HENNY YOUNGMAN AND THE STATE OF HEALTH CARE IN AMERICA TODAY

Have you ever gone to the doctor just because you didn't feel quite right, but weren't sure exactly what was wrong with you? 

Prepare yourself.  A problem that would have been cured in your grandmother's day by a strong dose of tonic will now cost you in the neighborhood of three months' salary, the antique clock in your dining room, and all the fillings in your teeth. 

There is no such thing as a GP anymore.   The General Practitioner has been reduced to bones in the La Brea tar pits, along with the rest of the dinosaurs. 

"I'm feeling weak and tired," I told a Doctor of Internal Medicine.

 

He put his hand on my wallet and told me to cough (Henny Youngman wasn't kidding!), after which he recommended that I see a heart specialist. 

"That's it?" I cried.  "No blood work?  No EKG?  No stress test?  Just 'go to a heat specialist'?" 

"Yes," he replied, while counting out my life savings. 

So I went to a "heart man,' as he's known in the biz. 

He presented me with a bill before he even examined me, then said, "You have six months to live." 

I looked at the bill.  I'd never seen so many zeroes in one place before in my life.  "I can't pay this!" 

"OK, then I'll give you another six months." (Did Henny Youngman go to medical school?) 

"Oh, and I'm sending you to a respiratory specialist," he said. 

When I showed up there, the respiratory specialist sent his secretary out to give me my bill in the parking lot!  On it was scrawled the name of a neurologist and the time of my appointment. 

The neurologist's office called me and gave me my bill total over the phone.  I was then told to report to the ICU. 

At the hospital, still not knowing what was wrong with me, I was placed inside an oxygen tent and put on suicide watch.  When the doctor finally came in, he looked just like Henny Youngman. 

I took one look at him and said, "Take my life...please."

PHYSICAL COMEDY

I went to my doctor the other day to get my yearly check-up.  I was not worried.  I walked in with my head held high, feeling confident that, in the intervening year, not much could have changed.  Last year, I was, if not in the pink, certainly rather far removed from the red.

“Ms. Buckingham, the doctor will see you now.”

I followed Florence Nightingale back to the examining room.  I actually don’t mind going to see my doctor.  He’s one of the good guys, and also happens to be a friend.  I’ve been his patient for 25 years.

After I undressed and put on that “Too thin for paper towels, too thick for toilet paper” Paris original with the open-air back, ‘Doctor Rick,’ as I like to call him, sauntered in.

His usual salutation is a peck on the cheek.

But not this time.

This time, I was greeted with gales of laughter.

When he finally guffawed his last guffaw, he said, “OK, who are you and what have you done with Carson?”

“You’re a funny guy, Doc.  Maybe you should be writing comedy and I should be laughing at patients.”

“You look terrible,” was his witty rejoinder.

“I’m just a little tired.”

 “A little tired!  Run over by a tire, maybe!”

Keep in mind that I’m paying him for this.

“Well, let’s get some blood work done,” he sighed.  I’ll be back in 10 minutes.”  Then he stepped out and sent his nurse in to draw the blood.  I finally figured out why he does this.  I think he faints at the sight of the stuff.  Whenever he has insomnia, he just drives to the local emergency room, and doesn’t wake up until the next day.

Anyway, the nurse, or ‘Nosferatu,’ as I have dubbed her, appeared with a needle and two-dozen empty vials.

“Are you really going to take enough blood to fill all those vials?” I asked, alarmed.

“Hmmmmm,” she hmmed, appraising me as an antiquarian would a badly worn sixth century ottoman, “No, I don’t think so.  With the shape you’re in, it just might cause cardiac arrest.”

Another comedian.

After the blood was drawn, she brought me a rare steak to eat while the analysis was being done.  Twenty minutes later, Doctor Rick returned.

“What’s the black armband for?” I asked.

“Ummm, I just didn’t want to wait until the last minute.”

“I really think you ought to stop watching those M*A*S*H reruns.”

“Get dressed and come into my office.  We’ll talk.”

Trepidation began to creep into the proceedings.  I dressed and joined him in his office.  On his desk were scattered tasteful pamphlets about funeral pre-arranging and burial plot availability.

