Twenty years ago, I received the lifetime ban from baseball. Yeah, that’s right. Banned. As in, me and Pete Rose. So, what was my heinous crime? I complained. A lot.

We went to a Brewers game in April. Nice, warm, sunny day. Tiny little jackets. So far, so good. But, by the time we left the stadium, it was windy, raining torrents, and even snowing a bit. (Come to think of it, it probably wasn’t April. It was probably the end of June. Because, this is Wisconsin, after all.)

I felt like a Popsicle. And the walk back to the car was blocks long. So, my husband abandoned me at a little shelter — a roof with nothing on the sides to keep the wind and snow away from my hypothermiated body. Some shelter.

He went on with our daughter to get the car. “I’ll be right back,” he promised.

I continued to moan and groan about being cold. Even the other people in the shelter were annoyed with me. Too bad. I wasn’t feelin’ their pain. I was feelin’ mine.

“I’ll be right back” was an absolute falsehood. Paul hadn’t thought about the traffic jam getting out of that place. It was another twenty minutes or more of Popsicling before he arrived. Make that an hour and twenty minutes. At least, it seemed like it.

By this time, there wasn’t much feeling left. I kept complaining of my pain on autoplay anyway, while I thought about how many fingers and toes I was likely to lose from this experience. Maybe my nose and ears, too.

Everybody else left the shelter, ostensibly to catch rides, but more likely to get away from The Whiner.

Finally, our car showed up. By this time, Paul and the daughter were cozy-warm and highly unsympathetic. (They didn’t have to be concerned about losing their digits or other appendages.) They scoffed at my wimpiness. I complained louder, due to their lack of empathy.

And that’s when Paul’s patience blew a hole in the car roof. He decreed the lifelong ban from baseball, and he mostly kept it. I might have appealed to the baseball commissioner without success. (Men always stick together.)

I think I sneaked into a Timber Rattlers game once. Once. In August or something. Because that’s the only time one might be safe from snowflakes and hypothermia in Wisconsin.

“Hello, Ornesta! Haven’t heard from you in months! I’ve been worried.”

“The telephone lines froze solid … just now getting them thawed out.”

“Um, it’s May …”

“Like I said — just getting ’em thawed.”

“Well, tell me about life in the north woods.”

“It’s been a survival challenge, let me tell YOU!”

“Lots of snow, I take it?”

“The snow isn’t worth talking about — drifts only twelve feet high this year. It was the attack of the polar bears that had us touch and go for a while.”

“POLAR BEARS? The U. P. doesn’t have those … unless you had a zoo escape?”

“It’s the global warming thing—“

“Oh, tell me about it!”

“I will, if you stop interrupting. AOC was up here a while back, and she says that’s what it is. It’s got the critters so befuddled they can’t tell the North Pole from the South, and they’re wanderin’ down here. Came right across the Gitch,* and the next thing we knew, a dozen of ’em were growlin’ and howlin’ all around the house. Bud said he knew how Davy Crockett musta felt at the Alamo. We thought we were goners.”

“Not to mention Davy had a habit of grinning down bears. Did you try that, or how exactly DID you get out of that one?”

“Well, at first we thought if we just fed ’em all the fish we had stocked up in the freezer, maybe they’d leave without eating us. But it takes a lot of muskies to feed a dozen polar bears.”

“I’ll bet it does!”

“And we were none too sure that bear-grinnin’ thing would work. So, Bud’s kinda gotten into this survivalist stuff, and he’s been making bullets in the cellar. So, cute as polar bears are on TV, it was them or us. Let’s just say there’s a whole lot of bear burgers where the fish in the freezer used to be.”

“I promise I won’t tell the DNR.”

“So, what’s goin’ on with you, honey?”

“Nothing as exciting as the Alamo or polar bears, that’s for sure. We had a lot of snow, though. Hubby strung a rope from the house to the garage so we wouldn’t get lost in a blizzard.”

“Yeah, we do that, too — but how did you Southerners in Wisconsin learn to do that?”

“I read about it in Little House on the Prairie years ago. It was pretty cold here, too — 23 below for a day or two.”

“[Snort!] Don’t tell me about your heat wave, honey! We don’t even start talkin’ about winter when it’s that mild!”

