GRENDEL AND ME (2/10)
Accepting the honor of Diver of the Year Grendel uses his cheek glands to scent his trophy.
I was talking to Grendel the other day upon presenting him with the sterling and crystal love cup for “Diverse of the Year”, and I must confess that he was as diverse as any recipient that has ever been so awarded. I knew it would be as helpless to explain why we give awards like this to each other as it would be to explain to Gulliver why Lilliputians gave each other bits of colored string for athletic prowess. However, he has never been an ingrate, so he accepted the empty bowl with grace.
By now you already know his reaction, so I might take a moment to reflect on why last month was devoid of any articles of our antics.
As you know I elected to get a gnu gnee, a decision fraught with the confidence that it was a minor gnuisance quickly dispatched without breaking stride. As you might have observed at the January meeting it was none of the above. It was, in fact still is, a lot more than expected. You’ve all heard the nurse say, “You may feel a little pinch.” Yeah, right.
Thus I thought I might recall some of the process for you, should you have to make a similar decision. At some point in the narrative drugs were introduced, but I assure you my observations are astute and as real as anything I have heretofore narrated in this Chautauqua previously.
Let’s begin this in the shower at 0400 where I scrub myself with some vile pink liquid soap that smells of unburied death, and follow it up with a drive to a hospital affiliated with a university to remain unnamed. For company there was my driver/wife who is not keen on being subjected to other living things at this hour. She was as quiet as a cobra and just as venomous. I was as quiet as a mouse for a different reason.
My next memory is of being in some kind of tent with cloth walls and women swarming around me mostly looking for places to stick needles. See, “You may feel a little pinch” above. The one that sticks in mind was trying to stuff a knitting needle sized hypodermic into a vein she suspected was just under the skin. She kept poking at it and I swear the little thing was squirming under the dermis trying to avoid being skewered like a barbecued sausage.
But, alas, she finally lanced it, and before she could do anything, it shook itself loose and started hemorrhage subcutaneously until a large spot appeared just below the skin looking a lot like the continent of Australia
“Gee”, sayeth the phlebotomist or hippopotamus or whatever she was, “I’ll have to find another vein.”
“Nay, quoth I, “You’ll have to find another nurse. Don’t touch me again.” A brave stand I thought at the time.
Meanwhile, another hippopotamus managed to secure another vein on my other arm and I started to feel a little woozy, a loss of blood thought or maybe I’ve been slipped a mickey and started to worry about waking on a slow freighter bound for Shanghi.
This fear of being Shanghied was reinforced by the feeling of traveling feet first, like a luge, until I struggled toward the light only to find myself in a room crowded with hitech equipment and a bunch of terrorists dressed in light green robes and masks and head gear. They stood around with their gloved hands perched up like waiting vultures. I remember being tied down with my arms straight out like I was on a cross. This isn’t going well was my final thought, as I sank rapidly into a twisting vortex.
Well, all’s well that ends well, as my next observation was of my rescuers hustling me into a hospital room, but that’s another story.
Meanwhile Grendel walked across a warm sunbeam and collapsed on the rug for an instant snooze as I might think some readers have done by now.
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