Bad Seeds, and How They Sometimes Grow Up

Both Marthalette and particularly Rilene had elements of the classic "Bad Seed" personality, but none of the actress' looks or charm.

Even as children, they looked much more like Matilda's nemesis.

I have many first cousins. Some would say that I have too many of them, and I would not argue with anyone who said that.  Lots of people have many cousins if one starts counting all the various step-relationships. I don't even have any step-relationships. These people are all legally my first cousins. One is my first cousin legally but not by blood, as she was adopted a few months ago from a Puerto Rican-Filipina mother living on the isle of Manx where her adoptive parents live. I haven't seen her yet, but I've been told that she looks like a little baby Bruno Mars and is gorgeous. Seeing her this summer is one of the things I most look forward to.

Having so many cousins has been, for the most part, a mixed blessing at best. Cousins are something everyone should have at least a couple of if possible, in my opinion. One can have, however, too much of a good thing. Furthermore, not all cousins are equal. Some are very nice people. Others are rotten to the core. I shall tell you about my two least-redeemable cousins.

Marthalette and Rilene are the first two of my Aunt Marthalene and Uncle Mahonri's thirteen offspring.  Marthalene is the oldest of my father's seven sisters. Aunt Marthalene was born just shortly after my father turned one year old. She married when she was eighteen and started her family right away, while my dad was still serving his LDS mission, and then finishing college and attending medical school afterward. Because she started early and wasted no time in her quest to personally (with the help of her husband) populate the world with dark-haired, not-especially-attractive progeny, all of whom sprouted humongous teeth shortly after they were born, her oldest offspring are considerably older than Matthew and I are.

People are stuck with the looks that are given to them. Because of that, I'm mildly reluctant to criticize the looks of my oldest cousins.  There are subtle things that can be done to make the most of a person's looks, but for the most part, if a person emerges from the womb looking part horse, part Osmond (though their genealogy proves there's no close relationship between them and the equally toothy but exponentially more talented Osmond brood), and part Eddie Munster, all of the tricks of a cosmetician's trade can only do so much to salvage one's appearance.  Even so, as my evil fifth-grade teacher used to say [about me; she found me both physically ugly and character- and personality-challenged], "Even if you aren't pretty, if you will just act sweet all the time, no one will ever notice that you're not pretty." This memo never quite made it to my oldest cousins Marthalette and Rilene.

Despite being on the homely side and not possessing an especially kind or sunny disposition, Marthalene is probably more notable for the thickness of her skull despite there being no clear evidence of a working brain inside her head than for unfortunate appearance or for her unpleasant disposition. Marthalene did not excel academically, though she didn't oten receive failing grades.  She muddled along and got a whole lot of C-minuses as I recall. Marthalette was gullible. Even I, who was eight years younger than she was, could tell her ridiculous things that defied logic that she would, more often than not, believe, then go crying to her parents because sneaky Alexis had tricked poor Marthalette into exchanging five quarters for a dollar because everyone knew that five quarters equaled a dollar.  Marthalene's gullibility caught up with her in high school, and this one she cannot blame on me. Someone far more evil than I told Marthalette that pregnancy could be prevented by douching with Coca-Cola after intercourse.  Marthalette married at the age of sixteen years, one month, and gave birth to her first child at sixteen years and four months of age.  It gets even stupider, though. She popped out four more children like bullets -- BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG -- before she finally deduced that the Coca-cola douche method of birth control wasn't working for her, and if she didn't want to produce roughly one baby every  eleven months, she needed a more reliable form of contraceptive.

Marthalette's sister just younger than she [by one week less than a year], Rilene, wasn't as dull-witted as was her older sister. She certainly wasn't Gifted-and-Talented-Program material by any stretch of the imagination, though as compared to Marthalette, she might have seemed almost like it.  Rilene possessed straight-across-the-board average intelligence, but she (as far as anyone in the family could tell, she was evil from day #1) was born with a malevolence almost unheard of elsewhere.  Young parents are often warned about their dogs in relation to their new babies, particularly if the dogs are of breeds known to be  aggressive.  Pit bulls, for example, who have always previously been gentle, have been known to unespectedly attack and even to kill infant offspring of their owners.  Rilene was a bit like a pit bull in that regard, except that, knowing her nature, the attack shouldn't have been unpredicted or unexpected where Rilene was concerned.  When Rilene's baby brother Bradford was a mere-three-weeks old, one-year-old Rilene was found in his cradle, sitting atop his midsection while simultaneously pinching his nose closed and holding a stuffed animal over his mouth. Fortunately this happened when my Aunt Celine was visiting, and Aunt Celine usually paid at least a little attention to what the children were doing. Since Bradford's intelligence is roughly the same as that of most of his siblings (they're all smarter than Marthalette), it's assumed that he probably wouldn't have been a nuclear physicist even without Rilene's attempt to send him back from where he came.

Aunt Marthalene kept Bradford behind a locked screen door in his bedroom whenever she wasn't holding him after the attempt on his life until he was considered strong enough to fend for himself. (Had it been up to me, I would have kept the diabolical Rilene under lock and key.)  When Marthalene gave birth to Moriancumr (the name is from the Book of Mormon, not that that in and of itself is a justification for saddling an innocent baby with such a hideous name), she assumed it was just Bradford with whom Rilene had an issue, so she took no special precautions with Moriancumer with respect to Rilene's fratricidal tendencies. When Moriancumr was less than a month old, two-year-old Rilene was found placing baby Moriancumr in the toilet head-first in apparent attempt to drown the poor child. My mother was at their house at that time, and rescued
Moriancumr  from serious brain damage or worse. Moriancumr had to be kept in the same bedroom behind a locked screen door.

At this point other cousins came on the scene, and Rilene discovered that it was light years more fun to torment them than to pick on her own siblings, because her parents would believe her claims of innocence and ridiculous denials of deliberately hurting anyone when it involved her attacks on children other than their own.  It was shared knowledge among my dad's other siblings and their spouses that Rilene would have no qualms about causing serious injury or even death to one of her cousins, so they took turns watching the children as they played rather than leaving Rilene to her own devices.  

In addition to physically hurting others, Rilene was also prone to theft.  (So was and is her father, though whether it's a strange genetic tendency or learned behavior is anyone's guess.)  Her theft was largely ignored and rationalized (my mom never put her purse down even for a minute at family functions at which Rilene was present) until her father became an LDS Bishop. (How possibly the biggest petty thief in the state of Utah became an LDS Bishop is testimony to the divine inspiration that goes into all LDS callings.) As bishop, Mahonri was responsible for collecting tithing from members. On Sundays at church, Rilene would often find reasons she wanted to sit on her father's lap.  Eventually the amount of tithing people claimed to have paid could not be reconciled with what Mahonri deposited and what the church records reflected. It happened with too many different families for  it to be the ward members lying. As much as he liked to gain at the expense of others, Mahonri had never been known to steal money. Miscellaneous household goods and personal items (toilet paper, Vaseline, sugar, Kool-Aid, and toothpaste, for example) were more to his liking. For the record, Rilene apparently tore up the checks in tithing envelopes; she wasn't so sophisticated as to attempt to forge and cash the checks. Strangely enough, though,  some people actually put cash in tithing envelopes; those were the envelopes Rilene apparently sought. Tithing envelopes containing money were found in Rilene's possession one Sunday morning by a primary teacher.  