______________________________

*Gitch — Lake Superior; Gitche Gumee, from Longfellow’s poem, “The Song of Hiawatha”

They souped Paul up pretty good with I-feel-no-pain drugs. The problem is the aftermath. I have seen this before. We never know what he will do or say or how many times he’ll ask the same questions over and over before the junk wears off. It’s enough to make a body’s patience wear down to the bare threads.

I took him to a diner — almost the first time we have dared such a death-defying lapse of common sense since March of The Year that Will Never End. He hadn’t had anything to eat since the night before, and with his hummingbird metabolism, he would most likely have starved if we had waited until we got him home to feed him.

He ordered coffee — not the decaf, oh no! That wouldn’t have been nearly as fun as mixing caffeine with whatever cocktail of narcotics they already had in him. And he had to have more than one cup, which is never, ever a good idea if we don’t want him flying around the ceiling fans.

He tried to replenish the cup for himself. But his hand-eye neuro transmitters weren’t communicating well  with each other. I tried to grab the pot and avert disaster.

“What are you DOING?” he cried.

“You were going to pour it all over the table. Let me help you.”

“I was just fine. I had the spout right over the cup. Is there something wrong with your eyeballs?” (Not mine, buddy. It’s you who had the surgery so you could see better.) “Why can’t I get any coffee out?” (It was coming out just fine and in the cup, as long as I wrassled you for it.)

He tried to take the top off the pot to make the coffee pour better. Fortunately, the granny who ran the diner saw the possibilities of a catastrophe right along with me. She convinced him to let her pour the coffee. End of impending calamity until he wanted Cup #3.

At that point we played the whole, who-is-going-to-hold-the-pot tug of war again, with Paul still as certain as daylight that I was the one having trouble getting the spout in the right place. He managed to start pouring — outside the perimeter of the cup. That’s the real reason they give us napkins I guess — to wipe up after under-the-influence seniors.

“You used my napkin! Now what am I going to use?”

“I will share mine. You don’t mind if it is slightly soiled, do you Paul?” (He did.)

I decided if I couldn’t hold the pot, at least I could move the cup under the spout where it belonged. Every time I moved the cup, he pulled the pot spout back outside the rim. We played that game a few times, until we both got tired of it. He gave in, still pretty certain I was the one having coordination issues.

It was a nerve-wracking drive home, what with answering the same questions five to ten times over and Paul’s pleas for me to pull over and let him drive the last half. (Not sure if he was teasing at that point, or if he was half-planning to grab the wheel from me.)

Then it was time to insert the eye drops. He almost put them in the unsurgeried eye by mistake. I yelped and grabbed for the bottle, but he recollected himself at the last second.

By this time I needed therapy, so I texted the daughters what was happening, all the while keeping an eye on hubby and wondering why the eye surgery place did not send a straitjacket home with us for my peace of mind. (They didn’t think of that courtesy, just like they didn’t think about the cruelty of making the designated driver sit in a cold car in December in Wisconsin.)

Things finally calmed down a bit. While I was still doing therapy by text with the girls, Paul decided to bake. It kept him from doing something more lethal. No telling how those muffins will taste.

After one very bad session with him, we moved on to Torture Expert #2. This one didn’t like little girls who wanted their mommy in the room with them. So, when I continued to fuss, he slapped my face, then promised me more of the same if I didn’t quit crying. (His assistant did not intervene. I quit crying.)

After those two horrifying experiences, every time I went to the dentist for decades after, my stomach tied up in knots for days before the visit. I finally confessed my terror to one kind young doc, who assured me dentistry did not have to be painful anymore, and he wasn’t going to hurt me. He was true to his word, and the next thirty years went by without any further trauma — no more knots, and no more slaps.

Enter my new dentist. I didn’t ask for him. Let’s just say it was sort of an inheritance. We’ll call him Dr. Sadistic, because, you know, “The names have been changed to protect the guilty.” I mentioned to the hygienist that one of my wisdom teeth had been aching sometimes at night. So, she took an x-ray to look for an abscess or anything else abnormal. There was none to be seen. I was satisfied.

However, the clean x-ray was not good enough for the new dentist. He decided to do an “intense” test using extreme cold, to look for cracks. First, he wanted to test a “healthy” tooth and see how that one reacted. Then, he would do the same test on the “unhealthy” wisdom tooth and see how the two compared. I suspected what “intense” meant — PAIN. I should have said no on the spot, but my brain cells sometimes go into hibernation. It takes them a while to get it together. Often, it is too late to retreat by the time they accomplish ther mission.

