The Possum In My Kidney

This getting fat and old business is crap. Things just don’t work as well or the same as they used to. I guess my warranty must have run out. Isn’t that when things go all to hell?

Well, my addiction to Pepsi has finally come to an end. It will be my undoing (or un-going as the case may be), as it seems my kidneys – at least the right kidney – has decided it will no longer tolerate this 44 year habit. (The worst thing I ever did was switch from beer to Pepsi at the age of 13.) I knew I was pushing it when I went on a Pepsi binge recently. Hell, I used to be able to drink a 6 pack of that cold, bubbly, sugary, caffeine-laced delight and not feel a thing. But age and (apparent) abuse have ruined that. It seems that my filtration system is not as good as it used to be. I get it. Things wear out. But it really doesn’t sink in until you push your body to the point of unequivocal revolt.

Indeed, my body revolted. I was in agony. No position was comfortable. My wife tolerated my moaning. The dogs – not so much.

After a couple of days of excruciating pain in the whole right side of my abdomen I gave in and went to the doctor. I’m not into pain and hardly stoic when it comes to suffering quietly. The wise MD, educated in Canada, which really does make her wiser than most US-educated MDs, ordered a complete abdominal ultrasound and some X-rays. So I hobbled and groaned and shuffled my way in to the hospital the next day, not knowing what would be found. The pain was so acute and yet so diffuse I couldn’t tell what innard was affected. Was it the huge hernia I’d been growing the past 10 years, finally wrapping itself around my intestines like a boa constrictor? Was it my gall bladder backing up into my ears? Maybe it was my liver. After all, I’ve been on Pravachol for over a decade – certainly those chemicals have played havoc on my hepatic system. Maybe it was my kidneys and the oh-too-familiar urgency/frequency shtick hadn’t kicked in yet. Whatever it was, it just hurt like hell and I wanted the pain gone. I had been given some “pain pills” but Tylenol worked better, which means nothing because the Tylenol didn’t work at all. (So much for better living through chemistry.)

So the exam went swimmingly. I flopped around in my hospital gown on the gurney. Roll this way, roll that way. Wow! That’s some hernia you have there. (I call it my ‘chest buster’ in honor of The Alien. Yes, it’s that big.) After getting poked and prodded for about half an hour or so, I wiped the gel from my torso as best I could and was shuttled off to X-ray. 5 in all. The bill would be almost as painful as the abdomen. Hurry Congress. Give us some kind of health care … I’d like the coverage you guys have, thank you. You can fund it out of that stimulus package. Screw Wall Street and BoA and Citi and Wells F**k-Up.

OK, back to my story. Surprisingly and unexpectedly, after the exams I felt remarkably better. Not wonderful, but not writhing in agony. I shuffled home.

Well, feeling better lasted about 2 hours. And then it hit. Oh, I knew what THIS was. Apparently the ultrasound stirred up just enough rubbish and debris to disturb the possum in my right kidney (see photo), and the full-blown kidney infection was now in high gear. The first clue was urine that looked like 2 week old beef broth. (Apparently possums don’t like beef broth.) Then came waves of pain in places I never knew I had. Those who have had such infections know the places I mean.

So then began the Bactrim antibiotic. Good against UTIs, bad for other innards. I discovered chocolate yogurt. And Go-Gurt. I don’t care about the name. It tastes like a banana split, so how bad can it be for me? Restore the good flora and purge the bad possum.

Did you know that blueberries are better at fighting UTIs than cranberries? Well, they are. So I have forsaken my beloved Pepsi for blueberry juice. Sad, ain’t it? Yes, this getting old business sucks. Next it will be prune juice. When that time finally comes, wheel me out to the fire ant hill, cover me in honey and let me go. I will not sink into prune juice. And don't give me that Ensure crap either.

