Urged by Cowguy and Skyler's Dad I showered SEVERAL HOURS before I had to today so that I could make this video Thanksgiving card for y'all that I woke up planning this morning.
Let's be honest with ourselves for a second and admit that 75-90% of the reason we blog is for affirmation. We love comments. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If a blogger writes a post and no one comments on it, does he become suicidal?
I was in the hallway of the gym last night between classes, watching the itty bitties splash around in the pool in the name of learning to swim (it's ovary-tuggingly adorable, like looking at newborns in a hospital), when I overheard a woman telling her friend that she hadn't attended the spin class because when she tried it last week it was too hard. It made me think about the first time I tried it and how bowlegged and noodly and dehydrated I was when it was over. I understood.
Last night's dinner club host approached me almost as soon as I arrived, leaned in conspiratorially, and said, "You know how sometimes you see or hear a phrase and after that you can't get it out of your head?"
I feel only slightly guilty for stealing this from Real Live Lesbian today (I'm not even sure she knows I exist and read her) but the reality is that she stole it from someone else and it was actually written by someone else entirely. All this is to say that I was moved by the author's words and I want to share them.
By Bob Greene, CNN Contributor
Editor's Note: CNN Contributor Bob Greene is a bestselling author whose new book is "Late Edition: A Love Story."
(CNN) -- The woman's Halloween costume featured a Third Reich motif.
This was last weekend in a sprawling bar-and-restaurant complex near U.S. 41 on the west coast of Florida. I had made the miscalculation of stopping by in pursuit of a quiet cheeseburger, not realizing that adults in trick-or-treat costumes were making the rounds on this sultry evening.
The woman (or the costume shop from where she had purchased her uniform) at least had the good sense to omit the actual swastikas, but that was the only bit of subtlety. The Heinrich Himmler high-fronted military cap, the boots, the swagger stick she kept slapping against her palm. . .some of the customers, playing along, did little comic goose steps as they passed her.
I looked up from my newspaper and tried to surmise if anyone was going to be offended enough by this odious display to leave. She beat them to it; she and her friends made a few quick passes through the aisles of the place, then returned to the night, ready to continue their revelry elsewhere.
Halloween in the United States is an increasingly odd holiday, no longer child's play, but on this evening I was thinking about another holiday, this one official, that is coming up this week: Veterans Day.
And, having unexpectedly encountered the woman in her getup, I found myself wondering what, six and seven decades ago, they would have made of it: what the 16 million Americans who served in the armed forces during World War II, who were sent across the ocean to defeat a brutal enemy, would have thought about this scene.
They're old men now, the soldiers who remain; many are frail and in ill health. It can be easy for us to forget that, when they were uprooted from their daily lives in the 1940s, no one knew what the history books would eventually say. No one knew the outcome. They were little more than kids, many of them; they were in effect told by our country:
Are you in school? You'll have to leave it. Have a new wife? You'll have to say goodbye to her. Working at a job you like? Tell your boss that you have to quit.
We need you to go halfway across the world, because we need you to save the world.
And they did it. Some 292,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines were killed in battle during World War II; another 114,000 died from noncombat causes. Some 671,000 U.S. troops were injured, many of them grievously.
The uniforms they put on were not Halloween getups; neither were the uniforms of the enemies they confronted across the oceans. On their way to fight the war, it's a pretty fair guess that they were scared and lonely. They understood that there was no guarantee they would ever be coming home.
Each November we are asked to pause and honor them, which is, or should be, an honor in itself. After the events of the last week at Fort Hood in Texas, with their reminder of the sacrifices that the men and women of the military make for us, Veterans Day will hold special meaning this year.
This November also marks the second anniversary of the death, at age 92, of my friend Paul Tibbets, who I got to know extraordinarily well during the last years of his life. I'd like to say a few words about him here.
At the age of 29, out of all the men and women in the U.S. military, he was selected for a task of almost unfathomable importance. He was told to recruit, organize, supervise and command a group of soldiers and airmen who were to train in absolute secrecy. If he succeeded, he was told, then the war could be won.
Someone had started a terrible fight; he was asked to finish it.