So, he tested the molar next to the wisdom tooth in question. Now, I had not been entirely sure from the get-go which of those two teeth was the actual problem. But I neglected to mention that. He applied the cold what-ja-ma-thingy. I yelled,”YOWWW!!! We are not going to do any more of this, OK???!!!” (This is why they play music none too softly in the dentist’s office — to mask the sounds of agony in the next cubicle.)

He was disappointed that I refused to continue. Surprised, he queried after half a minute, “Is it still hurting? That’s unusually sensitive.” He had figured on six seconds. It still hurt minutes afterward, and in fact, when I left the office half an hour later, it still ached a little. The ache returned at suppertime, hours later.

Long after vacating the torture chamber, the brain cells began to hum along a little faster. “Wait a minute. He was looking for cracks in a wisdom tooth? Why? We’re not going to put a crown on it, and if it breaks or there is an abscess or decay, we’re going to pull it. And the x-ray found neither abscess nor decay, so why did we even do this? If it needs yanking, that will eventually become evident without this crazy test. … Wait another minute. Did I pay extra for this?”

I will be on my guard against Dr. Sadistic in the future. In fact, there may not be any future relationship at all.

The chicken is not really free. It bears the hefty price tag of enduring through speeches delivered by the union high command. Every year, the president of the National Association of Letter Carriers sends his regrets for not being able to be with us. (Yes, we know, Mr. President. You are way too busy and important to come to Wisconsin in March. I wouldn’t be here either, if I had a choice.) But we are still obligated to listen to a couple of other mucky-mucks who fly in for the chicken and to hear themselves talk.

Their orations do not vary much from year to year. We are indoctrinated for fifteen or twenty minutes about how the Postal Service is being torn limb from limb by the Republicans. In order to save the P. O. (and our pensions) from total destruction, all good letter carriers, active or retired, must vote for Democrats, because they, of course, love letter carriers, and will see to it that retirees never have to eat out of garbage cans or sleep under the bridge. And so it has gone for the past thirty-eight union dinners we have attended.

However, this year we broke from tradition. They brought in a guy who had missed his life calling. No doubt he had truly wanted to be a college professor, but had joined the Postal Service instead, so that he could partake of the annual chicken dinner. It was not a speech, but a lecture, complete with asking the class questions to keep us on our toes. I listened carefully, in case there would be a quiz at the end. Perhaps the top ten students would get to take a bag of chicken home with them.

Now, I did fairly well in high school. In fact, I graduated at the head of my class. But because I have a bit of a mule streak in me, and because I have been a nonconformist from the bassinet, I refused to go to college. I have done all right, I think, in educating myself without spending those additional four years being bored daily into a coma. At sixty-two years of age, I have no pleasure in attending lectures now, either. The chicken we had just downed was beginning to seem not worth its cost.

Our speaker enjoyed himself immensely. The longer he went on, the more animated he became. The arm-flapping was vaguely reminiscent of what those chickens we had eaten may have done before they had ended up in the broaster.

I seriously thought about pulling out a pen and decorating the tablecloth with stick figures carrying postal bags and macing snarling mongrels. But that would not have been kosher, so I restrained the impulse. The napkins had already been removed by the servers, so a little impromptu origami was also out of the question.

I glanced at the lady seated across from me. She mouthed, “Should we skip out of here and let our husbands find their own way home?” Still, we knew that would not be decent, since it’s an unwritten law of the union that you must pay for the chicken by listening to the speeches. If this man ever finished, there might be time for the four retirees we were there to honor to say their few words before the dining hall locked the doors for the night. Maybe, maybe not.

Our speaker finally asked if there were any questions, and I saw a hand shoot up. No! Please! How can you do this to us? He will go on for yet another hour if you give him the opportunity!

He smiled broadly. “Yes, sir! Your question?”

“Yer time’s up, buddy.”

Slightly abashed, Mr. Professor sat down hurriedly, and we all clapped enthusiastically.

And that is how we managed to get home before every bar in town closed for the night.

“Well hey! How are you, Ornesta!”

“Down in the dumpsters, Sweetie.”

“Literally?”