Doctor Rick took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.  “To start with, your cholesterol is a little high.”

“How high?”

“800.”

“800!  At 800 my circulatory system should be composed mainly of what . . . cement?”

“Actually, everyone’s amazed that you can even think coherently at all.”

“I’m a humor writer.  I don’t have to think coherently, so this is not a problem.  What else?”

“Well, your blood sugar is a little high, too.”

“How high?”

“You shouldn’t be eating any foods that begin with any letter of the alphabet.”

Let me tell you, it only got worse.  I finally left with 35 prescriptions, six Medic Alert bracelets, a lifetime ambulance pass, and a strict diet that was comprised mostly of tree bark.  I am spending the rest of my days sounding like a maraca when I walk, a sleigh bell when I write, and a banshee when I move my bowels.

Medical care after fifty doesn’t really make you live longer . . . it just seems that way.

L'OREAL, PAPERBOYS, AND OPEN-AIR BATHROOMS

People are always asking me, “Do blondes have more fun?”  I have to make things up!  If I told them how I really spend my evenings, L’Oreal’s carefully built reputation would go right down the toilet, let me tell you!  They’d have to change their entire advertising campaign to something like this:  “Want to spend wildly entertaining evenings grooming your guinea pig, snacking on gummy bears and watching Leno?  Why not be a blonde and find out what ‘bored to death’ really means?”  The TV ads would show a blonde in a food-stained J.C. Penney sweat suit watching a golf game.  On the table next to her would be a nearly empty bowl of taco chips and an open quart of milk with lipstick stains on it.  Basically, it would be my life flashing before millions of eyes.

Do blondes have more fun?  Give me a break.  I don’t need that kind of pressure put on me.  I get enough from people I know—who needs it from Heidi Klum and Cosmopolitan magazine? 

And this is only a small example of the stress I go through, as a blonde, on a day to day basis.

You know the poster, “STRESS KILLS”?  I wish that’s all it did, don’t you?  I do pretty well at the start of the week.  I can cope.  I can deal with things.  By Wednesday, I start to get a little shaky in the control department.  I begin answering the phone with, “What now!” rather than “Hello.”  The paperboy tosses the paper at me, and I toss it right back at him, but I aim for the head.  I’ve been through three paperboys this week alone, AND I got a call from the Yankees about a relief pitcher job.

At any rate, by Friday, I’m a total wreck.  Gone is Monday’s quiet grace under pressure.  Here’s how my Fridays generally go:

The first thing I do is climb the tree in my front yard to get my paper.  This is where the new paperboy throws it now.  It gives him time to get out of range.  Scratched and bleeding, I climb back down, ripping a Pierre Cardin robe to rags.  I then totter back into the house and read the obituaries.  If my name isn’t there, I continue my day.  If a paperboy’s name is there, I throw a party.

Next on the agenda is a trip to the grocery store, which is so crowded that I can’t see what I’m grabbing.  All I know is that I usually end up with four grocery bags stuffed with Pop Tarts and kumquats.  I’m still not entirely sure what kumquats are, but I have a lot of them!

Then I drive home and back my car into the garage, remembering, too late, that I don’t have a garage…or a car.  What I do have is a return bus token in my pocket, somebody’s smashed up Toyota in my driveway, and an open-air bathroom.

So please, people.  Lock your cars.  Take your keys.  Don’t help a good blonde go bad.

'M' IS FOR 'MESSY'

        I have spent the past two weeks worrying about housecleaning.  Not doing it, just worrying about it. 

You see, we are those “lower than whale poop” types of folks known to the surrounding homeowners as “renters.” 

I don’t know why renters are regarded this way.  Stij and I are kind, considerate people and have not received so much as a polite “your front yard sucks, it is a weed-ridden mess, clean it up or else” note from the HOA.

Perhaps it is the former renters of this house who we are paying the social price for.  From what I understand, before us, there were a group of Harley guys who would laugh out loud upon hearing the word, ‘muffler.’  They shouted when they spoke because they had no hearing left. They worked the graveyard shift, presumably at a home for the deaf, and would pull out of the driveway just as the entire neighborhood was drifting off to sleep. 

