I Know What I'm Doing..Sheesh!

Hair stylists really ought to get into landscaping. The reason this popped into my head was that my lawn needed to be mowed and I won't have the time, energy nor motivation to do it in the next four days. If ignored four days hence, it'll look grubby and disheveled. So I went out and did it. Once cut I looked back and thought, “There, just like a new haircut, all neat and trim.”

Andy LeCompte could sell grass shampoo and perhaps a stylish lawnmower that doesn't leave split ends. Ah, it's been done already, Scotts fertilizer company makes their living off of neurotic homeowners who equate a neat lawn with moral hygiene.

And in fact that's what it's all about, framing the house, keeping it's “face” neat, clean and presentable. An upstanding member of the community is a house that's well scrubbed!. My home's face is now admissible to the neighborhood for another couple of weeks. I pray it doesn't rain and the sun bakes all plant life into dormancy so I don't have to mow anything. 

**

I once said my learning curve for self training or being coached for that matter looks like hell at first. I make a zillion mistakes but fairly quickly I tend to “get it.” The problem occurs if the discipline is dangerous. Chains saws for that matter. There isn't much forgiveness early on in the learning curve for that kind of study. You screw up once and....it's 911.

Then there's the opposite. The “I Know What I'm Doing” attitude. Now here's one I've been seriously guilty of because “I know what I'm doing, I've done it a million times before...” Experience tends to work since you have worked with something a lot, but then there are those times...

Years ago in another career I worked for a group home that had a lawn. In an effort to cut costs, the agency had fired their outside landscaping teams. They then suggested that the employees of the various homes cut their own lawns. We were paid for it.

So, one late July I'm out, making nice straight passes back and forth in the front yard, with my brain going elsewhere as it does when I do a repetitive task. That's doable really, you can apply just enough attention to something that bores the f out of you and still get it done, while you make plans to get good and drunk at Misquamicut beach one day.

Mowers have that chute where it expels the clippings and from all lawn mowers I worked with, they get clogged. I had learned, since I was a teen, to quickly flick the obstruction out, either with my foot or hand. I became pretty adept at it and for years I was successful doing it without one problem.

That day however was different. The mower chute became clogged and I kneeled down in front of it and then flicked out the clog. But that's when I felt a strange sensation. I felt 10-15 weird vibrations in my hand as I did it. I then noticed my white painters pants looked like someone had flicked a paintbrush full of red paint all over them.

I was in NO pain whatsoever and was confused. What the hell just happened? What was that sensation?

Then slowly, my eyes tracked to my left hand.

Jesus H Christ. I never thought that any part of my body would look like freshly ground hamburger. I had some pretty good spills in my life, falling off a bikes, a freight train and a few car crashes where my idiot friends treated Newport Ave like a dragster strip. But none of those times did I see any part of my body opened up and twisted like that.

I ran into the home, wrapped a towel around the index and middle fingers of my left hand and sat down. Nick, another employee there, wanted to see “how bad it was” and I took off the towel but I  refused to look. All he said was, “Wow.”

“Wow” isn't a good word sometimes.

A few minutes later A. comes through the door and suggests I go to Kent County as it doesn't look like Band Aids will help much.

As we were driving to Kent, I was preparing a speech to tell the nurses and Dr's about what I had done.

Dr: “You stuck your hand inside a running lawn mower?”

The Fool: “Wait! There's a reason why I did! You see, for years I've been able to...”

Of course they talked about it. I'm sure one went around the corner and said, “Hey, Margaret, go to bed 4 and see the tard who shoved his hand in a lawn mower! No joke, he did it!”

You know how many times I had to tell that story? About my being able, for years, to magically clean out a running lawn mower chute with bare body parts? Nearly every nurse, Dr and hand surgeon I met.

After being X-rayed and stuck with antibiotic needles, the Dr asked: “You see anything on the lawn, I mean besides blood?”

“No..why?” I ask.

“Well, from the X ray, you no longer have any bone in the tip of your middle finger....I wondered if you saw it on the lawn..if so, we could put it back. It's pretty resilient, it can stay out of your body for quite a while and still 'be good.'

“No” I say, “I saw nothing.” The truth is, probably, that bone was turned into bone meal. It's now part of the ecosystem in western Cranston now.

After being sutured up, given an appointment for hand surgeon at a later time, I go home. For weeks I have to hear...

“You did WHAT? You put your hand inside a RUNNING mower?”

Cue the story again. “Look, I've been able to, for years, clear that chute...”

**

My Hand Surgeon.

Once my fingers healed and they healed into a knobby scar tissue oddity, I met the hand surgeon.