I’m still trying to figure out where the possum came from. Honestly, I think he’s still in there doing the back stroke because I’m not 100% yet. Things still hurt from time to time. I think it’s those little teeth of his. Maybe I can drown him in blueberry juice. Or we can come to some kind of détente. I don’t know though. Possums are pretty mean little critters. Yup, I think I’ll just drown him. But not with Pepsi. That part of my life is over. Damn possum!

By the way, if you own stock in Pepsico, you might want to sell your shares soon. I think I have singlehandedly kept them afloat for years. Without my addiction, they’ll tank for sure.

How I Came to Teach

It's been almost 40 years now, but I remember it as if it were yesterday: shedding the ugly rented graduation gown that smelled like a thousand stale strangers and had clung to me like a clammy second skin since we had marched, single file, like blue and white robed prisoners, onto the muggy athletic field that late June evening in 1970; surrendering the mortar board -- (but keeping the tassel to hang on the car mirror until it disintegrated a decade later) -- all in exchange for my hard-earned high school diploma. And back then, so many years ago, it was hard earned. It was then, that night, after sitting in my car outside THE graduation party in town and deciding I didn't belong there either, that I swore off ever setting foot in another classroom, for whatever reason, and vowed I would somehow talk my venerated parents, both college educated, out of making me suffer through another four years of wretched hell. I had had it -- with demeaning teachers, vapid assignments, the squandered time of study hall, stupid cliques of puerile and arrogant classmates, and the politics of sucking up to people in authority who deserved about as much respect as a cockroach.

If someone had told me that lonely June night that someday I'd be in front of a classroom, teaching, I'd have thought he was mad. Yet, somehow, after three failed attempts at college, I finally learned that I didn't have to fit in to be successful, that I needed a better reason that parental prodding to attend college, and that, given the right circumstances and the right professors, college could actually be fun. I'll still not set foot in a high school, the land of the damned. They’re even more moronic, smothering, controlling places than they were 40 years ago, and I don't know how people, teachers and students alike, suffer through them or why. But college is, thankfully, not yet high school, and the vast assemblage of philosophies and opinions we call subjects and learning and knowledge is available to almost anyone who is willing to suspend his or her disbelief long enough to work in the land of new ideas and differing opinions.

Those of us who go to college have many reasons for doing so, not the least of which is to get an education. But, in all honesty, a good education can be had just about anywhere, if one applies oneself. At least half the people I know who consider themselves successful have never set foot in a college classroom, or have had minimal contact at best. No, those of us who go to college have something to prove -- generally to ourselves. And many of us want jobs that only come with a diploma in hand. So, we sit in classes -- some exciting, some dry as dirt -- and we write papers, take tests, write more papers, read until our eyes are bloodshot -- and eventually come out with a piece of paper that testifies to the level of our proficiency at some skill or ability we hope someone else will pay us for. And, so too, our culture requires a diploma as testimony to our willingness to corroborate and affirm what our culture currently values. One's diploma is then the penultimate cultural sign that one has digested and regurgitated, to the satisfaction of yet someone else with yet another diploma, what the culture deems meaningful. Whether any of what we learn is of any real worth is up to each of us to decide.

But there's more to attending college than that. In my case at least, by the time I really appreciated college, I was in my thirties. By then, I had gone to technical school and emerged with a certificate as an electronics technician, a skill I would never use. I had worked in radio, in theatre, in retail. I had slaved in a factory, suffered in a warehouse, and sweated in the fields. I had managed a book store, worked in a couple more, and met a string of allegedly famous people in the process. I had sold car parts to shade-tree mechanics, comic books to fanatic collectors, and make-up to drag queens. I had done voice-overs for two-bit local pizza dives and conducted a memorial choir for a beloved friend. After this string of richly absurd but dead end endeavors, it slowly dawned on me that I was spinning my wheels and needed something more than four years of high school Latin and a knack with eyeliner. I just had to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. So I found a college I liked, and classes I enjoyed.