Mahonri was released as bishop shortly after tithing money was found on Rilene.
You or I would have considered this a good time, even had we not thought of it earlier when she was attempting to harm babies,  to seek counseling for Rilene. Mahonri and Marthalene just tried to laugh it off and to offer by way of excuse that Rilene was "smarter than the average bear."   I don't recall Yogi either trying to kill siblings or stealing from church coffers, but perhaps my memory is faulty.

Marthalette and Rilene in tandem were dangerous.  Rilene would suggest to Marthalene that cousin Todd should be pushed off the bridge into the creek, but that she really didn't have the time to do it because the adults were always watching her. Marthalene, slow as she might have been, took Rilene's not-so-subtle suggestion and pushed Cousin Todd off the bridge and into the cold and swiftly-moving (but probably not deep enough to be life-threatening to Todd) creek, where he landed on jagged rocks and emerged with all sorts of gashes. Rilene just looked innocent while Marthalette was screamed at by Aunt Angelie.

Rilene and Marthalene both took a special dislike to me. I was not yet two and they were nearly ten and nine when my dad caught them as they were propelling me up the rungs of a ladder of a water tower on rural mountain property where a family reunion was being held. They offered no explanation as to what they planned to do with me once they got me to the top of the ladder. Their intent could not  have been anything good.

My mom cornered both Marthalette and Rilene individually that week and made dire threats concerning what would happen to them if either Matthew or I were harmed and there was any possibility either or both of them were responsible. Mom said that it was easy with Marthalette -- that she just said she'd call the police, and Marthalette would go to juvey. She was more specific with Rilene. She told her that she had a lot of acquaintances in the area who presided over juvenile justice, family welfare, and issues involving mental health of minors. She told Rilene she had the connections, based especially on Rilene's history of trying to harm her brothers, pushing a much smaller cousin off a bridge and injuring him, and feeding a bottle of children's Tylenol to her younger brother, and made allusions to a few incidents of which she was aware because school mental health professionals had called her off-the-record when Rilene's school behaviors had been disturbing at times. She told Rilene she already had enough evidence to have her removed from her family and placed either in a group home setting or in a lock-up mental health facility until she was eighteen at the very least, and possibly until she was twenty-five.  My mom said she would not hesitate to rely on her connections to make sure Rilene paid if any of the cousins were hurt because of her, but that she would  make it happen even faster if Matthew or I were harmed.  My mom  went on to say that the burden of proof if we were ever hurt at a family function would be on Rilene to prove her innocence just based on her track record. That was bullshit, of course, but Rilene didn't know it.

My grandparents began to hire "counselors" to supervise the children at family functions, and the "counselors" were told that Rilene and Marthalene were dangerous and that the "counselors" were responsible for keeping all children safe.

It was at that point that Rilene decided it was better to resort to psychological cruelty to me. That's when she started to call me first "fetus," then "aborted fetus."  My mom told both of the two oldest cousins that psychological cruelty was prosecutable, too (it wasn't, but my mom had no problem with lying to the little psychopaths) but that she didn't want to waste her time. Instead, she would withhold Christmas and birthday presents from every cousin who had called me that who did not apologize. If any future name-calling campaigns against any of the children were started, my mom told Rilene and Marthalene, she would permanently stop giving gifts to the children who were considered responsible. And she would ALWAYS consider Rilene and Marthalene, as the oldest, the ones responsible unless they had iron-clad proof to the contrary.

My parents at that time gave probably the only nice gifts most of those children received from Christmases and birthdays, so the threat of losing gifts was a very real threat to them.   We skipped the next two family functions until all of the apologies were received. Then, when we returned to the next reunion, my parents hired my Aunt Cristelle to protect us, which Aunt Cristelle did very diligently.

Marthalette now has eight children, and Rilene has six. (Chances are that neither one is finished popping out crotch parasites.) My mom always looks at their children (especially Rilene's) very closely at any event when she sees them. She also observes interaction between the children and their parents. She thinks both cousins have transferred their narcissism over to their offspring to the extent that they consider the children extensions of themselves and treat them well accordingly.  She says if she sees or hears of any signs of abuse of any of their children, she'll be on the 1-800 CPS number immediately and will also call the local police if either sister  commits crimes against her children in my mom's presence. The kids will probably be treated well, but Rilene has enough loose screws that almost anything is possible.

What if the Venn Diagram is not yet ready to rest in peace?

Forgive my diatribe. Relatively recently in the grand scheme of things, I was an elementary and high school student. I took a few education courses as an undergraduate, taught just a bit in a substitute capacity, and deal with educational issues to some degree whenever I'm assigned to medical departments that are in any way connected with pediatrics. I have just enough exposure to educational trends and issues to have formed a few very strong opinions on the trends and practices I see as they are coming and going. The only constant aspect of education is the constancy of change. The pendulum of education swings wildly back and forth. If you stay with education for long enough, I've been told, most trends you'll endure at least twice. 

People who are close in age to me were educated in early grades and to some degree even in later grades with a set of graphic organizing tools known collectively as "Thinking Maps."  I'm sure someone thought of them, copyrighted them, and is making lots of money from people using the ideas behind these tools for organizing one's thoughts, though I don't know how the person is continuing to collect and to build his wealth, as I doubt  the person still gets credit each time a teacher asks a class to devise Flow Maps to demonstrate the sequencing of events that led to World War I or asks a class to use Tree Maps to classify the leafs of tress they've collected from the playground.  

Money will still change hands, as each time an enterprising educator publishes another guide concerning how Thinking Maps might be better used in classrooms, not only is the author of the guide compensated (presuming that anyone actually shells out any cash for his or her book), but the originator of the concept presumably receives some sort of pay-out or royalties for the use of his original idea (which probably was never all that original in the first place; he was probably just the one who got his paperwork in order and submitted it for copyrighting before anyone else did).

While it may sound as though like I am disrespecting the entire concept, whoever came up with it, and every educator who uses the technique, in actuality I am not.  there is most definitely a place for thinking maps in our schools today. Today's children tend to be both visual and tactile/kinesthetic in terms of dominant learning modalities. It makes sense to ask them to organize content in a way that both makes sense to them and helps them to see relationships or to grasp concepts when they might otherwise lack the capability to do so.

Nevertheless, I do have two criticisms of the use of Thinking Maps, which I shall at this time share with anyone who is still bored enough with his or her surroundings to still be reading at this point.  In the cases of both criticisms, it's not a personal grievance against either the concept of Thinking Maps or any sort of vendetta against anyone who played a major role in introducing the concept to curriculum in the U.S. and, as such, significantly fattened his or her bank account by doing so. We live in a capitalistic society.  If there's a buyer for something, whatever enterprising soul who has the energy to market the product has every right to benefit from it as long as it's not being sold under fraudulent pretenses.  I wouldn't equate the development of Thinking Maps for educational use with the sale of snake oil to cure all sorts of ailments for which the product likely has no properties whatsoever that would remedy the conditions its proponents purport it has the power to cure.