“Well no, but it could come to that. Morale and the tourism industry have tanked up here, since President Obama did that latest executive order against the fishing industry — no fishing within 100 miles of shore — which means no fishing at all on the Gitch.* Bud says we’d be halfway between here and Duluth before we could throw a line in the water, and he didn’t think it would be safe with the 10 h.p. motor and the dinghy anyway. I cooked up the last batch of perch yesterday. From now on, it’s Mrs. Paul’s — out of a box!”

“I’m so sorry to hear that!”

“Yeah, and it’s just going to contribute to the fish overpopulating — shore to shore fish, can’t even swim around, poor thingies — and then they’ll have to dump tons of antibiotics in the lake, just to keep ’em alive.”

“Oh, tell me about it! The Prez did one of those executive orders on us, too — designated our town a drug-free zone, and now you can’t even buy an aspirin. Had to get my latest bottle from Canada.”

“SPEAKING of which … I’ve gone natural.”

“Hmmm? Just how natural did you go?”

“I’m talking about health stuff, silly. Those pills the doctors give you these days are dan-ger-ous! Like that Cipro-something antibiotic. Did you ever read the side effects? ‘Could cause tendons to rupture in people over sixty.’ Scary! What’s wrong with these guys?”

“The docs can’t help it. Not too many antibiotics work anymore.”

“And why do you think that is? Because they are stuffing the cows and the chickens full of that dope, just so they can stand wall to wall without sneezing each other to death. And now they’re going to have to do the same to the fish in the Gitch!”

“So, what do you use instead of Cipro when you come down with something?”

“Lots of stuff. Cinnamon, turmeric, beet greens, garlic –“

“I tried the garlic thing once for an earache. Put a clove at the back of your jaw on each side, bite down, and hold it ten minutes. Thought I’d swallowed a flame thrower, and I smelled like the Godfather’s mom for a week.”

“Well, did it work?”

“Nah. But I didn’t have any post-nasal drip after that. … Cider vinegar works great for migraines, you know. I keep some in a nasal spray bottle, and –“

“I think I’ll stick with the my current migraine drug, thank you — even if the first side effect listed is, ‘May cause death by heart attack.’ So far, I’m good. But, tell me about the Cipro. I have nightmares all the time about rupturing tendons. What do you do instead?”

“Well, I’ve been having trouble working around that one. Somebody told me to eat raw cranberries. ‘Raw cranberries are good for whatever ails ya,’ she says. So, while I’m munching away, she says, ‘But the acid in them strips the enamel right off your teeth.’ Great! Didn’t plan on having to invest in dentures! Thanks for the advice, lady!

“So, I mushed ’em up in the blender and tried to pour ’em down my throat without touching the choppers. No dice. And I tried swallowing them whole, one by one. Just about needed the Heimlich maneuver. I finally poked them into a leftover piece of key lime pie, hoping the pie goop would coat the berries so my teeth wouldn’t notice them. And then I sucked down enough water to swamp a camel — to fluoridate my teeth.”

“That doesn’t sound very practical, Ornesta.”

“No, it wasn’t. But I think I’ve got the answer now — oregano.”

“Like you buy in the McCormick bottle?”

“Oh, no! It’s got to be this special kind that grows wild in the mountains somewhere along the Mediterranean. They go in there with llamas, and load ’em up, and —“

“Um, I don’t think they have llamas in the Mediterranean, Ornesta.”

“Well, whatever! I leave the details up to the experts. I don’t go pick the stuff myself!”

“Why am I envisioning Mrs. Olson in a Folgers commercial right now?”

“Not coffee. Oregano. Although I have fond memories of Mrs. Olson and Juan Valdez and the other coffee celebs — and the guy in the kola nut commercial, too.”

“How’s the oregano working?”

“I think it’s doing great! And I didn’t see anywhere on the Web where they mentioned ruptured tendons as a side effect — except maybe for the guys carrying the stuff down the mountain — if they slip. You know, I think I’m going to like this naturopathic stuff.”

“Beats being a psychopath, I guess.”

“You betcha, Sweetie!”

*Gitch — Lake Superior

First, there are Packer games. The colder it is, the better the turnout. Wisconsinites take great pride in knowing how to dress for these events. Those cheesehead thingies everybody wears? Lined with head-warming uranium-enriched chemicals, this traditional Wisconsin headgear is  made from a secret recipe inspired during somebody’s hours of boredom while freezing in a tree stand, waiting for the legendary thirty-point buck to appear. Basement Packer chapels and decorating our living rooms in gold and green also keep us pretty busy.