There are several kinds of college students, but those of us who go to college and remain to teach as professors probably have something genuinely wrong with us. Those of us who choose to teach in the Humanities -- subjects like English, music, philosophy, history, theatre, cultural studies and the like, really need our heads examined. There’s really little to do with such degrees except teach these things to others. That's not bad, it's just an observation. These subjects are certainly just as worthy of our attention as genetics and nuclear physics and political science and mathematics. It's just a sad fact that, in our current culture, subjects like literature and writing and music and art and the study of why humans behave the way they do are considered of little value when compared to medicine and law and finance. What few people outside academia realize is that the humanities are the foundation of learning, and without the curiosity that comes from wanting to know what makes people tick, wanting to understand how humans behave, wanting to know what keeps the world running, there would be no medicine, no law and no finance.

Ultimately, staying in college to teach most likely has something to do with the real world and a pathological desire to avoid it. Most professors would probably deny it, and some probably aren't even self-aware enough to realize it, but the majority of us who remain in college do so because it's a nice, sequestered place to be. It's detached, isolated and insulated. It's nothing like the nine-to-five grind of the real world. Sure, a good many of us put in longer hours than most of our nine-to-five counterparts and none of us will ever see the hefty paychecks some of our successful athletic students will see. But we have an abundant environment constantly infused with new ideas. We have an interesting variety of idiosyncratic students every semester. We often spend countless hours amongst ourselves, indulging one another's peculiarities and taking delight in bitching about the state of the world. And those who get tenure usually end up with a nice pay check, some good benefits and pretty nice vacations. Then again, those of us who are adjuncts are probably the least balanced of all, as we get none of the perks, but we also probably have the most fun because, like the system that employs us, and unlike our tenured counterparts, we don't take ourselves too seriously.

If I sound a bit cynical I suppose I am. College isn't just a place to get grades and a place to net a diploma. (I'd say earn, but grade inflation and the bottom-line philosophy are driving colleges swiftly in the direction of high schools, where self-esteem is more important that self-knowledge and world awareness.) College is, ideally, a place to expand one's apprehension and appreciation of the world and its multitude of cultures and experiences. It's a place to challenge one's assumptions, to learn new and often provocative things and to engage one's brain in something more profound than video games and Monday night football. College is, for many of us who stay, a refuge from the banality and stupidity of life "out there." In college, thinking and questioning and debating and wondering are all indispensable things the world seems to be leaving behind. That's what I found in college. That's why I stayed. And that's why I taught.

The Hill

When I was a kid there was a hill down the field from my house that just waited for winter. And every winter, as it had promised the spring before, a thick blanket of snow would return to provide the best sledding in the neighborhood. All the neighborhood kids made evening pilgrimages with their aluminum saucers to its summit, eager to fly off its snowy peak, down its deadly slopes and into hysterical, icy oblivion. Screaming and shouting, each of us would take turns down its steep banks, We'd re-emerge at its crest moments later, panting from the long return trip, and eagerly await our next flirtation with certain death. Snow suits and blue jeans heavy with snow, wet socks twisted tightly down around the toes of our ice-filled boots, and mittens long since lost, we'd joyfully weather the gray-skied hours, sledding and marching, sledding and marching, down and up the Hill late into the evening, when we’d hear the call and, exhausted, troop home to hot dinners and warm, dry clothes.

The Hill was marvelous to behold. Ancient and natural, bordered on one side by an abrupt and dense furrow of trees and brambles, on the other by a modest highway, and ending suddenly in a large cement ditch, its vast expanse was white and silent in winter, green and fragrant with penny royal in summer. Two steep, almost 90° banks joined by a slight decline of only five or six feet and followed immediately by a long, sloping grade prolonged an already exhilarating cruise into a trip to thrill any child. With its ponderous potential buried in its uneven slopes, the Hill was a favorite spot in summer too, when we’d roll down its golden banks of dandelions, howling dizzily as we staggered back up its sides to roll again. The most foolhardy among us would often run down, gaining momentum exponentially, cartoon-like legs whirling wildly beneath, until gravity and laughter would overcome him and he'd pitch forward with riotous delight. And in winter, as unwary spectators would drive by, we’d take shameless pleasure at reenacting with melodramatic anguish fatal injuries from our great gravity-defying saucer rides, only to run away laughing uproariously when someone would stop to offer aid. Yet, no bones were ever really broken; no noses bloodied. We must have been made of rubber.

