to Portland a day early so Peggy could shop at the Button Emporium and visit a friend. I awakened that morning with a sore throat, and passed the day in fear that I might be getting sick. I spent most of my time sitting in the van, too sick to want to do anything else even if there had been anything else I wanted to do, and too worried to stay in the motel while Peggy went downtown alone with only her fear of city driving and her insecurity about reading maps to keep her company. I felt too bad even to read Marcus Aurelius’ essays about not letting the things of the world—including my own feelings—get me down. All I could think about was how miserable I felt, and that something—like a cold—might cause me to miss surgery.

I debated whether to tell the doctor if I did have a cold. On the one hand, I wanted to be open, but on the other, I speculated that our litigious society might cause him to err on the safe side and cancel the operation. That night at the motel, I was cold while Peggy was warm. “I’m having chills,” I thought. “Chills mean fever; fever and a sore throat means strep.” I looked in my mouth, but saw no pustules or redness. “No matter, I can’t feel this way and not have a fever,” I told myself; “and I can’t elect not to inform the doctor about a fever.”

My head and ears had ached all day, but since they ache all day every day, I was only surprised by the severity of the pain. I had already filled my prescription for Vicodin, and I took one. It made no discernible difference, but midnight passed, and I was supposed to be NPO.

I lay awake much of the night, scared sick that I might miss my surgery, and feeling blood pummel its way through the arteries in my ears and temples. I thought I saw flashing lights through my closed eyes (signs of a migraine or a cluster headache), but couldn’t be sure. I was sure that neither could hurt any worse than the one I had. My throat looked and felt no worse the next morning; the glands in my neck weren’t swollen; and Peggy assured me that I was too old to have strep. I still thought I had a fever.

When Peggy tried to crank the van, the starter made a pitiful little noise that indicated a dead battery. When I looked under the hood, the siren went off. We knew that the previous owner had an alarm system, but even after eight years of owing the van, we didn’t know that part of it was still there. I couldn’t find the siren, so I left Peggy to save herself and the dogs to freak-out in the van, while I went to the motel office. The motel had no courtesy car, but the manager offered to jump me off or else drive me to the hospital. By the time we got back to the van, the siren had stopped.

As I starting connecting the jumper cables, it started up again. I determined to find it and rip it out bodily if I had to. I finally felt it deep under the hood, alongside a wire that seemed to connect it. I couldn’t be sure of the wire, so I decided to yank the whole damn siren out to verify which wire needed to be pulled. I broke it loose, but couldn’t get it out. Being almost certain that I had the right wire, I pulled on it and quiet ensued. Peggy, mistakenly thinking that the jumper was already connected, turned the key and the van cranked immediately.

“Resistentialism: the belief that inanimate objects purposely thwart you.”
Snow’s Dictionary

The nurse in Day Surgery hooked me up to her all-in-one pulse, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, and temperature unit; and I waited in fear to see how high my fever was. It seemed like the thermometer was taking forever, and the nurse must have thought so too, because she declared it broken and went for a replacement. This one worked instantly, and the number 36.1 C. (or maybe it was 31.6 C.) appeared. I had no idea how high that was, but Peggy said it was a little below normal. My insides leaped with joy, because I knew that the last hurdle was past. As the nurse started my IV, I told her that Peggy was also a nurse and was really good with IVs. She responded by pushing the needle right through a vein—that she had just said she could hit in the dark—and into the bone. I said not to worry, that the pain took my mind off my headache.

The nurse finally left, and Peggy told me one last time that she really didn’t think I should stay awake for the surgery. I looked at her as at one who didn’t know what she was talking about.

The anesthesiologist came in, introduced himself, and said, “Open wide for me now.” “Uh-oh,” I thought. “You can close,” he said in a voice indicating normality. We talked. I told him that I wanted to stay awake during surgery. “Why?” he asked in a disapproving tone. “None of your business if you use that tone,” I thought, but I said, “I don’t like being intubated.” Well, with this kind of surgery, if we have to put you to sleep after it has started, the surgeon will have to stop the procedure while I get you intubated.” I thought it very unlikely that I would have to be put to sleep, and I knew that he knew this, but that he wanted to make things easy on himself by doing them the way he always did.