Alexis' criticism #1 of Thinking Maps is that they were overused in the days of my education and probably are still being overused. Thinking Maps should be a vehicle for teaching concepts for which a particular graphic organizing tool facilitates acquisition of or understanding of the concept to be learned.  if the activity is being done primarily to perfect students' skills at using Thinking Maps, it's busy work and is not worth the time of the students being asked to complete the task.  As an example, when I was in first grade, a teacher asked all the students in our class to create a Tree Map and to place animals under various branches of the "tree" of the map according to how many legs each animal had.  She placed picture cards of the animals we would classify into a transparent pocket chart, with the names of the animals printed below the pictures. 

Doing this activity required no research and little thought, as the animals "cow, grasshopper, lizard, chicken, turkey, elephant, snake, fish, pig, dog, cat" and probably a few more I cannot remember that were familiar to first-graders. Had the animals been unfamiliar ones, it could have been considered a legitimate science research activity.  Had just the pictures of the animals been displayed, perhaps it could have been considered a spelling exercise of sorts. Had just the words and not also the pictures been used to identify the animals, the activity might have been considered a low-level basic reading skills activity
(low-level reading comprehension, word recognition, or decoding skills).  The assignment as presented to us accomplished no significant thinking skills. The only point to the activity was to devise a Tree Map.  It was, therefore, busy work. It kept us out of a teacher's hair but neither taught nor reinforced any standards-based concept.  The same could be said for various bubble maps, flow maps, circle maps, and others that my classmates and I were required to produce.

Alexis' Criticism #2 of Thinking Maps is more specific, and is directed at a specific Thinking Map: the Double Bubble. The Double Bubble is used for comparing, usually and most easily, two concepts or actual things.  The double bubble isn't inherently evil or even flawed. My beef with it is that it was used to replace another graphic that was already doing the job quite well. That graphic was and still is known as the Venn Diagram. We've all seen it and used it. It's two circles or elliptical shapes, usually transposed in part over one another so that  points unique to each item being compared may be written in the parts of the circles or ellipses that do not intersect, while points in common could be written in the intersecting parts of the shapes. The intersection could be made as large or as small as it needed to be, depending upon whether the items or ideas being compared and contrasted possessed more similarities or more dissimilarities.  Parents could help their children with homework involving Venn Diagrams because they and their parents before them had used Venn Diagrams to highlight similarities and differences.

The person who copyrighted Thinking Maps couldn't easily include the Venn Diagram in his copyrighted material as it wasn't original. Instead, the person invented the Double Bubble, in which each item or idea to be compared was written with a separate circle around it. Items or ideas  having both criteria written in both bubbles were written in the center of the two original bubbles, with lines from them extending to each bubble. Items or ideas matching just one of the two criteria were written on the far side of that bubble, with a line extending just to that bubble.  The Double Bubble accomplished, for all intents and purposes, what the Venn Diagram did. I personally believe that the Venn Diagram is clearer in conveying its intended meaning, but that is just my opinion. They're really two ways of accomplishing the same task.

My criticism is that many educational practitioners who advocate the use of Thinking Maps go to great lengths to discredit the efficacy of the Venn Diagram. 
Administrators who give their teachers quotas for numbers of Thinking Maps to be assigned weekly or monthly (a practice with which I vehemently disagree as I feel that it lends itself to use of Thinking Maps for the use of creating thinking Maps as opposed to teaching actual content standards, which, in my opinion, translates to the deservedly maligned busy work) often do not give credit in attainment of the quota to assignments featuring Venn Diagrams.  Other educators, who are sold on the Thinking Map concept to the extent that they cannot recognize  a naked emperor when they're standing directly in front of him, will argue until their faces turn purple that a Double Bubble is vastly superior to a Venn Diagram. Doing such is much like arguing that a square is a terrible, evil shape that must be eradicated from the world, but that an equilateral rectangle is a perfectly acceptable polygon in the eyes of God and of good people everywhere, and its inclusion in our world should be highly encouraged.

Beyond that, Thinking Map cultists: the Venn Diagram has been here for a very long time.  Theree is no reason to think it will go away at ny time in the immediate future.

Hypochondria and My Acute Sense of Smell

I've alluded to Medical Student's Disease, AKA Second-Year Syndrome  or Intern Syndrome before in this blog. It refers to the state of hypochondria typically experienced by physicians-in-training in which we imagine we're suffering from about half of the illnesses we study. I've been at least as seriously afflicted with it as is the average medical school student.  I try to keep it to myself mostly because I have a vague idea of just how obnoxious it would be to others who would have to listen to my complaints. I have enough legitimate health issues that I don't need to compound my social pariah status by talking about the imaginary ones all the time.

When I was fifteen I had a somewhat serious kidney condition during which I underwent dialysis, and it took some time for my kidney function to return in full. If I develop an infection in my urinary tract, my kidney function is usually compromised. I thought I had the ability to determine when I had reduced kidney function by a smell I produced.  Any time I smelled the smell, I drank water by the gallon, stayed away from any medication that listed "impairment of kidney function" as a potential side effect or "do not use if you have kidney disease" as an even remote counter-indication, which is a whole lot of medications, and worried about who would give me a kidney when I inevitably needed one.

The problem came up again this weekend. I'm experiencing a minor health issue, but it's as minor as minor can be, and it has absolutely nothing to do with my kidneys. Still, the tell-tale smell was present. I finally mentioned it to the doctor who owns the home in which I have been living while in Canada. He sniffed me. "You smell like 'Tide,' " he told me, "the 'Spring- Reneweal with Febreze' scent. There's nothing wrong with your kidneys." He went to the laundry room and came back with a bottle of Tide, which he opened so that I could get a whiff of it. Yup. That's the smell that I thought indicated my kidneys were in their last throes of death. 

It looks as though I won't be requiring the services of a kidney donor in the immediate future.

The Responsibility to Protect Individuals From Themselves: Where Does It End?

In the mid-1980's, concern regarding emetine toxicity caused various members of the at-large medical community to call for restrictions on the availability of the over-the-counter medication ipecac.  Ipecac had been implicated in numerous instances of myopathy (a condition of muscle weakness) and, in particular, in various myocardial issues. The issue came to the forefront with the death of singer Karen Carpenter.  Ultimately the bid for restrictions on the availability of ipecac was rejected in the interest of the common good. The right of the public to have access to ipecac as a potential life-saving remedy* for cases of accidental ingestion of harmful substances outweighed any responsibility to protect individuals suffering from bulimia, anorexia, or any other disorder that might compel the person to misuse ipecac from his or her own self-harming behaviors. 

