Sunday, May 14, 2006
BRONZED MONKEYS
Being stuck in hospital for long periods of time has many down sides.
For example you’re surrounded by sick people and all the associated noises, sights and smells. Apart from an old people’s home, you don’t get as many wheel chairs, Zimmer frames, bed pans, etc.
The ninety six year old dear next door who, regular as clockwork, starts her day with a ritual clearing of the throat. Her homage to the great god Phlegmes includes an offering of a good sized quantity of lung butter.
This in turn causes great grief to my delicately stomached roommate, which then causes me grief due to his voicing of complaints about it for the rest of the day and the occasional evacuation of the contents of his stomach.
After the bed pan lunch episode at the Alfred I’m fairly immune to the ninety year old’s audio / throat gymnastics. Incidentally, she still insists that the car crash wasn’t her fault and that the brakes were faulty. Yeah right!
I take enough pills to rival Elvis in his last days and get an anticoagulant injection in the gut every day. My gut now has enough bruises to resemble George Forman’s head after the rumble in the jungle and feels like Courtney Love’s arm! Not to mention that I’m stuck in bed all day.
But one of the benefits of my forced hibernation from the real world was pointed out to me by one of my housemates last night during the coverage of the F.A. Cup. I will be able to watch every game of the world cup! As he put it
“I know men who would brake their own arm to be in your (my) position!”
I’m not the world’s biggest soccer fan. After all, it was invented by a bunch of wimps who thought that rugby was too rough. None the less, it’s an opportunity not to be missed.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that for some strange reason normal manners and courtesy seem to take a bit of a beating in this place. Specifically when it comes to dealing with people’s privacy.
Any normal person with a proper upbringing would know that when faced with a closed door which is usually open, that they should knock.
The very fact that the door is closed should alert the person wanting to enter that more than likely there is a good reason for it.
After knocking the said person would normally either wait for an invitation from inside to come in or enquire if it’s ok to come in.
It seems that not only visitors (both mine and my roommate’s) and some of the staff fail to observe this usual and normal protocol. They just seem to open the door and waltz in like they’re walking into a takeaway shop or something.
There’s a very good reason for the door being closed, that being my occupation of a bed pan, which my being male can only mean one thing.
Now, I first noticed this after I started to be able to do the whole business by myself.
I even had enough common decency to give my roommate plenty of warning so that if he chose to he could vacate the room.
At first I was surprised, angry and shocked. My privacy was saved only by the curtain drawn around my bed and even that doesn’t always stop them! There are a couple of serial offenders who shall remain nameless.
But then I referred to my knowledge of animal behaviour and training. Any animal which is faced by something unpleasant or painful will generally cease the action causing the discomfort.
So I figured that if these people don’t wish to respect my right to what little privacy is afforded to me, then they should cop all they deserve.
A right full on sensual assault!
Now if some one wanders in uninvited and I haven’t quite ‘done it’, I try my hardest to get one out whilst they’re still in the room.
I figure if normal animal behaviour laws apply, then eventually these fuckers will learn some basic civilised manners!
In the case that this should fail, they will leave me no choice but to resort to that age old trick used by our closest living primate relatives.
The disgusting although very satisfying I’d imagine, launching of your own faeces in the direction of the offending “animal”, hopefully scoring a direct hit.
Pow! Right in the Kisser!