Or maybe it was the renters before them.  People still talk about the family who never went outside wearing anything but head-to-toe  Ewok costumes…at least everyone thought they were costumes.  Some people assumed that it was in protest of the ‘no dogs’ rule, but there is far from majority agreement on this.

We’ve been living here for nine years now.  Never missed a rent payment.  Quiet, keep to ourselves.  Maybe they think we’re serial killers.  And we did rebuild the house at our expense after the giant bread mishap and actually added improvements previously absent, so no harm, no foul there.

At any rate, I was discussing housecleaning, wasn’t I?

When one rents, you see, one is subject to a demeaning little visit every so often from the Property Manager (we have one of those, too, making us overseen by the owner, the HOA, and the PM.  San Quentin is less surveilled.).  They send someone out to do a walk-through to be sure you have the required safety features, and aren’t hiding any dogs on the premises.

So I figured I’d better start cleaning.  We are not slobs, but there is a bit of clutter around, and I really could rake the living room a bit more often than I do.

Stij entrusted the cleaning to me, since he had to spend time making a living.  He walked into the living room just as I was finishing up.

“You’ve been doing this for over an hour and it doesn’t look like you’ve picked up a single thing,” he remarked.

“I haven’t.  I drove to the store and bought this,” I said, indicating the brand new easel, canvas, tubes of paint and jar of brushes.

“I see.  You’re going to do a painting called ‘Still Life Among the Ruins’ are you?”

I smiled and shook my head sadly because he had completely missed the brilliance of my cunning plan.  “I can avoid cleaning this room entirely!  If people think you’re an artist, they forgive a mess!”

“And exactly how much did today’s scheming set us back, Lucy.  You have some ‘splainin’ to do.”

“$167.00.  But look how much time it saved!  I can do other things, now.”

“Such as?”

“Well, I bought some cactus plants to put in the den.  It will make the layer of dust look like part of the décor.”

“You’re going to have to do some cleaning, you know.”

“Oh, what for?  I like the house to have a ‘lived-in’ look, don’t you?”

“This one has a ‘no survivors’ look.”

“You’re very funny for someone with no teeth.”

“I have teeth.”

“Not for long.”

“I’m going back to my shop. The inspector is due at 4:00 today. You have six hours. Will you be ready with a house that will pass?”

“Of course.”

“Oh, and by the way, I think the refrigerator needs to be defrosted.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t think there’s supposed to be frost on the outside.”

“Okay.”

“And there is a bunch of stuff—I say ‘stuff’ because I can’t identify it—that needs to be thrown out in there.”

“Is it ripening green or rotting green?”

“Let’s put it this way:  When I say I am going to raid the refrigerator, I mean that that’s what I intend to spray it with.”

“Fine.”

Stij glances around the living room, shudders, then goes back to making cabinets.

I went back to work.  I pulled out every souvenir from every place we’d ever traveled and festooned the bedroom with them.  This tells the viewer that we are world travelers and have little time to clean.

The kitchen was next.  I blowtorched the outside of the refrigerator to melt the frost, then blowtorched the floor to evaporate all the water.  It gave the linoleum a really interesting look, too.

While sorting through my pots and pans, I discovered a really filthy roasting pan that I absolutely couldn’t get clean, so I filled it up with fresh apples that I bought earlier in the day, and brought it over to my neighbors’ house.  Neighbors always return pots and pans sparkling clean, so that problem was now taken care of, since I wanted to make a roast later in the week.

I thought about cleaning all the light fixtures, but then decided to just opt for stronger bulbs.  Much to my delight, I discovered that it’s possible to buy 5000 watt light bulbs!  The fixtures looked great after all the dirt burned off.

As far as the bathrooms went, I just bought a huge piece of limburger cheese for each and closed the doors.  One sniff and no inspector in the world would want to venture in there—especially after I tell him that Stij has Irritable Bowel Syndrome and has been having bouts of explosive diarrhea.

So that was that, and it only took me a couple of hours.  I sat down and watched a movie.

At 4:00, the bell rang.  I dashed to the door and admitted the inspector, who seemed reticent to enter, but I chalked that up to shyness.

The tour was completed in record time, and the inspector left, giving us a passing grade.

Stij walked into a house that didn’t look much different from when he left it.  “I hesitate to ask, but did we pass?”

