Really old school. In fact he defines the last great generation of people who suffered in silence, SSRI inhibitor free, and aspirin is for whimps generation. Drug a kid in school to get him to pay attention? He will have none of that. Sit them down, tie them to the chair (alas no duct tape in his youth). He is proud, hard working and is a lifelong Republican because "those liberals will ruin the country."
He says a friend who knows a key operative in the party has proof in the form of photos that Hillary is a lesbian. He also thinks Bill Clinton has super powers that make women take off their clothes which is damnable. So he hates him. However this year he says he will vote for Obama because GWB has "redefined the worst parts of our party and the next generation will suffer." We will see, my take is he will say one thing and do another (vote the party line).
As the baby boomer generation gets up there in years our parents begin to slide into what I call the medical years. Blood thinners, pace makers, cholesterol drugs, and a host of other medications prolong the lives of our parents far beyond what nature and their life style allow. Seems not a week goes by without a medical related incident occurring to a friend or friend of a friend that involves a parent. Heart, liver, kidney, and <deity of chose here> forbid mental illness and/or cancer marches through the last great generation like an unstoppable plague. Bear with me though; there is humor here, albeit dark and often very predictable.
Dad, my proud, hard working, great provider often a pisser but more often my life guide is the very definition of old school parent. Always, and I mean always there to help out when he could. In fact I have come to understand that his generation loves a crisis as much as our generation loves living with an unusual amount of debt. This is a story, as told to me by my Dad. In true fashion I take some liberties with the drama, insert some of my own views on what happened and what I really think happened. And it all started with a milk crate full of books in the trunk of a Pontiac Grand Am.
My back first went out while I was removing a tree from my sister in law's front yard. It hurt right away but at age 40 (a few years ago needless to say) I could manage to complete the job and then drive home and wake up the next day and get out of bed. Gingerly, but I got out of bed stretched saw a chiropractor and functioned normally. Also I went to a class to find out how to take care of an aging back with core strength exercises (my beer muscles) and stretching. Fast forward to today and I am a 2 to 3 day a week practitioner of a great yoga stretching and strengthening program (for another post). So I have some idea of the pain and discomfort of a tender lower back. However my old school Dad takes it to another level.
A call from my semi-omniscient sister who lives out of the state I live in actually brought you this story. She had a premonition (she calls these visions) that Dad was dead. She had been trying to reach him for a two days and he usually calls right back. So her vision said he was dead. She asked what I thought and I said I thought he was fine or the smell would have alerted the neighbors. And that I would call and leave him one of my eldest son messages that the family is concerned he may be dead and if he is not could he let me know.
He called the next day a strain obvious in his voice.
"Hi guy," he rasped in to the phone.
"You are obviously not dead." I deadpanned.
"Oh no, just threw out my back and had to rest for a couple of days."
"Uh-huh."
About 50 pounds. That is what the crate full of books I weighed on my bathroom scaled topped out at: just shy of 50 pounds. In fact as I bent to pick it up off the scale I remembered to squat to lift with my legs as just snatching it up while stopped over would certainly prevent me from any participation in the missionary position for at least two weeks. Damn, that thing was heavy.
My Dad always had a lot of files, paperwork and books. In fact I believe he was compulsive in his document retention policies. Seems at a certain age there is that one document he was convinced he needed to produce to resolve a terrorist, financial or familial crisis that was in his possession. Not filed away in an organized fashion mind you, but he had it filed. In his bachelor years which followed an old school style divorce (yet another post) he began going through his books and papers. This was his pulp garden. He would care and feed for these documents and books like a master pulp gardener. Hence his tendency to move these items from his house to his office to his basement to his house to his office in a choreographed pattern not unlike watching an ant farm with a single ant. He had nothing to do and did a lot of it.
On a clear cool Boulder, CO day his mission of pulp relocation brought him face to face with a milk crate full of books. Why in the trunk? He said he was moving them. And I was an idiot for asking.
At 65 with a workout regimen consisting of book moving, afternoon cocktails and awkward single 65 year old social events IMO my Dad was ready to have a medical event, and not a small one at that. I was thinking heart attack as he would wheeze, huff and puff just climbing stairs. As the sun shone on the boot of the Pontiac Grand Am the grey green crate sat close to the back of the back seats in the trunk. When he stopped the car in the garage, as he is prone to do, he hit the brakes firmly thus sliding the milk crate from close to the trunk's lip to farther back in the trunk next to the back of the back seats. We will get into his driving at another time. It will be worth it, trust me on that one.
In his attempt to perform a clean and jerk of the milk crate, like a steroid infused Olympian, he grasped jerked and twisted his back visualizing a clean path of the books from the back of the trunk to his waist. I used the Internets to see if this type of injury in parents is common and the only thing I found is that that the 50lb milk crate full of books removed from the trunk of a Pontiac is now the standard test for Navy Seals rescue operational training. And believe you me the military has some serious books in their milk crate. The back specialist I talked to too said that lifting twisting and turning using just your back is the worst thing you can do for it (and to it). The result was his back literally dropped him to the ground on all fours, books strewn here and there at the boot end of the car. As my Dad described it, "It was like getting shot and your legs go out."
As I prodded him along on the storyline he said he lay there grimacing in pain. Like a bug stuck on a pin, he struggled and finally rolled over to the dead bug position where he lay for, as he said, "a few minutes." After some more conversation this few minutes was more or less 15 minutes flat on his back near his car.
After the pain dissipated and his eyesight returned to a blur, he shoved the books back in the crate, moved the crate to the side of the garage so he could close the garage door and began to crawl out of the garage. He did point out he had to struggle to reach the electric garage door switch to close the door. He usually left the garage door open if he was going to use his car again at sometime that day in order to "not wear out the electric opener."
"Can't leave that open if I can't drive," he said.
He crawled through the courtyard of his townhouse complex. My Dad, in horrific pain working his way across an inlaid paver courtyard the sun beating down on his back, his shirt and LL Bean chinos soaked with the sweat of a Bataan Death march participant. All in all after pacing it off I figured he covered about 70 feet over the red, interlaced paver courtyard to his staircase.
Well what did you expect? Certainly not a first floor townhouse, no way. He had to crawl up a flight of stairs to the door on the second floor, insert his keys into the door and then crawled into the townhouse, close the door, crawled through the townhouse to his bed.
Okay, I asked him what everyone else asked him, "Why didn't you call an ambulance or friend (with is cell phone)?"
"And what, lay there until they arrive? Pay for a goddamn ambulance to take me to a hospital to tell me my back is out and that will be ten thousand dollars for two days in the hospital thank you very much?"
Visions of this bed ran through my mind. It is a converted waterbed. Meaning he gained additional years of use and value by inserting a mattress into the frame when the waterbed balder turned an odd shade of grey-green and invertebrates not seen since the last period of the Precambrian and parts of the Vendian period were identified by a 4th grader. Inserting a mattress into an old water bed frame has the expected result: which is spaces large enough to fall into and get stuck if say you had a bad back and could not mind the gap on your way onto the Serta Perfect Sleeper.
For two days he laid there, his body deprived of regular meals, water and requisite medical attention. As he tells it:
"Going to the bathroom was really a bitch."
"You crawled to the bathroom?" I encouraged.
"It wasn't going to come to me."
Here's to our parents, proud, hardworking folks who battle against being a burden to their kids all while caring for us with love so deep it defies explanation. When they go the world that we know will truly lose the last great generation.
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