People “up nort'” enjoy raking four-foot piles of snow off the roofs of their trailer homes several times during the season. It is great exercise, and although not as exciting, is more fun than having the roof collapse into the living room.

For those who are more inclined to sedentary entertainment, a quiet afternoon spent fuzz-balling your red union suit is guaranteed to enhance your serenity.

You no doubt have heard whispers about the Polar Bear Club. On January 1st, members congregate on the shores of Lake Michigan (or other suitable ponds), strip down to their thermal underwear, and go for a swim. I must explain that these are not sane Wisconsinites. Too much fuzz-balling of the red union suits can push people beyond serenity into hallucinogenic euphoria. I might add that the multitudes of people who come just to spectate suffer some noggin problems as well.

Reading seed catalogs from cover to cover multiple times is also a favorite activity. At the end of winter, Burpee has a contest exclusively for Wisconsinites: whoever sends in the most thumb-worn catalog with their order of $100.00 or more gets a plaque with a big pumpkin superimposed over the state capitol, which reads, “Home-grown Wisconsinite and proud of it!” It may not ever warm up enough to get a harvest out of those seeds finally planted midsummer, but dreaming is almost as good as achieving, right?

The men all grow bushes on their faces. Outsiders think it is in admiration for those Duck Dynasty fellers. Nope. Purely a Wisconsin thing, contrived for survival. The Louisiana guys just stole it.

And we shiver. This is a health bonus. It tones the muscles. The more sleek you want to be, the more you turn down the thermostat. There are no gym fees, you don’t have to leave home, and the added bonus is a lower fuel bill. It’s a no-brainer.

“Remembrance Parties” are a big trend right now. The idea is to gather a few intimate friends, slurp some spicy-hot chili together (in hopes of generating authentic perspiration), and swap memories of the previous summer. “Joe, do you remember when we wore short-sleeve T-shirts last July for a couple of days? Refresh my memory. What did that feel like?”

Some of us find enjoyment in traveling from park to park to watch the bubblers freeze over (probably referred to as water fountains where you come from). It’s not quite as much fun as watching the Polar Bear Club carry on, but it works in a pinch, if you’re going stir-crazy inside.

Contrary to rumors, we do not enjoy lemming races. That is strictly an event in Upper Michigan, which Wisconsin is unfortunately adjoined to — but we can’t do much about them.

Now for a cultural exchange — What do all yous guys do in the winter?

A few years ago, we broke the story on bratwurst as the cure for swine flu.  Based on that find, the results of this latest study should not be a surprise — especially to lifetime residents of Wisconsin.  (We always said we were progressive!)

Right on time for Memorial Day festivities, a far-reaching clinical study just released by the prestigious Masbur Foundation has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that eating bratwurst significantly increases life expectancy. The quantity providing optimum effectiveness is 69.7 lbs. per person annually, with larger quantities producing no additional benefits, but not posing any health risks, either. Apparently “too much of a good thing” only means … more enjoyment of a good thing.

In the study, which covered a dozen brands of bratwurst, consistent consumption of Johnsonville Brats seemed to provide the greatest benefits. Data analysts surmised that bratwurst-induced longevity might be connected to body-healing chemicals released through the taste buds, thereby explaining why Johnsonville had the edge on the other brands.

The study also suggests that generous doses of sauerkraut consumed in tandem with bratwurst helps the anti-aging process.

I grew up Lutheran, and traditionally the Aid Association for Lutherans provided Christmas gifts for the children of our  impoverished congregation. One year they gave us peanuts in the shell. (It was a lean year for them, too, I guess.) The next year a small plastic nativity scene appeared, which I still display every Christmas. But the best present of all came during my third grade year — an American Bible Society King James Version hardcover Bible.

I felt so grown up. My very own Bible! I read it  all the way up to the genealogies in 1 Chronicles, before sliding down the hill of despair back to Genesis. My methodical mind could not conceive of skipping over those “begats” and moving on. So, to this day, I have a better working knowledge of Genesis through 2 Kings than most of the rest of you — simply because I backslid through them so many times. I finally arrived at the epistles of the apostles about ten years into the adventure.