This was the correct decision. I would not have disagreed with a decision to limit the purchase of ipecac to adults. For that matter, it would probably be in society's best interests for the purchase of most medications to be restricted to adults.  The reasons such has not happened are purely logistical. If all cold remedies, laxatives, analgesics, and other non-prescription products were required to be stored behind pharmaceutical counters and distributed only by pharmacy employees as opposed to being kept on shelves from which consumers could help themselves, the sale of non-prescription medications would become far more labor-intensive than under the present model, resulting in increased cost, which would inevitably be passed on to consumers.   We've traded  safety for convenience and lower cost in this instance, with the reasonable rationale that almost any minor who was sufficiently motivated to obtain a supply of ExLax would probably find a way to get it with or without increased restrictions.

On the other hand, one would think that designating a substance as available by prescription only, or even further restricting the availability of the substance by specifying its status as one of greater than simple prescription-only status, requiring that prescribers provide only hard copies of prescriptions, maintain copies of written prescriptions, and otherwise closely monitor its distribution would offer sufficient protection against illicit distribution. Obviously someone with sufficient motivation to gain access to a substance would find ways around the most stringent conceivable safeguards. Acknowledgement of this, however, along with common sense, would seem to dictate that  the medical and pharmaceutical industries should provide reasonable safeguards against easy access to substances that should be controlled, but concede that anyone truly desperate may circumvent those safeguards.

An especially powerful opium-derived painkiller is currently on the market. Opana (oxymorphone)is an extended-release form of possibly the most potent analgesic substance currently available in the U.S. today. Its intended use is for severe ongoing pain.  It is most commonly prescribed for such conditions as various forms of late-stage cancer. 

The Food and Drug Administration would like to force the manufacturer of Opana, Endo Pharmaceuticals, to take Opana off the market because of the risks associated with misuse and overdose.  Some individuals will gain access to the medication and use it for recreational purposes. Drug abusers have been known to crush and inhale or inject the pill to circumvent the "extended release" properties of the medication and to acquire a more powerful euphoric state or high even than the drug in its intended form will produce. This does, regrettably, sometimes lead to tolerance, greater abuse, and eventual overdose.

Such is unfortunate. It's sad to watch a person's life be ruined or lost by a need for the high produced by a drug. On the other hand, it's even sadder to see a late-stage cancer patient suffer. If a drug would relieve or make more manageable a cancer patient's suffering, it should be available to that patient. The fact that someone else might misuse the drug does not lessen the right of a late-stage cancer patient or someone suffering similar pain to the most potent analgesic possible.  

Just as, in the 1980's, the rights of potential accidental poisoning victims to access to a possible life-saving remedy of ipecac were concluded to outweigh society's need to protect those with eating disorders against their own harmful impulses,  the rights of individuals  suffering from conditions producing severe ongoing pain should take precedence over society's need to protect drug abusers from their own forms of self-injurious behaviors. Keep Opana on the market. If necessary, limit its use to hospital and hospice settings.  Such restrictions will not entirely prevent misuse of Opana, but we as a society lack the ability, and therefore have limited responsibility,  to protect self-destructive individuals from self-destructing.

* ALWAYS consult a poison-control center before administering ipecac. 

Adios to The Great White North

I was supposed to have flown over the border from The Land of The Maple Leaf to The Land of The [the last I heard, anyway, they haven't officially taken our liberty from us yet]Free and the Home of the Brave, but a few complications have delayed my departure.  I will be leaving soon, but I have a strong feeling that I'll be back before long. There's something to be said for dual citizenship. For anyone who has the opportunity to obtain it, it's something I highly recommend.  It doesn't make anyone less of what they already were; it merely broadens opportunities.

Today I attempted a brief treadmill workout following a minor medical snafu. After just over 1.6 kilometers (very close to one mile), felt almost as though I might be dying, so I halted the workout. It's a sad day in my life when I cannot even make it past a mile on a treadmill at a speed of 6 kilometers per hour.  To use an expression I despise, nonetheless, it is what it is. If I must choose between life and completing a respectable workout, I choose life. That's not to be confused with being pro-life, which i guess I technically am. That's something the official "Pro-Lifers" don't actually get about those of us who are pro-choice: most of us actually value life and dislike abortion just about as much as they do. We just don't think our personal religious beliefs should dictate policy for everyone else. OK, I'll climb off my soapbox now. I'll have to climb carefully, or my return to the United Sector of Assholes (to which my native land is sometimes affectionately referred) may be delayed even further.

I wonder if the cat, Ashley Madison,  remembers who I am. If not, she'll hiss at me upon my return. She's not fond of strangers.  I am perfectly OK with it if Fluffy, the obnoxious chihuahua mix my brother frequently babysits because he needs the money, has forgotten who I am. If my brother is the one being paid to care for her, I would prefer that she not pester me with her petty needs.

I will miss Kathleen, the small white poodle who inhabits the house I've called home for the past couple of months.  I don't ordinarily take to small yippy dogs, but Kathleen and I bonded together over oodles of quality time.

Hasta la vista! My next post will likely be from the other side of the 49th parallel.

Doctors Doing What Most of Them DON'T Do Best

None of us wore scrubs or lab coats. Our tackiness does at least have limits.

Tonight I participated in a "Doctors in Concert"  benefit event.  It twisted a few noses out of joint that I, as a pre-MD, was invited to participate, as I'm somewhat obviously not the only musician in an entire medical school full of high achievers, many of whom are of the ethnicity to have been raised by bona fide tiger mothers.  For all I know, some of my peers here may possess far greater musical prowess than I.  I didn't invite myself into the lineup, however. That would have been done by the dean and by the director of the program in which I will study if I come back after next year.  Both of them wanted to give me greater exposure to the members of the committee who will rank applicants for matches. It's not as though playing piano or violin makes me a superior candidate, and it certainly does nothing to increase my aptitude as a potential surgeon. The idea, I was told, is that playing in this event puts me in front of the people who will decide my fate, should I choose to accept that fate if offered to me, in a very positive light. Furthermore, it causes me to appear more well-rounded (except that I haven't yet regained all of the weight I dropped when I was sick; I still have a figure resembling that of Olive Oyl, other than my feet, which are tiny, unlike those yachts at the base of Olive Oyl's ankles).

There was one legitimate reason for me to have participated in the soiree, which was that both piano accompanists were on call tonight. One or both of them could have been called in on emergencies. Both had practiced with those they were to accompany, but neither one is a stellar sight-reader. Accompanying a soloist for whom the other accompsnist had prepared would have been a stretch for either of them. Sight-reading is one of my strengths as a pianist. As it turned out, I was called into service as an accompanist on the final performance. A cellist was to play a movement from a Bach cello sonata. The accompaniment was not even challenging enough to cause me to break a sweat.

For my violin solo, I played an excerpt from Les Miserables  on a violin someone dragged out of storage. The strings must have been two years old, but I didn't want to put new strings on the violin, because new strings stretch and sometimes take a little while before they hold their tuning, particularly if they're Thomastik Dominant strings. I was OK with whatever happened as long as I didn't look like a fool or a rank amateur, and I didn't, apparently, though I didn't hear anyone suggest that I should contemplate quitting my day job, either. 