He had told me that he would have to cut it all up again and re-suture things so they'd grow back “normal” looking. He also said I didn't really need a bone in the top of my middle finger since scar tissue in there would be nearly hard enough to provide some structure. As for the lack of feeling in those fingers, he said the nerves will regrow but it'll take months.

Ok, great, cut away...

Once that was done, he gave a six month appointment to return to see if everything healed up as it should.

Three months later as I was reading the ProJo, I come across an interesting story. Apparently a Kent County Dr had shot his own hand with a .357 revolver while “cleaning” it. I thought for a moment...”Hmm..was it the hand surgeon? The ER Dr? Or was it no one I knew?” I let it go as life goes on.

My six month appointment is due and I return. They bring me into the room with the hand surgeon and he starts to look and manipulate my hand. He also asks if everything is OK. As he was doing this I noticed a large, star shaped scar on the palm of his hand.

“Holy Shit...it WAS him!” I think. I seen bullet holes in dead animals, usually if it's a contact shot where the muzzle of the firearm was resting against the skin. The pressure blows out a weird star shaped wound. I can't keep quiet so I blurt out...

“So....I'm NOT the only one!” I say.

“Huh?” says the Doc.

“Your hand...you're the one who shot himself!” I say.

I see the look on his face, it's the same look I had on mine when trying to explain to everyone else what I did.

He comes forth and tells the real story. He wasn't cleaning anything. He tells me he was trying a old gunslingers' gun trick called a Road Agent spin. It's where you look like your surrendering your weapon, to be taken from your hand, but at the last moment you can drop, spin it and fire into the bad ass Sheriff who's taking you for Fort Laramie to be hanged.

Here's the actual trick...

Click Pic and Watch

“It went off.” he says. “Right through my hand, through the TV set and into the next room.”

“Damn, you are lucky, had there been another person in there...” I say.

“Yep...” he says.

I felt A LOT better about my little accident after learning a hand surgeon, SHOT his own hand.

Anyways, I no longer flip anything out of the chute. I just jack the mower up and down till it falls out on it's own...and my yard is pretty enough to date once again. 

 See? All healed. You'd never know had I not told you!

RIC

Youth is the most beautiful thing in this world...and what a pity that it has to be wasted on children!

I went back to my old college, RIC, to keep an appointment with a career counselor. I'm looking into the future, short term and long term and realizing that changes will occur whether I want them to or not. I do however prefer the environment around me become a product of mine, not the other way around. We'll see how lucky I am.

“You do realize the retirement horizon is looking at you.” C. Carsini said to me. What's weird, I know this, but when someone else says it to your face....ouch. By the way, RIC is still staffed with women from Nawt Providence, a third were chewing gum.

I had figured the campus had changed but I wasn't ready, nor aware of how much it has really transformed. Driving in from Mt Pleasant I was greeted with LED signs, external bulletin boards, telling me what's up for the day, week and month there at RIC. As I walked from my car to Robert's Hall, I was met with even more change.

“Where did that building come from? It wasn't here 10 years ago.”

“And that one...”

“No...the Fogarty building never had an annex.”

The main building I was interested in was Gaige Hall, where I spent a pleasurable part of my youth. There was one room where the History Club met daily and we commandeered it for our own hedonistic use, with the help of a professor who ran interference for us. I wanted to see it again.

After meeting the counselor, she had told me, “Well, if you go to Gaige, the only thing that remains, and what you'll remember, is the outside brick work.”

So I go Gaige and am stunned. The place has been gutted and re-designed. It's a bit sterile but the electronic kiosks, the WiFi antennas and a host of other new gadgets fill the place. The elevators talk and the water fountains have digital screens on them. Why would you possibly need a digital screen on a bubbler? I should have tried it out to see what it does...but I didn't.

I try to find that room we all hung out at and had so much fun.

Not There.

I try all floors, perhaps my memory is off.

Not There. Not There.

But I remember it being there! This place is of Legend! It looks like it was ripped out and turned into a larger classroom. It has similar, but smaller equipment Roger Waters used to project images/movies on his Wall. A youngish professor was on a lap top running it all for this summer session class, spraying images of Medieval Europe on the white board that transformed from one to another.

Damn...

Well, it was 32 years ago...Shit...I grow old.

**

Another thing about being my age, you pack on the experience. As I walked the campus I noticed the women there. Of course I did, nothing's prettier than a college girl. But as I passed them walking, sitting down reading, my brain just popped out quickie evaluations of them I could never have forged when I was that age. I wasn't mature enough yet. I had not yet learned that people wear, quite unconsciously, their innermost personality on their shoulders. From that, you get a nearly decent estimation of them. I suppose working with the deaf population taught me a few things as well. Body language for example.

I passed one girl, at a table, slightly geekish and reading. She looked up with a hint of desperation to talk to anyone. “Who are you? Are you alive? Wow..a REAL person!”