By the time I made it to the New Testament, that Bible was getting mighty precious. It went to school with me. (Those were the days before life imprisonment was imposed for bringing the forbidden book there.) For a brief time I hugged it to sleep every night — a little weird, I know, but Oral Roberts said he did it, and I figured if it worked for him, why not me?

That Bible lasted forty years. It had a few surgeries along the way.  My husband Paul is a Shoe Goo specialist. Other men do duct tape, but he has mastered Shoe Goo for whatever ails whatever. Our marriage has probably been held together with the Goo all these years, and I am just not aware of it — because he is such a master at applying it for that good-as-new look. But there are things even Shoe Goo cannot fix, and when pages began to wear through, and I was writing in words where the ink had departed from the paper, it was time to find a new Bible.

When you’ve had the same Bible for forty years, its quirks sort of work their way into your system. I wasn’t handy at knowing which book or chapter “Judge not that ye be not judged” was in, but I sure knew which column and how many lines down from the subheading it was.  And I didn’t want any talk about being “an hungred” or “shewing” anything. The American Bible Society had fixed those spelling thingies by the time my Bible was born, and I wasn’t about to go back to the original 1611 version. I prayed diligently for a Bible with the exact same inside text to still be available somewhere in the world, and then called the ABS with hope in my heart. They had no idea how to help me, since my Bible was pre-ISBN days. What they sent didn’t even come close.

Paul felt he needed to prepare me for the big let-down.  “Why don’t you just use that nice leather KJV I bought you?”

“It says ‘shew.’  I can’t abide ‘shew.’  It has doctrinal commentary and footnotes, which ABS Bibles avoid. I hate notes. They distract me.  And it’s a red-letter edition.  I don’t like that either.  Jesus talked like everyone else. He didn’t float around spewing red letters.”

He rolled his eyes and assured me there wasn’t a chance in the world that I would get a Bible even close to what I had, much less the spitting image. Oh, he of little faith!

Starting to feel slightly daunted, I took my decrepit Bible and daughter Beebee in hand and headed down to the local Christian bookstore. 

“Excuse me, Miss, but can you help me find a Bible? I want something similar to this.” 

The store clerk obliged me by showing me numerous KJVs — all with “shews” and red letters attached, not to mention the inevitable footnotes. After a good ten minutes of trying to please, she slipped off to do more important things with saner customers. But Beebee had been busy during the discussion, and this time the busyness paid off.

“Mom, look at this one. Doesn’t it look just like yours — maybe?” 

She handed me the Bible Amy Grant sang about in her classic, Fat Little Baby — the biggest King James you’ve ever seen. Its page 493 matched my page 493, subheadings and all. No red letters. No “shews.” Bonded leather. And 300 superfluous pages at the beginning, explaining African American historical relationships to the Word of God, complete with full color paintings and poetry from their artists. It was The African American Jubilee Edition, and it was God’s answer to my prayer. I don’t know why the clerk had missed it. Perhaps my rather light complexion just didn’t click with her.

Heart pounding with joy, I skipped to the checkout with my treasure, and proceeded to squeal, “Look what Jesus did for me! I can’t believe it! I needed a Bible exactly like my old one, and everybody said it couldn’t be found, and look! Here it is!”

The clerk had neither eyes to see nor ears to hear. She missed the miracle entirely. No doubt miracles are commonplace in Christian bookstores, and she’d already seen her share of them that day. “Fifty dollars, please,” was all I got in response.

I chortled all the way home. “Beebee, do you know how all this happened? The American Bible Society didn’t know what they were doing when they put The African American Jubilee Edition together.  They did it just for me. God knew I was going to pray for a Bible just like my old one, so He inspired the ABS mucky-mucks to think up a new edition. And then the janitor found the old print plates from forty years ago kicking around in the warehouse, and brought them to the CEO (kind of like in the days of Josiah, when they found the Scriptures that had been forgotten in the cluttered-up temple), and –“

Beebee couldn’t take it anymore.  “I know, Mum, I know.  We’re all happy Jesus heard your prayers. But the little song and dance you did back there in the bookstore was embarrassing!”