The emcee  made a bigger deal of my age than was necessary. ("If she looks young to you [The braces didn't do much for adding maturity to my overall appearance, nor did the sunburn that I got from water skiing and jet skiing on Monday without benefit of sunblock; a sunburn doesn't inherently cause a person to look younger. It's just that spending a day out on the water without benefit of sunblock and getting totally baked in the process the night before a concert performance is the sort of thing a young person would do.], it's because at twenty-two she IS young. She will earn her M.D. next year at the age of twenty-three, which is younger than the average age of a first-year medical student.") If you remember the mean, median, and mode stuff from fifth and sixth-grade math, twenty-three [or maybe twenty-four]  is probably the mode age, or the single age that occurs most frequently, among first-year students at most medical schools. It's just that several slightly older and a few much older students skew the statistics. The point of the whole affair was to raise money, and the emcee probably hoped the benefactors might be impressed enough by my relative youth to contribute a few extra dollars beyond the price of admission.

Tomorrow I need to make contact with a few patients, but I'm otherwise free. I've mailed the important stuff home already.   Jeff, the doctor who owns the place where I'm staying, told me to throw my last few days' clothing and toiletries in a box he gave me.  He'll have his office staff  express mail it to me next week.      

I have a date tomorrow (technically today by now) night.  I'm going home on Friday, though I still do not have my flight itinerary. I'm not stressing out over it.  I will get home when I get home. (That's either redundant or exceedingly obvious.)

And, in conclusion, as they say in the wee hours out here in the English-speaking portion of The Great White North, good night.

   I do not own this video. I sincerely hope that the
person who does own it will graciously allow it to
remain here at least briefly for my readers' enjoyment.
It's my favorite video of a musical performance by doctors
except that, in this case, the "doctors" are not actual doctors but, rather, men who portray doctors on TV.

The Battle Hymn of the Irish Tiger Mother

Amy Chua and my mom were, despite appearances and birth date discrepancies, separated at birth.

I won't say this post is utterly pointless, as I have two main topics I wish to address here. They are, however, vapid points at best. Nevertheless. it's late and I'm still awake, which is the perfect storm in terms of creating posts of a more vapid nature than is usual even from me.

Punto Numero Uno of this post is that DNA analyses can lie or can err. I read The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. I don't care if ancestry.com or 23DNA or whoever processed my mom's DNA  indicated that my mother is 68% Irish, 20% from Great Britain, 10% Scandinavian, and 2% Caucasus.  Somewhere in her DNA, blood, and everything that might make her who she is lies a whopping amount of Chinese. If you haven't read the book, you don't exactly get what I'm talking about. If you have read it, my mother is more like Amy Chua than any Chinese mother I know, and I know more than a few.

Punto [it's not a swear word, by the way; puta is the swear word; punto merely means point)]  Numero Dos of this post is that there is a reason I cannot sleep well in an over-sized bed. I'm hyperactive by nature, and often I'm restless when I retire to bed even though I'm tired. If I'm in the above-the-garage apartment in the queen-sized bed, I involuntarily deal with my excess energy by rolling from one side of the bed to the other and back until I eventually conk out mid-cycle. There's sufficient room for me to comfortably rotate three-hundred-sixty degrees laterally on each roll. If I'm in a twin-sized bed, the holy-roller maneuver isn't an option. I just move my legs a bit until I fall asleep, which usually happens much more quickly, and also doesn't cause anyone who happens to be in the garage either to fear that there's an earthquake or to wonder if someone is having wild sex in the above-the-garage apartment. I should only be so lucky.

Good night, anyone who is unlucky enough to still be awake.

The Canadian Rockies

I'm back on level ground after spending the past few days in the Canadian Rockies. I traveled with three families including the family at whose home I reside while here in Canada. One of the doctors in our party has a time share. i was given a private room with a private bath in exchange for about four hours of babysitting for one of the couples traveling with us who has a three-month-old infant girl. In truth, I would have paid for the privilege of playing with their baby for the time she was in my care. They really didn't have to comp my room.

We're pretty far north and at a decent altitude, so it wasn't exactly balmy, but I had suitable attire for the weather. With the latitude comes somewhat late dawn and early dusk prior to the summer solstice even after the vernal equinox. We were warned about grizzly sightings. No one in our party was fortunate (?) enough to see a grizzly or even a black bear. I didn't venture far enough into the woods to have much of a chance of sighting Ursus arctos horribilis or whatever his scientific name is. A family staying near us in the lodge started a hike a bit earlier than was prudent one morning and came face to face with a cougar that reportedly looked something like the one pictured here. There were five hikers and three of the five quite tall; the mountain lion gave them a second look but decided they weren't worth the risk. A teenage girl in the party had a severe asthma attack immediately after the cougar retreated. She didn't have an inhaler with her. They rushed her back to semi-civilization, where a rescue inhaler was provided.  As a word of caution, rescue inhalers are handy devices to carry while hiking if one suffers from even occasional asthma.

It was a nice diversion and a nice long weekend.  Memorial Day isn't celebrated in Canada, but Victoria Day was celebrated last Monday. I worked that day, so I was comped today. The other hospital and medical school personnel with me are essentially high enough on the food chain that they may choose their days off.

I will soon be leaving the Great White North, which isn't so white as when I arrived here.  I have limited power at best to foretell future events, but I may return in the not-too-distant future if circumstances work out in such a way as to permit it.

Alaska Pride: Online Vigilantes Mob Anchorage Mom Jessica Beagle...

<<Let us leave judgment unto those to whom it's appointed.>>

How typically Mormon. God did not or does not speak in the English of King James yet Mormons must pretend that he did and must carry on the tradition.  " . . . Leave the judgment unto those . . ."   Give me a freaking break! Can't you just say "leave the judgment to those" and let go of the pretentiousness?

A New Scandal, Starring . . . ME!

I moved to the place in which I currently reside at a time that could be described, unbeknownst to me,  as tumultuous to the others living on the premises. I had assumed the people living in the large house attached to the garage apartment I had leased to be a typically happy-most-of-the-time-though-not always-because-that-would-be-creepy, but mostly just a routine-to-the-point-of-being-boring family, sort of like the one in which I grew up.  Appearances, however, especially those of the initial, in-passing variety, can be quite misleading. 

It was in a most abrupt way that I found out just how misled I had been by my own initial and rather naïve assumptions about the family whose adjoining apartment I was scheduled to lease through the duration of my visiting clerkship.  I returned to the apartment one Thursday [at least I think it was Thursday; the days blur together and become indistinguishable from one another after having spent several consecutive unscheduled twenty-four hour blocks on duty] willing myself up the inside staircase [for which I tacitly thank the architect of the building each night or morning I must ascend or descend those stairs when the temperature is below zero degrees Celsius; the Gods who prevent accidents do not look kindly on me], wanting only to decontaminate myself briefly in a hot shower just enough that I wouldn't be carrying MRSA or whatever other nasty hospital pathogens might have adhered to my skin into my pristine bed, when I hear a roar coming from the direction of that very bed.
The creature from which the guttural sounds emanated appeared as though MRSA was probably the very least of his issues. I screamed, reached for my phone, backed out of the apartment , and dialed 911.