He did. He got his unit ready. And on an August day in 1945, he flew a B-29 he had named for his mother, Enola Gay, to Japan, where he and his crew dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It was the single most violent act in the history of mankind, and he carried it out without flinching because he believed, in the deepest part of his heart, one thing above all others:
He could end the long war. He could stop the killing. All of the American soldiers who were on their way to the shores of Japan for a land invasion could turn around and go home, could raise families, could live again in a world at peace.
He understood the controversy, and the anger, with which his mission would be received by some. He understood that there were people who would forever hate him. He and I talked about it many times before he died. After the war, he told me, President Harry Truman asked him if people were saying unpleasant things to him because of the bomb. Paul Tibbets told the president that, yes, some people indeed were.
And Truman said:
"You tell them that if they have anything to say, they should call me. I'm the one who sent you."
So it's November again. Veterans Day is upon us.
There is a quotation variously attributed to Winston Churchill or George Orwell. Regardless of our individual politics, regardless of our beliefs about the rightness or wrongness of a particular war, the words are worth reflecting upon anew this week:
"We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."
And so, to all who have served us, then, now, and in the future, a word of somber thanks, from those of us here at home.
Alright, first things first: I am not dying (yet). I do not have a brain tumor or lymphoma. What I have, according to the experts, is a staph infection. On my head. When I asked how in the holy hell this happens I was told that something as simple as a tiny cut or a wonky hair follicle can cause it. I’ve decided I’m going to tell anyone who asks that I got it from a swirly Whiskeymarie gave me in scary bathroom in March. Implausible? SURE! But certainly more entertaining than an ingrown hair.
While I was all jokey-jokey about it yesterday (What? Me? Using humor as a defense mechanism? Inconceivable!), I was pretty scared when I left for the doctor’s office. Given that the majority of your comments on yesterday’s post were adamant that I get my ass to a doctor, STAT, I think you were, too. (I love you for this, by the way. Special thanks to the anonymous spammer who recommended guaranteed cheap Viagra from India. Very helpful, spammer, very helpful indeed.)
Now, even though I make melodramatic jokes on this blog and within my circle of friends, I do not make stupid-ass jokes when interacting with professional people who don’t know and understand me. This is to say that I did not made jokes at the doctor’s office about brain tumors and aneurysms. So when my doctor took my hand and asked me to look him in the eye during the exam? Well, my terror level immediately elevated to RED! And then, very seriously, he said to me, “Lymphoma isn’t painful; staph is. I’m pretty sure this is staph.”
Have I mentioned before that my primary care doctor is odd? He’s a tiny Pentecostal Japanese man and, as if that weren't an odd enough combination, he is also easily embarrassed. The first time I saw him he did a complete physical which, of course, involved the dreaded backless paper gown. Outside the ob/gyn or proctologist, you are usually instructed to leave your unders on. But I don’t wear unders. During that first exam he repeatedly tried to tuck the paper gown into the top of my non-existent unders. I finally had to explain that there were no unders there for the tucking which made his face immediately turn red. I laughed and told him it was no big deal and didn’t bother me but it was clear that it bothered him. My first clue was his obvious discomfort and the fact that he said it did.
Anyways, after he was done scaring the crap out of me yesterday, he sent me to the lab for more tests. He wants to check my antibodies and rule out mono since I’ve been sick so many times already this fall. Have I told you I HATE needles? I hate needles. And this will make the second time I’ve been in the lab to have blood drawn in like a month. The lab tech remembered me from the last time. She remembered me suggesting the hospital house monkeys in the yard outside the lab's windows so patients would have something funny to look at while they are being stabbed and having their life-blood sucked out of them, one small vial at a time. (Okay, maybe I DO make stupid-ass jokes with professional people who don’t know me. Shut it.)
The bottom line of all this is that I am going to live another day. Thanks so much for your concern and offers of assistance. Son of A Thomas even offered to come over and play doctor. Now that I think about it, there is one particulary troublesome lab test my doctor requested that I haven’t yet completed . . .
SOAT? Still want to come over and help? I'll take care of "production" if you'll handle collection and packaging.
One last thing . . . you’re all a crass bunch of sick mother effers for calling dibs on my stuff and requesting an open casket so you can play grabsies with my corpse. I love you.