“Certainly.”

“How?”

“Well, he didn’t buy a lot of my explanations, so I finally told him that  he had to keep it a secret, but that this house had been chosen for next month’s ‘Better Homes & Gardens’ layout on quick and effective cleaning methods, and they had to take the ‘Before’ pictures before I could do anything to the house.”

“He bought that?”

“After I told him he could be part of the photo shoot, he did.  Evidently, his mom is a big fan of that magazine.

“So what happens in a month?”

“Oh, I think we’ll have moved out by then.”

ORGASMS, PINA COLADAS & BOILS

Did you ever find yourself roped into tending bar at a party?  Now, I don't know about you, but if it's anything but a glass of wine, beer, or something straight, I'm at a total loss.  But I'd made the mistake of asking the hostess if there was anything I could do to help, and KAZAM!  I was in charge of libations.

Of course, the first person who walked up wanted some ghastly concoction called a "Sea Breeze."  Not wanting to reveal my ignorance, I mixed up a glass of salt water and sand and handed him a paper fan.  He gave me a funny look and walked away.

"I'd like a 'Harvey Wallbanger,' please," a rotund little fellow said.

"OK," I replied cheerfully.  I gave him a glass of half orange juice and half horseradish.  I didn't know if his name was Harvey or not, but he sure was banging on the walls after he gulped that down!

"A 'Fuzzy Navel,' please."

"Sure!"  Orange juice and cat hair!  Next!

"Vodka and tonic, please."

Easy!  Stoli and Geritol!  Who needs bartending school?

"A 'Pina Colada,' if you would."

"Comin' right up!"  If I recalled my Spanish correctly, "pina colada" translated to "spastic colon," so I gave him a glass of six squares of Ex-Lax dissolved in hot prune juice.  No one saw him again after he drank it, but looking out the window, I could see lines forming at the service station restrooms across the street, since no one could get into the bathroom here.

"I'd like a 'Mai Tai.'"

"You already have-a your tie," I replied, trying to sound as Italian as he did, so he wouldn't feel uncomfortable.  He walked away looking confused.

"A 'Boilermaker,' please."

"Right!"  A glass of apricot juice, Night Train, and sterno.

"What IS this?" he gasped after his first sip.

"Your 'Boilermaker.'  I get boils every time I drink it."

"Okay, let me rephrase," he said.  "I'd like a shot and a beer."

"Really?"

"YES!"

 I shrugged.  "Okay."  I punched him in the nose and handed him a beer.

A young woman stepped up.  "I'd like an 'Orgasm,' please."

"Who wouldn't?"

"I mean to drink!"

"Honey, what you do behind closed doors is your business.  Who's next?"

"A 'Rusty Nail,' please."

"No problem.  If you'll just step out into the garage…"

Am I a great bartender, or what?

 

ADVENTURES AT OFFICE MAX--PART TWO

Picking up where we left off last week:  my six bookcases and desk were finally delivered from Office Max, I'm now out of the hospital, and the time has come to put the damned things together.  Oh, yes.  I have to put them together all by myself.

First, the bookcases.  According to the box, no tools are necessary for assembly, and each case only takes twenty minutes to put together.  Buoyed by that statement, I opened the first box and ripped open my right hand on some sort of packing crap…I think it may be called a brad or a staple or, hell, Mildred Pierce for all I know!

Following a quick trip to the emergency room and 57 stitches, with the promise of a 50/50 chance of being able to use my thumb again, I set to.

I yanked at the boards in the box.  Nothing.  They were stuck.  I sat down on the floor, braced the box with my feet, and really put my back into it.  Out flew a long board, narrowly missing my head before embedding itself in my wall.  Try as I might to remove it, it became clear that  board and plaster had plighted their trough, and would be joined there for all time.

I stepped back and surveyed the destruction; much like van Gogh would step back from a painting in progress just prior to cutting off some body part or other.  To sum up, I now had clotted, drying blood all over my beige oriental rug and a six-foot board sticking out of my wall, looking as if it were shot there by some gigantic deranged Indian.

What to do?

I grabbed two stools, placed one on each side of the board, and called it a "Breakfast Nook."