By this time, the my landlady appeared, demanding to know what I was doing there. "I leased this apartment,' I shrieked at her. "I fumbled through a drawer under a built-in desk near the apartment's entryway.  I found the papers for which I was looking and held them up to her. "This is my copy of the lease, signed by both me and you!"

"Things have changed since then, " she explained, "My nephew now needs the apartment," she explained.

At this point, law enforcement appeared, their sirens destroying the pre-dawn tranquility of the normally placid upscale residential development, with the revolving police lighting turning the dusting of snow on the lawns into various hues of red, blue, and purple. The officer took a look at the lease I handed him, then turned to my landlady.  "A lease is a contract, you know, " he told her. "Unless there's something in it specifying that the terms are null and void if your nephew or any other relative shows up, she has a right to assume that her apartment will be vacant and that her bed will be empty whenever she shows up."

"But it's my NEPHEW, you see, and my husband -er-boyfriend [this was my first clue that the man and lady of the house were living there without any sanction from God or the government of Canada] will not allow my nephew to sleep in our actual home because of something that happened when he spent another night here. It's cold out there, as you can clearly see. I couldn't leave my nephew to brave this weather on his own."

One of the officers responded with, "But you could leave this young lady, who is probably half his size and ten years younger than he is,  out there to brave the cold weather on her own. . ."

The land lady smiled. "You understand!"

The officers both frowned. "No, we really don't," one of them responded.

"Are you the legal owner of this home?" one of the officers asked my landlady.

"For all purposes," she answered.

"But are you the LEGAL owner," the officer pursued.

"No," she conceded.

The officer turned to me. "Do you have the resources to get a decent hotel room for the next few days?" he asked me. I nodded affirmatively. "I suggest that you do that while this situation gets straightened out. I cannot promise you this, but my department will do what it can to see that you are reimbursed for you hotel expenses." Then he asked, "Do you have a way of contacting the legal homeowner, ideally as soon as possible?" I shared with them that he was a professor at the medical school at which I was serving a guest clerkship, and that I could catch him during his office hours during the day after getting some rest. The officer encouraged me to do so as soon as was practical, and gave me two copies of his card, one for my own use and one to share with the legal homeowner.

I checked into a cushy hotel for sleep, then dragged myself off to the medical school campus for what I expected would be an ugly confrontation. Instead, the landlord was, if anything, more appalled that I had been by what had transpired. He told me that he and the lady of the house were splitting. She would be leaving, as it had been  his house for nearly twenty years. The woman merely moved in with him. The landlord insisted upon paying my full hotel bill, which would be for three nights. He also suggested that I would want to order new bedding rather than relying on the cleaning process to rid the bedding of the intruder's germs. He said he would have the mattress and sofa steam-cleaned, and that everything would be spotless when I returned on Sunday. I was skeptical of his offers of generosity, but when I checked out of my hotel room late on Sunday, I found that everything had been paid in full, and an envelope was handed to me. When I opened it, I found that I had been reimbursed for tips to the maids and servers.  New bedding and towels  - similar in color and style but of higher quality that what I had originally purchased, was in place where the old stuff had been.

I later learned that the landlord had lost his wife to pancreatic cancer about ten years earlier. The three kids -- two who were away at college and one who still lived at home -- were the product of him and his late wife. The woman had a daughter who lived in Australia somewhere, but had not visited in the two years the doctor and his housemate -- also a doctor -- had been together.

The doctor's two older children ( a 22-year-old daughter and a 24-year-old son) returned home the weekend following their father's girlfriend's departure. Their time home was mostly family time, from which I attempted to keep a discreet distance.  Their father had a hospital-related social obligation on Saturday night, however, and the three children took advantage of their father's absence to throw a "Ding Dong! The Witch Is Gone!" celebration, to which I was invited. It was a relatively quiet affair as drunken revelries go, but it was clear from all three of them that there was no sadness in them in connection with the quasi-stepmother's departure.  I had no idea. Everyone was so civil that I had no clue they weren't a biological family, much less a blended-without-the-sanctity-of-marriage family.

I stayed in my apartment, with occasional visits for meals or to play their Steinway grand piano, until I worked far too many consecutive hours and developed staphylococcal pneumonia, which led to a pneumothorax, at which time, following my release from the hospital, I was moved into the main part of their house. I was on my way back to the apartment when the father and seventeen-year-old son came down with massive cases of food-borne illness following ingestion of Thai food. The kid's illness was significantly worse than was his father's. Following that, I again exceeded allowable work hours by 100%, which resulted in my pneumothorax recurring. It was easier for the nurses hired to care for us to accomplish what they needed to do if I was in the main house.

Idle minds sometimes cannot handle the idea that a twenty-two--year-oold medical school student is sleeping in a separate bedroom in a house with a forty-six-year-old medical professor and his seventeen-year-old son.  It cannot be simply because medical care is facilitated if the sick people are all in one place.  And even if such were not the reason for all three remaining under one roof, whatever the reason were, it would clearly have to involve the female having sex with at least one of the males, and more likely, with both of them. Logically, as it would be more efficient for it to happen in such a manner, the three have their sexual frolics at the same time. Wouldn't it make sense?

The most interesting aspect to these rumors, to me anyway, and of I only recently became aware, is that it is not the hospital community spreading the information back and forth, but the mothers of students and the staff of a neighborhood elementary school. Our immediate neighbors seem not to be involved in this spread of misinformation (it's misinformation at this point, anyway; who knows what the future holds?), though we cannot know that for certain. It seems that those who are most concerned live blocks away from us.

I'm not certain why adults are so taken with what others who are of age in this matter (the age of consent in Canada is seventeen) are doing or are not doing with their private lives. They'll get an eye-full tomorrow, however, as the local high school's prom happens then. Evan, the seventeen-year-old son of the doctor from whom I am renting, was unceremoniously dumped by his prom date less than two weeks ago when a more prestigious offer came along. Evan's dad suggested that the two of us could make a date of it. I'm all for ensuring that the little hussy who dumped Evan should see him having a good time at his prom, so I said yes to the proposition. I'm not looking my very best at the moment, but I look at least as good as most of the dweeby high school seniors. I can hold my own.

But can the town biddies hold their tongues? My guess is no, they cannot.

Names are sometimes changed to protect the innocent . . . but not always.

I go to reasonable though not extreme lengths to preserve my anonymity in this blog. i don't advertise to supervisors, professors, or other medical school personnel that I blog here, but I know I cannot safely assume that none of them are aware of this blog or of my connection to it.  Many names of acquaintances, past or present, I change, often only slightly.  Where family is concerned, other than omitting surnames, I usually don't disguise much. Most of the first names are real. My number one defense in all of this is that the truth will set anyone free who didn't commit an offense for which one can be incarcerated. It's not libel if it's true. The bottom line is that I probably have more on all of the relatives than any of them have on me. If they really wanted to out me, I suppose they could, but I would come out of the encounter smelling far rosier than the outing relative would. Still, only the family and very close friends have any idea who I'm talking about when I write about a relative.

