Alarming!

 

I remember when I first began to hate alarm clocks.

In the wayback, I was working at a big city general hospital as an orderly, which is what male nurse aides were called back then. The guys, all of us college age, were sort of heavy lift specialists, coupled with some male patient care, particularly surgery prep: shaving the surgery site, administering enemas. Then there was helping folks who didn’t feel like walking to take a walk, feeding men who had no desire to eat, moving unmoving people into wheelchairs, or sitz baths, or onto gurneys, or X-ray tables, or removing bodies to the morgue—all the really fun stuff.

We worked a rotating shift schedule and I was working my first graveyard shift, 11 PM to 7 AM. The first night wasn’t bad, even though I hadn’t tried for any extra sleep.

I got to see my first bullet wound that night, down in ER. And I learned why the ER entrance was kept locked with an armed security guard at the door. The other orderly on shift, a more experienced guy, showed me the pock marks on the wall, repaired bullet holes from a street gang battle that, two years earlier, had spilled over into the treatment room where one of the wounded gang members had been brought by his buddies.

After that first graveyard shift, I went home, took a shower, had breakfast, went to bed about 8 AM, and slept until about 11 AM, when nature called.

I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I got up, had lunch, and took care of some chores. After supper, about 6:30, I laid down to catch a few more Zs.

But the Zs eluded me—until about 9 PM, when I finally drifted off.

Only to have the alarm, an hour later, drag me—like a calf that was stuck neck deep in the sucking mud—oh so exhaustively struggling, back to a mere semblance of wakefulness.

That night, I learned to keep busy because, if I sat down for more than half a minute, I would fall asleep.

For the rest of the week I tried a series of daytime schedule revisions, shifting around shower times, meal times, sleep times, activity times, shuffling and re-shuffling, trying to find the right pattern that would let me get sufficient sleep.

It never happened. My body would just not accept the reversal of the asleep/awake-night/day schedule. Swing shift was never a bother, since it approximated normal waking hours, but graveyard was the pits.

Fortunately, the work schedule rotated weekly, but I never did adjust to the graveyard shift.

And I came to dread the clock alarm, something that, up ‘til then, I’d accepted as a routine event of the work or school week. But now it had become a corkscrew, twisting and digging into my sleep-sodden brain, drawing and dragging me to a nauseous awakening.

Even now, years into retirement, an alarm clock still triggers that gut-wrenching reaction.

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Wisdom from the movies

A work in progress . . .

That's part of your problem: you haven't seen enough movies. All of life's riddles are answered in the movies. - Davis (Steve Martin) Grand Canyon

The world is what you make of it, friend. If it doesn't fit, you make alterations.   - Stella (Linda Hunt) Silverado

I always figure you might as well approach life like everybody's your friend or nobody is; don't make much difference. - Paden (Kevin Kline) Silverado

Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. - Man in Black (Cary Elwes) The Princess Bride

I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living, or get busy dying. - Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) The Shawshank Redemption

Que sera, sera. (Whatever will be, will be.) - Josephine (Doris Day, singing) The Man Who Knew Too Much

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Things I was not expecting

This is a work in progress.

Back in the day, I'd never had guessed I'd be dealing with:

• Camouflage as fashion
• The internet
• Telephones as cameras
• Telephones as computers
• Unlimited information at my fingertips
• Fish finders
   
• GPS
• LEDs
• Avocados
• Artichokes
• Autoimmune disease
• Relinquishing my driver's license, at my own volition
• A mobility scooter as my primary transportation
• The Covid-19 pandemic

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How to get along

This is a list, in no particular order, of the most practical advice that I've heard, read, or learned over the decades. While a few of these appear to apply more to business and employment, they actually apply in all interactions with other human beings.

pexels.com

• Don't save the best for last. As a practice, saving the best for last reduces our appreciation for all the lesser stuff because we tend to focus on the best parts. Conversely, when the best is gone, that which remains has a larger significance. (Since I deduced this while eating a watermelon slice, reserving the sweetest center for last, I dubbed it Watermelon Theory #1.)