Being a humorist and therefore having no capacity for self-preservation, I opened another bookcase box.

Out charged the biggest rat I've ever seen since Humphrey Bogart in The Roaring Twenties.

My ferret, Gizmo, took a great deal of interest in this rat, and in a frenzy, managed to get out of his cage and make a beeline for Mickey Mouse on PCP.  The fact that this rodent was twice the size of Giz didn't seem to bother him at all.  He latched onto the hairless tail with all the might and killer instinct that a two pound animal can muster, and proceeded to be dragged around the room by this panic-stricken, shrieking rodent.  Vases toppled and smashed gaily on the floor.  Plants were overturned and trampled.  Bric-a-brac didn't stand a chance as the rat scrambled up onto furniture with my ferret still attached to his nether regions.  Watching him try to get shed of Giz reminded me of kids playing "Crack the Whip" at ice skating rinks.

But Gizmo would not be moved.  Well, that's not entirely true.  He'd allow himself to be dragged around the apartment like a dust mop, but that tail was going to remain firmly clenched in his fangs.

Finally, the rat got tired of it all, reached back and gave Gizmo a roundhouse punch in the nose.  It surprised him enough to let go, and the rat legged it to parts unknown, leaving me with an embarrassed, ashamed ferret to comfort.  After two hours of assuring him that I didn't think he was a pantywaist, I returned to the bookcases.

The rat was still at large, but I didn’t care anymore.

I emptied the box of its selection of boards and little hardware doodads that I assumed I'd be needing, and picked up the instructions…which were written in German!

I am nothing if not game, so I laid the pieces out in what looked like the appropriate arrangement, and started putting in dowels and screwing in screws…for the next three hours.

"Twenty minutes! @$%#%$#% Office Max!   @$**%#$#% bookcases!  And mostly, %$#@$#@%#%#% Germans who don't have the decency to provide English instructions!" I remarked.

At any rate, at the end of three hours, the swearing was done and I stepped back to drink in the full impact of my creation.

It didn't look like a bookcase.

It looked more like a chicken coop in a slum. 

I took it apart and tried again.

This time, it was a ghastly recreation of my ex-husband that I knew would haunt me until the day I died.

Some would call me "persistent," others might opt for "idiot," but I gave it one more try.

My final effort resembled something out of an Irwin Allen movie, and  the rat immediately moved into it…to give birth.  Though I had to relocate them to a shoebox, I am keeping her family nice and warm.
 

Guess what I'm using for firewood?

ADVENTURES AT OFFICE MAX--PART ONE

I made the grave error of buying something from Office Max, a/k/a "Temple of Doom."

But let me backtrack a bit.

Having moved into a new apartment, and living alone for the first time in my life, I discovered I was woefully unprepared to deal with setting the place up.  For one thing, I am a book fanatic, and have a personal library of over 6,000 volumes.  Unfortunately, I had not one bookcase to my pitiful name.  The time had come, as the Walrus said, to stop threading my way through my living space around ten-foot vertical piles of books.

Being somewhat frugal at this point in my life, I naturally checked the Sunday circulars to see who might be having a sale.  After flipping through Circuit City, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Sam's, and a place called "Jimmy's House of Edible Lubricants" flyers, I came upon an ad from Office Max.  To my delight, they were having a great sale on, not only the bookcases I needed, but also on computer desks.  The clouds parted.  Seraphim sang in perfect harmony.  A ray of sunlight fell across my face--a face that was covered with grateful tears.

Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor?

I high-tailed it down to Office Max, humming all the way.  I danced in the front door, only to find…ground zero when the shit bomb hit.

I had never seen such disorder in my entire life.  If ever a place of business looked as though it had been picked up 2000 feet and dropped, this was it.  But, undaunted (well, okay, maybe a little bit daunted) and spurred on the by the great prices, I stumbled forward.

Upon finding the desk/bookcase area, I glanced around for a salesperson.

Nada.

Finally, I ran serpentine through the mess and inquired at the customer service desk.  I was sent a salesperson forthwith.  Or, as forthwith as I could get, anyway.

After about twenty minutes, a wizened man three days older than dirt tottered up to me.  "Can help you, Miss?"  he rasped.