When I write about people unrelated to me from my past, the people sometimes have professional connections to my parents. To keep my parents happy when writing about such people, I do change names and identifying details. Acquaintances of my parents will never find themselves in my blog, or find my blog, period, by googling their own names. The names I substitute for their actual names are usually similar both in ethnic origin and overall sound. The people I will discuss momentarily, will, likewise, be represented by a different surname than is the one they use legally. I will, however, use the actual first names of the twin sons from the family featured in this late-night edition of my blog. Even using my widest imagination, I could never invent any names so bizarre as were the ones actually thought of  and used by the parents.

In the community in which my family resided before our most recent move lived (and still lives) a urologist, his registered dietitian wife, and their twin sons who were maybe three years younger than my brother and I  but at least four years behind us in school. The urologist, who shall be known here as Dr. Warnock, was a legend among the medical community for his wild hair, his unkempt beard, and his suspenders, which featured Sponge Bob and Patrick from the Sponge Bob Square Pants animated series.  I don't know if the man owned just one pair of suspenders and wore them daily, whether to work, to church, or to mow his lawn during the roughly three times each year that the family lawn was mowed (neighbor complained that the Warnock home looked as though it was inhabited by the Addams Family of the 1960's TV series), or if he owned several identical sets of suspenders. I don't suppose it really matters. 

The Warnock family attended a Missouri Synod Lutheran congregation in the community in which we all lived back then. (I have no idea if the  Warnocks still attend that church or any church.) Dr. Warnock's beard came into play in regard to his church participation because his Lutheran congregation had traditionally followed the practice of taking communion from a communal cup. Many church members were put off to some degree by having to drink wine or grape juice or whatever it was they used to represent the blood of our Lord and Savior that had been contaminated by bits of Dr. Warnock's breakfast or perhaps even dinner the night before that was embedded in his beard until it washed away into the communal cup. If my memory serves me correctly, the congregation very nearly divided over the issue. In the end, a compromise was reached in which the wine or grape juice would be served both in the communal cup and in individual cups. The compromise did not achieve total harmony, as among those who believed the communal cup to be Jesus' way of serving or partaking of communion was Dr. Warnock, and many of the other religiously like-minded parishioners were put off by Dr. Warnock's weekly tainting of the communal cup. This, however, was mostly a matter of curiosity for my family. We weren't Lutherans, and it didn't impact us in any way. The Catholics, of which my family considered and still to some degree consider ourselves a part, solve that particular quandary by having just the priest partake of the wine. He can have either the cleanest or the nastiest beard in the hemisphere or no facial hair at all, but he contaminates only his own drinking supply. Everyone else goes out and buys their own wine and consumes it in whatever sanitary or unsanitary fashion they so choose. This is, I would have to guess, the way God would have it. I say this not just because I'm Catholic but because it makes perfect sense. It's bad enough for the parishioners to support the priest's alcohol habit. Why should the membership pay for everyone else's wine addiction as well?

As urology practices go, Dr. Warnock's was not the busiest one in the area. Sponge Bob suspenders might have offered an advantage in terms of promoting rapport with patients had Dr. Warnock been a pediatrician. With a clientele consisting primarily (though not exclusively) adult males, however,  the idea of having one's intimate body parts probed by a creature who bore more than a passing resemblance to Charles Manson and who proclaimed his individuality by constantly wearing the Sponge Bob suspenders was not highly conducive to the development of a thriving urology practice. Once, at one of the few sleep-over birthday parties I was allowed by my parents to attend, the group of ninth-grade party-goers of which I was a part chose, among other houses, the home of the Warnocks for a game of door-bell-ditch. I  know from personally having rung his doorbell and having witnessed it as he made his way through the dim lighting of the house in the wee hours, that Dr. Warnock wore the suspenders [and nothing else] to bed, though it is an image that will permanently scar my mind. I didn't dare tell my parents why I woke up screaming in the middle of almost every night for the next three weeks.  After all these years, I cannot for the life of me figure out how Dr. Warnock kept the suspenders on his body with no other clothing onto which to attach them. Perhaps he hooked them to something on his body.  Eeewwww!  Just thinking about it nine years later gives my brain a serious case of the creepy crawlies.

Doctor Warnock's wife's single largest source of notoriety or eccentricity -- independent of the simple notoriety associated with being conjugally joined with a man who possessed unkempt hair, a particle-laden beard, and constantly wore Sponge Bob suspenders, was the manner in which she insisted upon being addressed.  I'm not sure even her sister-in-law, who lived across the street from her, was permitted to call her by her first name of Marlene. Neither, though, would a simple "Mrs. Warnock" suffice. Her sister-in-law was also "Mrs. Warnock," but her sister-in-law was married to an attorney, and Dr. Warnock's wife had no desire for there to be any confusion as to which woman was married to whom. Dr. Warnock's wife insisted upon being addressed b everyone in our community as Mrs. Dr. Warnoff.

Mrs. Dr. Warnock had been a registered dietician with the local hospital  until she reached roughly the third month of her pregnancy with her twin boys. It was at that point that she found she could no longer stand, upright or otherwise, without physically supporting with her hands the weight of her twins in utero. This is what was told to me, anyway. I haven't the foggiest notion as to what would have happened to the twins or to Mrs. Dr. Warnock or to her uterus or abdomen had she simply let go. Would the twins have fallen to the floor, stretching the skin of Mrs. Dr. Warnock's abdomen as the babies made their descent? Would the twins have made their descent the more conventional way and have been born very, very early? Would Mrs. Dr. Warnock have fallen forward with the weight of the babies, although if such would have been the case, it's hard to fathom how supporting the twins' weight would have kept that from happening?

Mrs. Dr. Warnock wore some sort of a brace that helped to support the weight of her twins for a brief time, though it didn't stop her from constantly carrying her midsection with her hands as though she were a typical Walmart shopper who had stowed away roughly thirty cans of sardines inside the front of her top or dress in order to better take advantage of the ultimate discount. By the fourth month of her pregnancy, whether due to medical necessity or because the obstetrician could no longer bear the look of Mrs. Dr. Warnock staggering into the office each month manually propping up her intestines, excess skin, babies, placentae, and anything else that might have been in there, Dr. April Ketterman put Mrs. Warnock on bedrest. She was allowed to get up as needed to take care of personal business, and she was required to shower daily, as what was growing on the inside of Mrs. Warnock was sufficient concern to Dr. Ketterman without compounding the problem by creating nests of flora and fauna in various external crevices. 

The twins grew to almost-but-not-quite record proportions before Dr. Ketterman used subterfuge to schedule the C-section against the wishes of Dr. and Mrs. Warnock. Dr. Ketterman had Mrs. Warnock check into the hospital for an ultrasound, noted that there was insufficient amniotic fluid, and announced, "VOILA! There happens to be a surgical suite, complete with staff, available at this very minute. What a coincidence!" This took place in late July of 1997.

