Summer 2020, when we all need to chill
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- August 22, 2020
- 771
Like far too many Americans, I’ve been working at a job that offers no health insurance.
Sure, I could buy it independently, but that would require me to make a choice between paying the rent or going hungry.
Well, I exaggerate for effect, but not by much.
It’s a rough time for all of us.
No one is very happy these days.
And not to put too fine a point on it, but things might get even worse, which is like a kid making his first trip to the ocean asking, “Oooh, look, Mommy, is that a sting ray?”
“Stay clear of that syringe, son,” comes his mother’s warning. “Try to find one that’s not filled with heroin.”
It’s been that kind of summer.
So when I drove to the doctor’s office earlier this week, I almost terminated the mission with extreme prejudice, to lift a line from “Apocalypse Now,” one of my favorite films and certainly a movie to watch this doomed summer 2020, if only for comic relief.
After all, who doesn’t double over with laughter when Robert Duvall utters those immortal words, “Charlie don’t surf!”
I still get dangerous flashbacks when I remember what it was like to experience “Apocalypse Now” on the big screen with Dolby Surround Sound in a theater packed with '60s survivors who knew someday, somehow the Doors and their epic “The End” would find their way into cinematic history, even if it meant the whole Oedipus complexity would merge with Playboy bunnies.
As Capt. Willard says at the outset, “I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one.”
That was kind of what was going through my head as I gunned my way through the early morning traffic, weaving (carefully) between church buses and a military convoy, an exercise in vehicular legerdemain that encapsulates life in the Bible Belt.
I’ve been living in the American South for almost 20 years and have yet to master the gravitational pull of those seeming polar extremes. It’s peace on Earth, good will toward men versus bomb ’em back to the Stone Age.
I’ll say one thing for this part of America: These folks are flexible.
But a doctor’s office staff is not. In the days leading up to my appointment, I received no fewer than three voice mails and four text messages, reminding me of my responsibility to arrive not only on time, but to make sure I was 15 minutes early.
It reminded me of anecdotal evidence from the way Vince Lombardi, the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers, used to run his team.
“If you’re on time,” said one veteran of those early-'60s NFL training camps, “you’re a half-hour late.”
Of course, Lombardi was a devout Roman Catholic too, which made his crazy-as-an-outhouse-rat logic easy for me to understand when I was a kid. I mean I dealt with that same kind of madness every day, the ways the nuns would alter the Byzantine rules just enough to make sure your penmanship didn’t make the grade.
And the priests? Don’t even get me started on their peccadilloes.
But that’s life, right?
In the immortal words of Hunter S. Thompson: “Buy the ticket, take the ride.”
Speaking of riding, I was just ahead of schedule when I made the exacting U-turn all patients must execute in order to access the doctor’s office, a hairpin 180 that, even if you’re used to it, can cause extreme panic and severe worry about your life and limbs.
And so, naturally, the first thing they checked was my blood pressure.
I rang the bell.
I mean I sledge-hammered that sensitive piece of medical equipment to such an extent that the kindly nurse gave me a second chance, which was just as disappointing.
I take three — sometimes four — pills every day for hypertension, and my wife — a licensed practical nurse — used to take my readings regularly, recording them faithfully.
Not so much anymore, though it’s not her fault. My adolescent lifestyle rather calls to mind the title of an old Doobie Brothers album; to wit, what once were vices now are habits.
So it’s a miracle my blood work came back much better than I anticipated and my EKG showed readings well into the normal range, despite the fact I’d been up working all night and hadn’t eaten anything remotely healthy all summer.
Unless you count double anchovies on that July 4th pizza, the one that gave me two of the most vivid dreams I’d ever experienced.
In one, my 1991 Honda Civic was running better than it ever had, despite the fact it’s been in an auto-induced coma since 2012.
In the other, a wave higher than an mountain was bearing down on me, blocking out the sky, threatening my very life, but instead of crashing down on me, crushing me against the bottom of the sea floor, it lifted me above the horizon to the limits of the sky before setting me down as gently as a butterfly landing softly on a flower.
“So is there anything, specifically,” the doctor asked from behind his COVID-19 mask, “that’s giving you any problems, something that isn’t showing up on these tests?”
I’m lucky to have this decent, empathetic medical professional in my corner. I understand that. What with my recent crossover into Medicare Country — I turned 65 last winter — I’m far better off than I might otherwise be and that many, many others are.
So I wanted to be honest with him.
But I had trouble coming up with something that didn’t involve divisive politics or the too-hot weather or the fact that sometimes I can’t find jack-squat to watch on Netflix and that occasionally, when we’re at the beach, my wife beats me at bocce ball.
“Well, there is one thing,” I said, “but it’s nothing anyone can do anything about.”
He raised his eyebrows, as if to ask, “OK … ?”
“It’s this,” I said, pointing to my chest. “Do you think it’s stupid to wear a Black Crowes T-shirt 30 years after I first saw them play?”
“You’re fine,” he said, walking out the door. “Those guys rocked.”