I was wondering how much trouble he was going to give me when Peggy stepped up to the stretcher and said, “Snow usually does pretty good with this kind of thing.” I was grateful—surprised but grateful. The anesthesiologist gave in: “Alright. People who ask to stay awake usually do okay with it.”

He left and the surgeon, Peter Hwang, arrived. If I hadn’t already known he was coming to a hospital that he rarely works in, I would have figured it out because no one knew how to pronounce his name. He looked a little uncomfortable as he stepped inside my curtained room, like he was worried about invading my space, and this seemed to validate my observation that he is shy. He quickly stepped into his role as a gentle and confident physician, and I had the thought that he is also strong.

When the nurse came to roll me into surgery, I was already high on Demerol, and I enjoyed watching the ceiling tiles undulate as we moved. I’ve yet to be rolled anywhere in a hospital that the stretcher didn’t clank into something, but this trip went better than most—a few bumps but no BANGS. Another nurse was already in the OR, and the first nurse told me to tell the second nurse what I was there for. I counted five people who I had already told this, but I knew it was for a good reason. Peter congratulated me on getting everything right, and I said something about him not chopping off my leg. “Or making you into a woman,” the anesthesiologist joked. “That’s a good one—I wish Peter or I had thought of it,” I told myself.

I don’t remember when the surgery began. I was awake, it’s true, but my IQ had been reduced by 50% and my mental age by 50 years. I knew that my nose was being worked on, but I neither saw nor wondered what tools were used, or whether Peter was looking through a scope or at a TV screen. I also lacked any conception of time, and only realized when I saw a clock on the way out that the operation had taken two hours. I mostly kept my eyes closed during the surgery because of the lights, so I didn’t even know where three of the four people stood. Peter was to my right, and I thought I saw the anesthesiologist off to my left instead of behind me as I expected. I also remember announcing that I had to pee, and a nurse bringing me a urinal from my left side. Peter asked me twice if I was finished before I even started, and I braced myself to hang onto the urinal until I was done.

I remember that I resolved to remember many things, although for the most part, I don’t remember what it was that I resolved to remember. Peter could have been operating on my big toe for all I cared. Once, I heard what sounded like bone being crushed for what seemed like a long time, and I idly wondered what was happening. I concluded that my face had gotten out of alignment and that he was pushing against my right temple and my left cheekbone to mash it into place. “I thought chiropractors were the bone poppers,” I said to myself before I remembered that the skull is all one bone. “Oh, well, whatever…” I was thinking when Peter asked, “Are you okay?” in a tone that I interpreted to mean, “My god, that MUST hurt!” “I’m loose as a duck,” I answered, only to realize that I should have said goose. Then I thought that maybe I had said goose, but I couldn’t remember.

Another time, I told Peter that I had wanted to stay awake so I could feel like a part of the team rather than like a turnip. He said with sincerity that I was a part of the team, and I replied with equal sincerity that he was a good doctor. The anesthesiologist later told me that I was a good patient, and although we had gotten off to a rocky start, he had kept me out of pain, and he seemed to have softened, so I told him that he was a good doctor too.

So far as I knew (and still believe) there was praise and camaraderie all around, even if one of us was at the intelligence level of a dog—or, more accurately since I am human, a child. I managed to recapture one of the attitudes that children and pets deserve to have. Although they can’t always understand why the grown-ups in their lives do something, they should have every reason to trust that it is the right thing to do. Such trust brings out the best in most people, and there are no crimes so abhorrent as those against children and animals.

Staying awake was a good idea, as I knew it would be. Otherwise, I would have had none of these memories—or any memories for that matter other than of waking up in pain from having been intubated. As it was, I was rolled directly out to be with Peggy. Later, I wondered how I had managed to talk so much while my nose was being worked on, and hoped I hadn’t caused a problem.

The surgery has been over for 24 hours. I skipped a dose of Vicodin because I wanted to see how I felt without it; and I can joyfully report that the pain from surgery is only 10% as bad as the pain I experience everyday. My throat pain is also gone—maybe it was psychological.

I won’t forget Peter Hwang. Really gifted doctors can perform feats that are as mysterious as they are wonderful.