Stifling the urge to reply, "Gee, may I help you," I told him of my mission.

"I'll have to check out back to see if we have any more left," he said, and in the style of Tim Conway's little old man, shuffled off to the nether regions.

Thirty-five minutes later, he returned, and I noticed that he was wearing one of those Mission Impossible type black headsets.   I wondered if this was really the image they wanted to project to a shopper in their establishment.

"I'm sorry, Miss, but we'll have to order them for you," he said.

"Why?  The circular was just released this morning!  How could you possibly have sold out of them already?"

"I just work here, Miss.  I don't know."

"Ah, that sounds familiar.  Just following orders?"

"That's right, Miss.  The order desk is right this way."

I shrugged and followed him.  It didn't really make that much difference, I supposed.  I'd done without them this long; a few more days wouldn't matter.

At the desk, their latest twelve-year-old hire greeted me with a highly professional, "Yeah?"

"I need to order six bookcases and a computer desk."  I'd brought the circular with me, so I pointed out exactly what I wanted.  "Please have them delivered on a Tuesday."

"Lady, you can't just pick a day like that!"

"Then this is the only store in American where I can't!" I retorted.

Another twelve-year-old, drawn by the raised voiced, sauntered over.  "Sure she can," he said.

This resulted in a filthy look from moron number one, and additional typing.  Oh, I could see tense times at recess today!

"What's your phone number?"

I gave it to him.

"What?"

I repeated it.

"Excuse me?"

I repeated it.

"OK.  Is it 236-8799?"

"Close.  646-5086."

"What was that again?"

After another five minutes of this delightful banter, I gave it to him in semaphore and American Sign Language, and I think he finally got it.

"That's $476.00.  Your order will be delivered on Tuesday between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm."

"Can you be any more specific than that?"

"No," he said, handing me my receipt.

"Well, you're welcome, of course.  And I must say, it's been a wonderful, friendly experience, and I think I'll have you all over for a big cookout this summer!" I snarled, snatching my receipt and stomping out the door.

I wondered what the odds were that I could actually receive the items I ordered.

So, Tuesday morning came, and I bounded out of bed to the jangling of the alarm clock.  This is not easy to do on a day off, but I did it, because I wanted to be ready when they arrived.

I waited all day and the only person who showed up was a Jehovah's Witness, looking for heathens. I sent him to the apartment below me, but not before telling him that he might want to stop back tomorrow, because by then I will have committed a murder.

"Oh.  You ordered something from Office Max, didn't you?" he asked. "Believe me, God will understand.  He may even help you."

I thanked him, gave him a cookie, and directed him downstairs.  Misery loves company, don't you know.

At 5:15, desperately trying to keep my voice from sounding like something out of "The Exorcist," I placed a call of Office Max.

"Office Max.  How may I direct your call?"

"The store manager, please," I said.

"Hello, this is Wayne."  Good God!  His voice hadn't even changed yet!

I told him my tale of woe.  No matter what I said, he replied with, "I can certainly understand how you feel."

Finally, after the fourth time he said that, I asked, "How can you possibly understand how I feel?  Have you bought something from Office Max recently?"

"Oh, no!  I'm a whole lot smarter than that!"

"Yes, you probably are," I sighed. "How are you at ducking throwing knives?"

"Why?"

"Oh, no reason.  Just call the warehouse and find out what happened, will you please?" I asked.  "And then call me back and let me know what's what."

"Fine."

After twenty minutes, Wayne called me back.

"It seems that there was some damage to some items on the truck, and they couldn't be delivered," he sniveled.

"And when was this reported, Wayne?"

Mumbling.

"Pardon me?  I didn't hear you."

"At noon."

"AT NOON!  And you couldn't be bothered to pick up the phone and let me know?  I've been sitting around my apartment all day with my thumb where the sun don't shine, and you're telling me that your people knew AT NOON that the delivery wasn't going to be made?  Is that what you're telling me, Wayne?"

"Um, yes?"

"Hold on, Wayne.  I have to run and stick my head into a bucket of cold water so it won't EXPLODE!  Don't go anywhere!"

When I returned to the line, I was considerably calmer.