• Don't expect or demand that things be perfect. When trying to make things work among human beings, insisting any plan or performance be perfect will likely debilitate the participants and defeat the purpose. However, it is not an excuse to fail to do your best work within the time and resources allotted. (This is a formalized version of my Watermelon Theory #2, which arose from a decision to swallow the seeds rather than spit them out. It's a long story.)

Tristan Schmurr, Flickr.com

• Take on the job everyone dreads. It usually provides the most opportunities. (I've dubbed this one my Dirty Garage Theory, a conclusion from a time when I was about eleven years old and I decided, on my own, to clean and straighten up our family's two-car garage. I think my folks were still giddy about that when I went off to college.)
• If you can do a job sitting down, then sit down. Don't make a job
  harder than it has to be, for yourself or others. (This I credit to a co-worker, back in the day.)
• Fail often. Practice assumes failures, and you don't get good at

  

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  anything without practice. Embrace your failures. Learn from them; they're likely your most valuable lessons. (Lots of folks had this figured out long before I did.)
• When you've screwed up, own up to it without hesitation. It not only reduces the wind in your critics' sails, it can increase your respect among others. Still, it's always hard to do; better get used to it. (I figured this one out years ago when I went to the boss and told him how and why I'd made a mess of things, what I'd done to sort things out, and what I would do to make sure it didn't happen again. He regarded me in silence for several seconds, then grouched that I'd left him nothing to say, as I'd already covered all his points. He told me to get back to work.)
• When you've screwed up, go out of your way to make up for it, even if

  

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  it costs extra. This is especially true if you've disappointed a customer, an employer, or a loved one. Or anyone else. (From A Passion for Excellence, by Peters and Austin.)
• Promise less, deliver more. Be absolutely certain you can deliver what, when, and for how much you promise. Better to underestimate than overestimate your performance. Then do better: more, sooner, or for less. (Also from A Passion for Excellence.)
• Don't save up your good times for retirement; take them when you can. (From a retired and disabled acquaintance in La Junta, Colorado, about 1972. From personal experience, I'm glad I followed his advice.)
• I saved the best for last. Do unto others as you would have them do

  

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  unto you. You just can't go wrong when applying the Golden Rule. But, to avoid a common misunderstanding, treat others the way they'd like to be treated, the same as you'd want your preferences observed by others. For instance, just because you like licorice doesn't mean that other people do, too.

It's difficult to appreciate ideas like these until you've really fouled-up a time or two and are willing to look at yourself critically. And it usually requires the full development of the brain's frontal lobe. The frontal lobe is where fine judgment and evaluative abilities are centered. The maturing of that region often extends into one's mid-twenties.

Creative Commons

So, that's it, the best I've got, after sixty-eight years. I wonder if having this list when I was twenty-five might have made a difference? With a heavy sigh, I have to reckon not. Experience is the best teacher. But maybe having ideas like these in hand would have crystallized the lessons sooner. Maybe.

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Pizza advice

My preferred toppings are sau-

sage, mushrooms, and onions.

As I look back, two pieces of advice stand out as the most appreciated, in a lifetime of receiving advice. But, to diverge momentarily, why is it that advice comes in pieces, I wonder. Oh, and (SPOILER ALERT) title and graphics aside, this post has nothing whatsoever to do with pizza, other than as a play on the words, "piece of advice."

But, to return to the topic.

My first full-time job was in my early teens, during school summer holiday breaks in the mid '60s. I was a utility worker for an smallish outfit in Toledo, Ohio, called National Canvas Products. I worked at whatever job needed some extra help. Many of my co-workers were off-duty city firefighters. (Toledo's fire department worked a twenty-four hours on, forty-eight hours off, shift rotation.) And a fair portion of those firefighters were veterans of the various armed services during World War Two and the Korean conflict.