The Hill had stood as I have described it for generations. A familiar landmark, it had been traveled up and down thousands of times by everyone in town going to and from work, visiting the neighboring town, heading to the village for a movie or dinner out. And everyone had special memories, though granted not all of them necessarily pleasant ones, of the Hill. You see, the Hill it seemed was not particularly fond of mechanical apparatus and was especially hostile to bicycles and their riders, both in the perilously swift ride down and the painfully arduous push back up. Nor was its icy winter road inviting to vehicles. Many a night I'd sit in my bedroom and hear tires spinning on the ice, as Beetle and snowplow alike were indifferently dispatched into one of its alpine banks. It even inflicted a mortal wound on my own Radio Flyer one summer when, thinking to re-enact the exhilarating flights of winter, I foolishly rode the luckless wagon pell-mell down the Hill, teeth rattling dangerously in my ten year old head, certain as I lurched down its side that death was only seconds away. I survived with only superficial injuries (and a very sore tailbone), but the wagon’s front tires would forevermore be splayed.

It was this animosity, then, this malevolent attitude towards things mechanical, that was finally, and sadly, the Hill's undoing.

I should explain that the Hill was one of the boundaries of the State Hospital where my father (where just about everybody's father) worked, and where, for almost 30 years, I called home. My family lived on the grounds, as many staff families did, and so for many of us the Hill was a twice daily experience at least. Whether walking, riding, driving, skiing, sledding, bicycling, rolling or running, one couldn’t go down to town or school nor get back home again without going down and up the Hill. And, because it was, in effect, the main entrance to the State Hospital, it was groomed and trimmed and meticulously cared for to reflect the importance it held as the pinnacle of the institution. Its steepness, Freud might have argued had he visited, was no mere accident, but a testimony to the rigorous and often arduous journey on which one must embark to regain the level footing of sanity. But that's another story.

In summer at least, the Hill had to be mowed. For all its beauty and majesty and potential, it was, after all, only a large, albeit very large, clump of dirt, rock and grass. And since, except to the children and a few adults, there was nothing magical about the Hill -- it had no supernatural grass that would grow only 2 inches and no longer -- that meant someone, or in this case several someones, had to mow it. And quite a job it was.

Once upon a time, patients would mow the grounds. They would be sent out in crews, the sane and the not-so-sane, with simple rotary mowers, to tame the acres and acres of lawns that made up the Hospital grounds. Teams of men, all dressed in hospital drab, would patiently mow -- around trees, up steep banks and down, over hidden woodchuck holes, under immense pines. The whirling blades of their simple machines would mingle with the sounds of summer, and the moist, fresh smell of new-mown grass would drench the air. There was satisfaction in this simple task, and the Hill showed no animosity towards either men or machines as they made their way, week after week, summer after summer, across its green terraces and down its high banks. These men were much like us children -- moving across the Hill with ease, tracing patterns as they went.

And so the Hill stood for all the seasons of my childhood -- noisy children and quiet men crisscrossing its angular sides, defying gravity or surrendering to it through the years.

But slowly technology ascended. Time passed and the crews of quiet men and simple machines were replaced by loud, intrusive tractors pulling long blade assemblies, piloted by solitary men who seemed to find little pleasure in their task. Isolated from the fragrant expanse and aloof atop their fuming machines, they rumbled vacantly across the turf. Yet, while making short work of most of the grounds, these men and machines would struggle against the Hill, often leaning precariously over an edge or sometimes running wildly down a slope, digging huge earthy scars in the luxuriant green hillside, scars that remained like exposed gashes in its sides. Woodchuck holes would routinely grab wheels, leaving disabled machines abandoned for hours or days awaiting rescue, and there would often be patches here and there of tall weeds, too difficult to reach with the massive machines, emblems of neglect and indifference dotting the hillside.