"I WANT TO KNOW JUST WHAT THE HELL YOU PLAN TO DO ABOUT THIS, YOU AMAZING MORON!" I remarked casually.

After screaming myself hoarse, we decided that the items would be delivered the following Tuesday, when I would again be at home for the day.  In return, I agreed not to lie in wait for Wayne in the parking lot with the intention of chewing his leg off.

During the balance of the week, I said twenty-three Novenas, sacrificed three white roosters, and danced naked by a fire in the light of the full moon.  Confident that I had all bases covered, when Tuesday rolled around, I again leapt from the covers early, and waited with, as Dickens would have said, great expectations.

At 12:30, there was a tap at my door.  Sure it was the delivery, I flung it open.

On my welcome mat stood a short, fat creature who looked like he just crawled out of a pipe.  "Delivery from Office Max," he mumbled.

"Fine!  Bring it on in!" I cried.

"Nope.  I was told that this was a dock-to-dock delivery.  I don't get paid to haul this stuff up two flights of stairs.  There are eight boxes in the truck and they're really heavy."

"Do you mean to tell me that they sent you out all by yourself, with no help?"

"Yeah, lady, and I have a bad back like you wouldn't believe."

"My friend, once I get through with your boss, he's going to wish a bad back was ALL he had!"

Door shuts.  Short, fat deliveryman exits stage left.  Our protagonist grabs the phone and dials Office Max.

"How may I direct your call?"

"WAYNE!  WAYNE NOW!"

"I'm sorry, but he's tied up at the moment."

"THEN GET HIM UNTIED, YOU PERVERT, AND PUT HIM ON THE PHONE, PRONTO!"

"One moment."

Thirty seconds later, my buddy, Wayne, arrives.

"Hello?"

"IS THAT ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY?  'HELLO?'  THIS IS CARSON BUCKINGHAM, IN CASE YOU DON'T RECOGNIZE MY SWEET, DULCET TONES!"

"Oh my God.  What happened?"

He didn't have to ask ME twice.  He got such an earful, it was leaking out his nose!

When I finally lost my voice, Wayne said he'd call the warehouse and see if they could get the short, fat deliveryman some help and send him back over.

"Fine," I croaked.

Two hours later, another tap at my door.  I said a quick prayer of thanks to any deity that cared to listen, and opened up.

It was the Jehovah's Witness again.

"Hello.  I just thought I'd stop by to see if you needed any calming down."

"How on earth did you know?"

"You're dealing with Office Max, my child."

"Right.  Please come in."

We talked for hours and he calmed me down considerably…until I glanced at the clock.

"It's 4:35!  DO YOU BELIEVE THIS?  IT'S 4:35 AND NOT A GODDAMNED SIGN OF THEM!"

"Now, Carson, remember what we discussed…forgiveness, serenity, patience…"

"OH, BLOW IT OUT YOUR ASS!" I suggested, scrabbling for the phone.

"Office Max.  How may I direct your call?"

I shrieked into the receiver.

"Oh, hello, Ms. Buckingham.  I'll get Wayne for you."

"Hello, this is Way…"

"THE QUESTION YOU HAVE TO ASK YOURSELF IS, 'DO I FEEL LUCKY?'  WELL, DO YA…PUNK?"

"Oh, Ms. Buckingham…hello.  Did your delivery arrive?"

"NO, MY DELIVERY DID NOT ARRIVE.  CHRIST WILL ARRIVE BEFORE MY DELIVERY DOES!"

Wayne, fearing for his life, came up with a cunning plan.  The items would be delivered the following evening at 6:30, when I would be home from work.

OK.

The next evening, I actually allowed myself to feel hopeful.  I arrived at home at 6:20 and walked up the stairs, only to discover that my doorway was completely walled in, 'Cask of Amontillado' style, by eight huge boxes!

After I finished banging my head against the wall and shuffling these monoliths out of the way, I propped open my door and dragged eight boxes, easily weighing about 150 pounds each, into my abode.

 

As a result of all this heavy lifting, I am now in the hospital.  They want to put me in traction to correct my back problem and relieve my pain, but the traction machine is broken.

They're waiting for a part from the medical division of Office Max.

I may just slit my wrists and save them the trouble.

 

(NEXT WEEK:  PART TWO)