“Lonely...stuck living in her dorm all summer long” I thought.

Another I talked to in order to find a certain room...

“Professional girl working for RIC, being paid crap. Lit up when I talked to her...bored shitless she is.”

In the waiting room at CC at RIC, a 20 year old with the self esteem of a bug was reading a weight loss magazine. What drew me toward that was her long sigh after holding up a fold out showing a genetically lucky girl who was proportioned perfectly. This girl who was sighing didn't need to lose an ounce. But try to tell her that. Try to tell her that she's in her 20's and has the best look she'll ever have, before age ruins her.

There was a kid I passed, his look was of defeated confidence. God knows why. He had passed a girl his age, a nice girl, who looked up at him as they walked by each other. He never spotted her curiosity. He was lost in his mind and missed that look he received.

I passed a proverbial douchebag as well. Every college has a few of them. The thing was I could see right through that mask. Those guys I knew in my college years seemed to “with it” but now...jesus..now I see them as jokes. “All you have, my friend, is your display, you have no talent yet, you have no chops!”

Only if...only if...I had this perception when I was at RIC then, I'd have 24 bastard children out there somewhere. Maybe it's very lucky I didn't...considering child support. But still...it would've been more fun.

Nope, you don't get these powers of perception until you're ancient. It takes a long, long time to bake that cake to completion. These college kids are still jiggly, with much liquid cake batter not just set yet. But, to have that done when you're young! To have that capacity at such a young age!

I will grow my brilliant white hair and beard out. I'll get a staff, ramble around like Gandolf and offer proverbs to the young who cannot fathom what I am talking about. What I preach about doesn't exist nor has it ever existed to anyone that young. They don't get it.

There was a time when I never “got it” either.

I do now. The price for that skill is time, a lot of it too.

You Learn Things...

As you drive towards Mt Willard, going north on 302 just outside of North Conway, the mountains fill the span of your entire windshield. Pictures can't really do it justice, you need your own eyes to see the effect. Also, since I never saw Willard in real life before, it's looming appearance made me think, “Oh shit, this is going to be waay harder than I thought.” The mountains in the area just shoot up out of the ground and many with vertical cliff faces that run hundreds of feet long. Willard's face just showed one hell of a drop off and that was giving me second thoughts. “Fuck me...this might be a big mistake!”

AllTrails.com and most other sites devoted to climbing in every form had this to say about Willard. “A moderate hike, probably the most 'bang for the buck' scenery-wise vs. many other mountains in NH.”

Add to that a forum where anyone can post and pretty much said the same thing, except they added “easy and quick.” A relative few said it was harder.

Sure, it's easy if you're 24 years old. It's easy if your cardio, PaCO2 and ligaments are late model and in fine working order. I sure ain't “late model” anymore.

I won't repeat what happened as I wrote about it when I went up Watatic a while back. Just say I ran my heart rate up to 160 bpm and had to stop, numerous times, to wait till it got back down to a “manageable” 100 bpm. Once there, it didn't take much to ramp it up once again once I started ascending. I found out later there ain't 22% O2 levels like around here at sea level. Up there it drops to 17% and I guess my late model cardio was noticing it. I personally didn't notice a thing except that my heart was pumping on overdrive. The higher you go, you start to make silly decisions as your brain starts to starve for O2.

What did strike me this time around was how dark it is in the forest. The skies were just party cloudy for mid July and the sun is usually screaming bright but not on the forest floor. Then again, I had to tell myself that this isn't the woods of RI. This is the real forest I heard about in Grimm's Fairy Tales and that movie, “Deliverance.” The Black Forest in Germany isn't black, they call it that because so little light reaches the ground due to the trees and plant life blocking it. I'd say the forest in NH ain't too far off. When I popped out my camera to take a shot, the flash automatically flipped up because IT didn't think there was enough light either.

Another thing too, most woods have a scent, something akin to rotting leaves but this was a conifer/deciduous forest (a mix of pine and oak trees). The smell was like shoving your face into a warm, wet pile of fuming garden mulch. It doesn't stink but boy does it have it's own signature. If you like dank, go here.

If you go camping in these parts, real camping where you piss in the woods and hump your own equipment in and out, you're going to end up smelling and looking like the surrounding area pretty quick. You will become just like every other animal that calls the Whites home. Ticks and fleas in your nether regions are an added bonus.

**

Hiking with others can be fun but it poses some complications as well, namely; physical condition, age and motivation. If you want to kill the vibe of the group, just have one person who's into a competitive race with the others. You'll then see some real interesting dynamics develop you haven't witnessed since high school. Add some stress to an otherwise congenial group of friends and boy, will it ALL come out and not necessarily the good stuff. You'll see political groups forming, disbanding and reforming to gain the upper hand on the decisions needed to be made.