One summer, I fabricated and assembled canvas boat tops. They were one of several leisure activity-related products—tents, sleeping bags, boat covers, snowmobile windshields, ping-pong tables—the company turned out. Working on the boat tops, I performed various tasks, from bending the aluminum tubing frames on wooden templates, called jigs, to assembling and packing the shipping cartons.

Among those men I usually worked with was a fireman, Robert "Pat" Patterson. I suspect that his advice originated from time spent in the service.  I was standing at a fabrication table doing some small-piece hardware assembly job, when Pat came over with a stool and said to me:

"When you can do a job sitting down, sit down."

It was a good piece of advice, easily generalizable to various applications, all related to not making the work harder than it had to be. It served me well throughout my career, especially when I was a supervisor of other employees. Making workers' jobs easier almost always means that more work can get done.

    Mr. Majestyk was filmed largely

    on location in and around La Junta,

    including the community hospital's

    emergency room, with a couple of

    the nurses as extras.

The other piece of advice was offered about a decade later, while I was
working at the small community hospital in La Junta, Colorado. An older man, a retired business owner, was admitted to the hospital several times during my tenure as an orderly, a male nurse aide. He had a number of respiratory and circulatory problems that had a tendency to flare up and require brief periods of close medical supervision. Both of us being friendly type of guys, we developed an acquaintanceship.

One summer afternoon, my wife and I were riding our bikes around the shady residential streets when someone called out to us from the deep shadow of their front porch. Turned out to be my good acquaintance and his wife, who invited us to join them for some iced tea.

We enjoyed listening to their tales of an earlier and woolier La Junta and some of the trials of building a business there. But it was something he said, just before we went on our way, that stuck out. He'd lamented that the travel and activity plans they'd made for retirement were now impossible due to his maladies. He felt it was a mistake to have worked so hard during his life and to have deprived his wife of the enjoyments they'd both wanted. He said:

"Don't save up your good times for retirement; take them when you can."

I took this piece of advice to heart and followed it at every opportunity. And I am very, very glad I did.

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Ice cold memory

Divine Word Seminary or "P-burg,"
as it was known at the other
SVD seminaries in the US.

Summertime, mid-1960s. I don't remember the year, for certain. I was at
my high school, Divine Word Seminary, a few miles upriver—the Maumee River—from Perrysburg, Ohio. It was an all-male boarding school, termed a "prep" seminary by the SVDs, known in English-speaking countries as the Divine Word Missionaries. The SVDs (the Societas Verbi Divini), a Roman Catholic religious order, operated several high school seminaries in the US, preparing young men for a college education and advanced religious training prior to entering the priesthood as missionaries.

The Maumee River, above the deepwater head of navigation. 

Along with a few other guys, I'd volunteered for some manner of hot weather duty. Maybe it was helping out with one of the vocational retreats for grade school boys or maybe it was some other sort of clean-up chores; the exact reason for my presence has faded with time.

What I do remember is finishing up, tired, hot and sweaty, and all of us heading up to the main building, where the Father with whom we'd been working promised us some cold Cokes. The five or six of us pulled several chairs together in a corner of the dining room, a roughly forty-by-sixty-foot expanse enclosed on three sides by floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the woodlot leading down to the river. It was an impressive setting, remarkable even by adolescent standards.

A couple minutes later, Father Whoever brought out a case of twenty-four

ten-ounce bottles and informed us he'd had them chilling in the freezer so they'd be plenty cold. And hope to tell, they were that! There were already a few tiny ice crystals that were floating on top and that cold, sweet, tangy liquid drained down my throat like nothing before. I was sitting with my schoolmates, talking and laughing, enjoying the contentment of a job well done and, as I've come to know, drinking the most satisfying drink of my life. We finished off the case.

Coke is still my favorite soft drink. Ever since, I've often recalled that time of a half century ago when enjoying an extra-cold Coke. As the one I was just imbibing when I decided to write this story. And no, I never became a priest.

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