That was all about ten years ago. Last night the pages and cover of my beloved Jubilee Edition decided to part company. It must have had a heretofore undiscovered birth defect, no doubt due to being manufactured in China, unlike Bible #1. Dr. Paul pulled out his popsicle stick and Shoe Goo and did emergency surgery, and it is currently in ICU. 

Dr. Paul thinks we can expect a full recovery. But just in case, I did some online exploring and managed to find a revised, now-only-in-hardcover African American Jubilee Edition — still with page 493 identical to my page 493.  Its glorious 1440 pages will be in my mailbox in another week.

The story started some weeks ago with a feisty migraine that did not make its usual concession to migraine medicine. Misery ensued, including a vomiting session, which is common for migraine sufferers. But unlike all the times before, chunks of blood came up with the stomach acid, which called for a trip to my doctor.

She was A-OK with me barfing up blood — said it was “just” an esophagus tear, probably nothing to be concerned about. But I have a knack for volunteering information that I should keep to myself. In answer to a routine question, I admitted that sometimes food feels like it gets stuck in my throat.

Doctors and tech support people from foreign countries are much alike. They listen for key phrases and then automatically respond to those, no matter what else you tell them. “Food stuck in throat,” is such a key phrase — and it brings dire possibilities to doctors’ minds. She didn’t hear anything after that, and began punching buttons to schedule a throat scope.

So, today was scope day. The prep was almost nonexistent — no breakfast and NO WATER for four hours ahead of the procedure. Simple enough — IF one does not wake up with a migraine. I was concerned that might happen. It did. The alarm went off two hours before the scope job, and Old Man Migraine had already made his appearance.

So I cheated. I took my first-line-of-defense drug, ibuprofen, downed with a tablespoon of the prohibited water. This was not the brightest move in the world. I should have immediately gone for the high-powered migraine stomper, but my thinking abilities at 5:00 a.m. are not the best. One-half hour later, Mr. Migraine was not only on my doorstep; he had broken and entered the house. So I debated cheating again with an additional tablespoon of the prohibited H2O for the sake of the big-gun drug … but didn’t.

I got to the scope place and explained that if the migraine really went south, I might throw up at an inopportune time, like while the scoping was in progress. (They probably have people retch all the time while they’re doing that, but are too delicate to tell on themselves.)

“Not to fear!” assured the RN. “The narcotics we’re going to pump you full of are gonna knock any pain you have into outer space. And if you start to feel sick, we’ll just put some nausea antidote in that silly little IV you’re wearing, too!”

Enter the scope doc, and I didn’t bother to mention barf concerns. But he wanted to know why, exactly, I was there. I told him about doctors and key words. (I left out the comparison to tech support people in foreign countries so as not to agitate him. He was going to be stuffing hardware down my throat, after all, and I wanted him to be feelin’ groovy while doing it.)

He decided that he was going to stretch my esophagus, in hopes that I would never get shredded wheat and other foodstuffs stuck again. (He said sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. If not, I would “just have to live with it.” I was perfectly happy living with it before now anyway.) He agreed with me that there was probably nothing wrong.

Seemingly nanoseconds later, everything was reported to be normal. But now my throat ached powerfully (from stretching it), and my head still hurt as much as ever. So much for narcotics that pack a whollop no migraine can withstand.

I popped the migraine dope which should have been ingested hours previously, along with a muffin and a glass of juice. They then wheeled me out to the car in a jellified state and shoveled me in. By this time, I highly suspected that they had not put any of that lovely nausea inhibitor in my IV.

We made a stop at the post office, and while my husband, a former postal employee, was inside swapping stories with his buddies (or whatever else he does over a couple of packages), I faced the grim reality that it had been entirely stupid not to bring an ice cream pail and a box of tissues along in the car. The major decision now became whether to open the door and discreetly release the goods right there in the parking lot next to the car, or head for the nearest snowbank and hope I wouldn’t woozily topple over trying to get there.

I opted for the snowbank, not wanting other postal patrons to step in decomposing muffin mingled with stomach acid. I made it, without any nose-dive mishaps. The process was not discreet, but at least I got ‘er done.

I was afraid hubby would absent-mindedly drive off without me. He came out, vaguely noticed something large was missing from the car, and scanned the landscape. I think he might have sauntered over to the snowbank and toddled me back to the car, but can’t remember for sure. I just know that I got home somehow and slept for hours before adventuring to tell the world about the experience.