No longer beautiful, the Hill looked wounded and forgotten. By now, we had all grown and left and no children remained to follow us. Patients, thanks to medications and a new philosophy, were no longer encouraged to participate in their environment and many instead spent their days sleeping on benches or wandering the grounds with little of value to do. The Hill, once immense and inspiring, was now merely a nuisance to mow.

When I returned home, after many years' absence, I was saddened but not surprised to see that the face of the Hill had been changed. Regrettably, the two steep banks had been leveled. In their place was a single, unremarkable grade. Tamed by idle minds with little spirit and less imagination, it had been stripped of its uniqueness.

Certainly over the years there was no lack of willing manpower to mow the Hill. It gave summer days a purpose to those who might otherwise have had none. And in winter it was a treasured playmate for generations of children. To the children of subsequent generations it is now merely a hill, just one more common, unremarkable thing in their lives.

If I believed in omens I might be inclined to say the leveling of the Hill was a sign of things to come. Now no longer a State Hospital, the grounds and buildings have been surrendered to house prisoners, none of whom enjoy the freedom to stroll through and enjoy the grounds and woods that surround them. Once an environment of rehabilitation, now the grounds, where not barricaded with razor-like barbed wire, go largely ignored or unused, fenced or paved over. Natural beauty has been displaced by base technological ugliness, designed as much it seems to keep the restorative environment out as to keep dangerous criminals in. It makes me question why such a place would be sacrificed for those who cannot be permitted to benefit from it.

The Hill as I knew it is gone, and so are the times in which it stood. What now survives is a sadly familiar hallmark of man's willingness to compromise nature for convenience. Leveled to make life easy for someone, the hill no longer stands as the summit of a beneficent institution but represents instead cheerless compromise and acquiescence. It sits sadly lifeless, its distant images of children tumbling and men moving gracefully across the fragrant grasses of summer slowly fading away.

© by Erich Trapp
1996

The loathsome copulation of AT&T and Yahoo

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away there was a thing called Compuserve. (To some of you this will mean a great deal. To others, it will mean nothing at all.) It was simple, text-driven, and easy to use. You sent messages, you received messages. People knew how to spell. The world was good. Then came the more 'sophisticated' Internet, with its growing cancerous mass of bells and whistles and pictures and ads (and ads and ads and ads, ad nauseum). But I was on BellSouth and things were still remarkably good. At least they look so from here, and now.

Then, from out of nowhere, and totally uninvited, AT&T descended on BellSouth like vulture on road kill. The next thing I knew, my Bellsouth content had been hijacked by AT&T, drawing the life from it and pasting its own mindless ads all over each page. We were not given a choice -- we were merely assimilated into its Ninth Circle of Hell. AT&T sucked BellSouth like Monica sucked Bill. Before we knew it, it was all over with nothing to show but a small stain of @bellsouth.com as a reminder.

Sadly for those of us who remain in the hair-pulling, mind-numbing slow lane of dial-up -- not by choice but by geographical circumstance or the infantile petulance of the gods or the evil sting of technological Karma -- anything with more than one picture or two colors or 15 lines of text takes an eternity to load. I am 57 years old. I no longer have an eternity to watch as pages load on my computer screen. Nor do I have the eyesight. Nor do I have the patience. Inside I am screaming. Screaming! This is not good for my blood pressure. I get headaches waiting for content (most of which is unadulterated crap) to slowly drip down my computer screen. This slow trickle from The Information Highway causes me to suffer apoplexy.

This slow wait is eerily reminiscent of the early days of television (a few will remember this), when one turned on the tube and left the room to cook dinner or wax the car or birth a litter of puppies while the set "warmed up" for umpteen minutes. But at least when it warmed up there was something moderately interesting to watch. Why, the static discharge from the cathode ray tube alone was entertaining. Zap! Rendered semi-conscious for seconds.