I hike with someone nearly half my age who jogs regularly. Good for him. I wish I was in my 20's too (but this time around knowing then what I know now). His excellent physical condition means he can whip my ass at ascending while I have to hold back and mentally keeping pace of my heart rate. Yes, we are mismatched as a “team.”

So why can't I get anyone my age to do it?

Most of the real locals I know here, who are my age, view their weekends as a time to rest as they work either physical jobs or very time consuming/stressful jobs...or both. They see weekends as a relief to do nothing.

“Huh? Are you fuckin' kidding? I ain't going to climb 3,500 feet! I'll climb the six steps to get into a liquor store though..and that's IT!”

That still ain't a bad idea for a weekend though.

Here's a vignette I had on Willard last week that taught me something I forgot long ago. A little life's lesson you tend to lose in the minutia of day to day living.

Without getting into it, there's been changes...many changes where I work and it poses some short and long term questions to me that will have to be eventually answered. As I was thinking about it, an old thought popped into my head that a close friend said long ago about work in general.

“No one can force you to do “anything!” You can say NO!” He was referring to a job he had in Ohio while in school and he found that it sucked so he blew it off. There was a price to be paid for that too. Finding another job to replace it and go a bit further w/o a steady income. But in his mind, it was worth it. He wouldn't settle and “Embrace the suck” as the Army Rangers say. As far as embracing the suck, you can make yourself mentally tougher if you do tough it out, but there are certain situations in life where you could still get that kind of workout, but it's way better, far smarter, to flee them with a flame coming out of your ass. There are some places, events, where being tough isn't much of a reward in the end. Want tough? Hang out in Syria or where the Ebola virus wants to crawl on you. I don't care how tough you are, it's a SUCK situation. . An illiterate person would've left that a long time ago, leaving your educated tough ass behind.

So....

As I was humping up Willards busted, rocky trail, I could feel the physical stress building in me. Most times I would just keep quiet and plod on. But, you reach a point where it becomes overwhelming and you have to stop. I do anyway. At 55 I will. Don't forget, I'm old now and an on again off again smoker who needs to blow off 20lbs. Final analysis: “He's getting there, old and decrepit...but not quite just yet but he's feeling it coming!”

My young friend understood why I was stopping but it is a bit tiring to someone that age to have to do it again..and again.....and yet again. Like I said, we were mismatched.

“You'll do it! You can keep going! We're almost there!” were the hints of support I was getting. With that I would start again, cutting short the length of the break I wanted and acquiescing to his prompt.

In my head I knew it wasn't that I needed mental encouragement. Hell. I can be focused as shit and never stop if I have a goal in mind, almost insanely so. If in the right mind, I.Don't.Quit I will summit this and come down in the rain and midnight dark if I have too because I have all sorts of nifty equipment in my backpack to do so. But this time there were REAL physical limitations that cannot be ignored. There are actual walls I have to contend with. These limitations, are different.

So, after stopping and hanging onto a sapling for support, he suggests we start again. I cave into the peer pressure and go. I glance up at the trail and see how steeply it rises and stomp on. I go until I start to feel the heat beaming off my face like a freshly made glowing ingot of steel. My heart was easily heard in my ears too.

“No...NO..Fuck no...FUCK NO!...I'm STOPPING no matter what anyone thinks for as long as I WANT!”

I didn't say that, I sure as shit heard it in my head though.

I sat down on a log and take the pulse. Wow, 160 per minute. That's a bit too far beyond the safe limit for someone my age. I stay seated on the log till that rate came down and I felt refreshed somewhat.

“Ok, Let's go” I say once I was completely satisfied that I got things to a comfortable level. I then said, “I'm going in stretches...then I'll stop..and go again...and we'll reach the summit.”

As we headed up, I thought about what happened. I finally, finally chose myself instead of going along with the crowd/group...whatever. There came a point where I wasn't going to tolerate my unease any longer, so I chose myself. This coming from someone who's been, in one form or another, the helping progressions his entire life. Add to that an “un” professional career of emotionally carrying terminally ill relatives on my back for years at a time.

When you're the only “strong” person there, you get to carry the load.

But I reached a point on that mountain where I said “No.”

As we got nearer to the summit, I realized that “No” isn't just for mountains alone, I can use it anywhere I feel like it. Work, life, pepperoni on pizza or not...I have choice.

Mike was right all those years back, you don't have to a god damn thing if you don't want too.

Unfortunately, there are two kinds of people in the world, the nurses and the nursed. If you are a “nurse,” you tend to ignore your own misery while you care for others. It's automatic and damn near innate. It's a knee jerk reaction you do w/o a moment's thought. Well, time to nurse my own damn self, don't you think? A billion others do it.