Mrs. Dr. Warnock in particular was insistent that the babies could not have been conceived until February at the very earliest, as the wedding hadn't taken place until February 22.  Mother nature was indicating something entirely different, though, as weddings and conceptions do not necessarily occur in all cases in that order. Furthermore, twins usually don't go the full distance of forty weeks. If Dr. Ketterman didn't get those twin caribou out ASAP, there wasn't going to be an operating table to be found that was sturdy enough to support the weight of all three of them. One epidural, which worked on only one side of Mrs. Warnock's body, one attempted spinal (which couldn't be completed because Mrs. Warnock, even though she was feeling no contractions, couldn't hold her body still enough for the anesthesiologist to insert the needle into the proper location, which may also have been part of the problem with the epidural as well), and one whopping dose of milk of amnesia later, the twins joined the world as independent beings -- sort of.

Though ultrasound examination had shown no hint of any issue of the sort, the initial fear of the obstetrician and assisting surgeon upon first seeing the twins was that  they were conjoined at the head, in a condition known in less  culturally sensitive times as "Siamese twins," correctable -- if at all -- only by major surgery. Upon further inspection, however, Dr. Ketterman discovered that Twin #1 had Twin #2 in an unusually binding headlock. She concluded after separating the two  that major surgery might have been simpler than prying the two  warring neonates apart.  Since then, parents and teachers have devoted considerable time to prying the two from gnarly headlocks and prying them off other unsuspecting children. At a summer recreation program, I was once ambushed by one of the twins -- I certainly couldn't tell you which one it was; the truth of the matter was most likely that the twins couldn't tell themselves apart --  because I refused to hand over my Capri Sun pouch when the twin thug demanded it.  I wasn't especially fond of Capri Sun, but the water fountains weren't working, and it was a 105-degree day. It took three of the teen employees nearly five minutes to free me from the grasp of the twin thug.

My parents still aren't certain which parent was responsible for the names given to the Warnock twins, as my parents didn't live in the community at the time the twins were born. After the fact, both parents were so proud of the creations with which the twins were saddled that they both took credit. I would have hid my head in shame when asked and might possibly have blamed the twin indiscretion on adverse reaction to anesthesia or even on a bad acid trip rather than to admit that I ever, in a state of lucidity, thought it was a good idea to give a pair of pet gophers such ludicrous names, much less my children, but there is no accounting for taste, particularly when it comes to naming one's offspring.

I shit you not: Dr. and Mrs. Warnock  named their twin sons Dodd and Todd. I personally have an issue with rhyming names, which are, in my opinion, confusing and cutesy to the point of sickeningness at best, and wholly obnoxious at worst. Todd by itself is a normal enough name, I suppose, although a parent needs to try to think of the possible ways children on a playground will manipulate a name to make fun of the unlucky child who has the name. Todd  unfortunately rhymes with odd, which is a factoid that will not be lost on Todd's classmates. (A children's book that would have been in print when Dodd and Todd were born is entitled Even Steven and Odd Todd.) Dodd, too, in addition to rhyming with Todd, rhymes with odd. But while Todd is, for the most part, a normal name, Dodd is not. Who in his or her right mind would stick a kid with Dodd for a first name whether the kid had a twin with the rhyming name of Todd or not? Purely and simply, the name sucks.

For starters, we have Odd Todd and Odd Dodd, who look so very much alike that they cannot even tell themselves apart.  In addition to resembling one another, Todd and Dodd bear a remarkable resemblance to Disney's version of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum from Alice in Wonderland. The Warnock twins' resemblance to the Disney pair was so obvious, so pronounced, and so well-known throughout the area that when The Enchanted Theatre, a regional community theatre organization devoted to putting on children's productions, chose Alice in Wonderland for its spring production one year, a representative of the organization called Mrs. Dr. Warner to invite the twins to be a part of the production.  Mrs. Dr. Warner lacked the knowledge of the reason her sons came to the minds of the production staff when casting the roles of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.  Mrs. Dr. Warnock was so proud that her twins had been sought for the roles that she had purchased tickets for the boys'  extended family members within a week of initially having been contacted by the theatre company.  Her purchase was premature (just like she claimed her babies' births were); after the second of two initial consecutive rehearsals attended by Dodd and Todd ended in brawls that would have made The Undertaker or Pentagon Jr. proud, complete with a broken clavicle, a broken wrist, a dislocated elbow, a bloody nose,  and a very sore groin, (none suffered by the twins but all reportedly inflicted by them by them), the production staff held an emergency meeting at which it was decided that authenticity in the casting of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum would have to be secondary to civility; additionally, Dodd, and Todd were incapable of repeating, much less independently reciting, the most basic of lines. Dodd and Todd were replaced. Mrs. Dr. Warnock demanded a refund on the price of the nearly fifty tickets she had purchased, but the president of the Enchanted Playhouse told her that the money she paid for tickets would be needed to offset the rise in the theatre's insurance premiums.

My dad was on call for one of his monthly E.R. stints one Sunday afternoon when Dodd was brought in by ambulance after somehow falling on the side of a bicycle and impaling his abdomen on the pedal. An injury in which a person is impaled is never a good thing, but in this particular case, no vital organs were affected. skin and what little muscle was there absorbed the impact.  In initially attempting to assess the degree of shock present in the child, my dad asked the boy his name. "I'm either Dodd Warnock or Todd Warnock," the kid answered. "I think I'm Dodd. No, wait, I think maybe I'm Todd." 

My dad was concerned that both the blood loss and the shock were greater than what had been estimated. He suggested that supplies for transfusion be made available in the event that they were needed quickly. Then The kid's blood pressure was taken. It was 140/90, which is somewhat high, but appropriate fir a patient who is in pain. The reading would not have been indicative of major blood loss. It was then that one of the nurses, who had a daughter in one of the boys' classes and who volunteered weekly in her daughter's class, clued my dad in. "He's not in shock. That's not what caused him not to know his name. He really doesn't know whether he's Dodd or Todd. This kid's no rocket scientist."

My parents never intentionally socialized with Dr. and Mrs. Dr. Warnock but sometimes found themselves at the same hospital-related social functions. My dad disliked functions of those sorts, or at least that's the excuse he gives, and he needs to imbibe freely in order to make it through them. Consumption of alcohol reduces what little filter my dad has in the first place. If, at any of those functions, one of the Warnocks ended up anywhere near my dad, he would start in on the topic of what would possess someone to name their twins Dodd and Todd. "Dodd isn't evn an actual name," my dad would opine. Sometimes he would add, "Why didn't you name the other one God. God and Todd Warnock. Maybe it would be a bit blasphemous, but it's closer to a real name than Dodd is.Or you could spell Todd T-o-d. Or you could spell God G-o-d-d.  Or you could just not worry about matching the spellings. Or, better still, you could not even rhyme the names. You could have named them something like Eric and David. Then maybe they wouldn't be the dysfunctional little blobs that they're turning out to be." My mom would inevitably appear and pull my father away before violence erupted.

It's probably good that my parents moved away from that community when they did. Dr. Warnock may have more in common with Charles Manson than just the crazed appearance.