TODAY I WASN’T THAT GUY

One of my neighbours had an operation on his prostate to remove a cancerous growth. This was about a month ago, and when another neighbour gave me the gossip my first thought was he is going to be bored to tears. He is an active guy who works hard driving a tow truck and equally hard when he is at home. He’s one of those guys that has a beautifully manicured lawn and gorgeous flowers artfully arranged. Makes the rest of us in the neighbourhood look bad. I didn’t wish cancer on him, more like a brain tweek that takes away his desire to garden at a high level. I wish him a speedy return to work and pray that they got all of the cancer, never to return.

 

I hope good things for him even though he continues to vote conservative both provincially and federally. I guess he already has something wrong in his head after all.

 

Today while I was talking to him he mentioned that he hoped the surgeons got all of the cancer but you just never know. I replied with a story about a fellow that I worked with. His wife had breast cancer and she successfully battled it with surgery and chemo. He said he was taking her to Vegas to celebrate. I told him that Vegas doesn’t have a lot of places to sit unless you are gambling, but they went anyway. As it turned out they did not have a good time because there was no place for her to just sit and watch the world. I don’t know why I said that except as an indication that people should listen to me.

 

After a month or so my buddy (a pack a day smoker) found out that he had spots on his lung. He was off work for a couple of months and I ran into him at the local Tim Horton’s on a Friday afternoon. He was on his way to the oncologist to get his clean bill of health and planned to return to work on Monday. Saturday night, his wife called me and asked if I would be able to take him to the hospital for radiation treatment on Monday. It turned out that the cancer had spread to his brain. Of course I would even though he and I were just work friends. It is the human thing to do.

 

Three weeks later Leo passed away.

 

As I was telling the story to my neighbour, I realized that it was not the kind of thing a fellow wants to hear just after his prostrate surgery. I managed to stop talking after the part where his wife beat breast cancer. Good things happen to good people after all.

 

I was almost that guy. You know the one. He keeps talking and talking and talking when he should not have started in the first place. I consider it a sign that I am finally growing emotionally. I guess it could be that my tongue has finally slowed to the speed of my thought.

 

Today I wasn’t that guy. I hope that I am not that guy tomorrow but I can’t make any promises.   

 

 

What Are The Chances

 So, when I was a mid teen I watched “The Great Escape” and became interested in books about the second world war, prison camps and books about the men who fought in the wars.My dad was shot down over Germany while on a bombing raid and spent the next three years in German POW camps. Thankfully he was a pilot and the Germans considered pilots to be gentlemen so they got to be interred in Stalag Luft camps which means they were run by the German air force and received better treatment than captured soldiers.

That isn’t to say he had it easy, but it was easier. The bread was only made with one half sawdust to flour mix and they were pretty much left to their own devices…more or less. Dad didn’t like to talk about his experiences very much so I didn’t get a lot of first hand info. I asked him once if he ever dug an escape tunnel and he told me that the older guys (over 25) did that kind of stuff and the rest of them helped in any way they could. I kind of wish I had bugged him more or that he would have been more willing to talk about his experiences. I would give anything now if he could just talk about anything at all now.

One of the books that I read involved a Japanese submarine. The sub had been patrolling the pacific trying it’s best to sink any allied ship at all when the commander of the sub got a fishbone stuck in his throat. If not surgically removed the man would have died a horrible death so it was decided that the sub would surface and surrender to the first allied ship they saw so the commander could be saved. I have since learned that a Japanese commander would prefer death over surrender but the author obviously believed that teenage boys would like his version of the story.

Now, I have never been on a submarine unless you count the one at West Edmonton Mall, and certainly not been in any kind of war unless you count a thumb war. However, that book and the plight of the Japanese commander convinced me of the foolishness of eating fish unless it has been breaded and fast frozen by Captain Highliner. Even then I feel that I am living on the edge. Inevitably in a long life you get offered fish by a host who doesn’t know the dangers of eating fish or you figure that billions of people eat fish and don’t die a horrible, painful death. Every single time I have had fish they has always been a bone that is very needle like and I know that without constant vigilance I would surely be dead.

I find myself in Lisbon Portugal. I safely made it through Amsterdam and Madrid without having any fish, but today I couldn’t resist ordering fish and chips. I found seven or eight needle like fishbones. I am hoping that I got them all, but it is very possible that this note will be the last thing I write. I might be lucky enough to run into an American battleship with a top notch thoracic surgeon, but what are the chances?