But I digress. Back to the computer.

The nag screens from AT&T began to appear, touting how improved my experience would be when I 'migrated' to the new Yahoo-AT&T pages. My email would load faster, I'd have more options to personalize my web experience, and my home page would be a thing of beauty and a joy forever. How could I say no to such a compelling offer? Well, I managed. On dial-up magic does not happen. On dial-up doing laundry happens or dog-walking happens or watching paint dry happens. So, day after day I kept saying no. I wasn't happy with AT&T but I knew I sure in hell wouldn't be happy if AT&T was sucking on the hind tit of Yahoo.

Then the nag screens began to come more frequently and I knew it was only a matter of time. Instead of going days without the pressure to conform, I was suddenly faced with the choice of being assimilated or exterminated. After weeks of refusing to be absorbed by the bastard child of this unholy union, I held my nose and I took the plunge. I MIGRATED.

And the minute I began the process I realized I was doomed.

Now, the idea of migrating, as far as I can tell, offers with it the option to return to one's home. Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. Not so with Yahoo-T. No such option is available in their Universe. Once you have gone to the Dark Side, there is no redemption, no going home, no sweet reunion with familiar icons and pleasing colors and shiny radio buttons.

Now, we have this malevolent marriage of AT&T and Yahoo, neither of which has any desire for or ability to meet the interests of its clientele. Additionally, and probably more disturbingly is, it's plainly obvious from the design of this alleged integration that the whole scheme was cooked up by a very large committee with a very small mean intelligence.

For example -- I have two bellsouth email accounts and also belong to several Yahoo Groups, two of which I am responsible for updating on a fairly regular basis. One would think (and this 'thinking' assumption is the biggest mistake) that AT&T and Yahoo would bundle all these services together, making all available on one page with a mere click of the mouse. Not so, Dear Reader, not so. In order for me to read my separate email accounts I have to go through the tedious, hair-pulling, blood-pressure rising process of logging out of one account and logging into another. (Remember, I am already 57 and my time on Earth is limited.) If this isn't bad enough, if I want to work on or upload anything to my Yahoo Groups, I have to log out yet again and log back into the Yahoo Groups site. This is beyond stupid. If one had to come up with a definition of beyond stupid, this has to be it. The whole scheme must have been, could only have been, designed by a bunch of crackbrained, imbecilic, vacuous, asinine people, who are probably either bankers or mortgage brokers or Congressmen.

This signing on and signing off, logging in and logging out would be bad enough if I had high speed. But I have dial-up, which in my area amounts to a little less than two tin cans and a string. As a society we have invented some pretty remarkable and totally useless things: the bullet-proof bed, the diaper harness, the fanny fan, the fish-n-flush toilet, pierced glasses (held to your head by actual piercing), the head napkin, the cricket gun, the extreme comb over, and even something called the Marilyn Manson Exercise Suit. Yet, high speed access totally defies the brainiacs at AT&T who apparently can't string a wire to my house and make DSL happen. Hell, I'm not asking for miracles like WiFi. I'm just asking for a web page to load before I collect social security.

The moral of my story is this ... if you have high speed, DSL, cable, or WiFi, get down on your knees and thank the gods of The Electron for your blessings. And while you are there, say a prayer for those of us languishing back in the 20th century for we know what we miss and are sorely oppressed. If you are an AT&T customer and are asked, cajoled, threatened or seduced, do NOT migrate to the new AT&T-Yahoofornication. Even if you have high speed or WiFi or satellite or can speak to your home planet in 17 different languages including Boolean Algebra and Inuktitut and Mati Ke, do not be provoked into migrating. Take my word for it. Nothing good can come from it and you'll probably end up apoplectic like me. Stay away from The Dark Side. As Nancy Reagan used to preach, "Just Say No!"