So the other night, I am sitting with my wife, when I hear a scraping sound outside. Curious, I step out my front door to find my neighbor running up my driveway wielding a shovel. “Look out!” he yells, as an opossum scurries in my direction. In this brief moment, I decided that being pinned in a corner between a frightened animal and a madman with a shovel was not in my best interests. I quickly backed into my foyer and closed the door.

My wife and I stand bewildered as what can only be described as the brutal beating of a marsupial takes place on my doorstep. When the sounds of metal thumping flesh subsided, I slowly open the door to find my neighbor ramming the shovel’s blade into the animal’s throat. “This’s what’s been diggin’ up our lawns!” the man’s wife croaked. “Well, you got him.” I said, as they left with their prize.

Looking back, I wish I had gone ballistic and scolded them for their actions, but I just stood there. I was left absolutely speechless. It was simply one of the strangest encounters I had ever experienced. They have since apologized, claiming they worried it was dangerous, but seriously…

You know, I usually have some sort of quip at the end of these things. I guess I’m a little rusty.

First of all, I realize how trivial this is. In a world full of tragedy and despair, I write about acceptable descriptive words for eggs. I know this is meaningless babble, but I don’t care… I have to get this off my chest. Don’t call my eggs fluffy.

Take, for instance, a commercial whose goal is to entice me into buying breakfast at some restaurant. It hits me with the slow-mo shot of pouring orange juice. Then a voice describes the crispy bacon, the tall stack of pancakes over some beautiful food footage. My mouth is watering and I can almost smell it… Then it happens. They tell me to enjoy their fluffy eggs.

I realize that there is nothing technically incorrect about describing eggs in this manner, but I can’t help but view this description as anything but revolting. When a word has multiple definitions, one needs to be aware of possible misconceptions. I know what they mean, but I just keep thinking of fur covered eggs. Another thought that wanders through my psyche is that little baby chicks are fluffy too. So in a matter of seconds, I have gone from fantasizing about a delicious breakfast, to a waking nightmare where hairy eggs and baby chicks are considered breakfast.

I’ve been noticing a growing trend at my local Walmart Superstore. I think we have all, at some point, decided against a purchase while shopping. Rather than take the time to put said item back where it belongs, we simply stick it on some random shelf. Not something to be proud of, but not a huge deal either. But what I write about today is just wrong. Wrong! More and more, I am discovering abandoned meat on the shelves. Really.

Waiting in the checkout line, my eyes scan across the four foot wall of candy, magazines and beef jerky before me. I see Snickers, Reese’s, RAW CHICKEN, Skittles… Wait, was that meat?!? In the past few visits alone, I have come across everything from chicken wings to Swedish meatballs. Meat lives in the fridge, dammit. What kind of standardless human would think that was a good idea? Not only are you ruining the product, but possibly contaminating all the surrounding products. Not to mention Walmart’s complete inability (or reluctance) to keep their shelves clean. I actually feel like a dirtbag just shopping there.

I hate Walmart, and people who abandon meat. So there.

I’ll say it again, I HATE emergency rooms.

I’ve never liked hospitals to start with, but the Emergency room takes that feeling to new heights, executes a triple backflip and then sticks the landing.  Before having children I had rarely spent anytime there and when I had been unfortunate enough to visit I had been overwhelmed by the feeling of hopelessness and despair that seemed to linger in the barely circulated air of the waiting room.

Now, as a parent with an either very adventurous or completely retarded ( no disrepect to the genuinely handicapped) 2 year old (my thoughts on his state of mind seem to vary depending on how long it’s been since I’ve sat in the emergency room for 6 hours), I’ve been forced look at life in the emergency room in a completely different light:  no longer an outsider, with no idea what’s going on, but as an old hand completely aware of the crappiness of the situation.

Let me explain.  Since April I’ve been at the emergency room three times.  Each time I had to head up there in the evening and wound up staying until the wee hours of the next morning.  Why my son can’t try to kill himself in the morning, I don’t know.

Occasion 1:  More my fault than his.  I’m not going into the specifics of the injury, but let’s say a tomahawk was involved, along with a willful two-year old, a horrified father and a slice in the meaty part of the hand.  8 hours and five stitches later, I had learned a few things: 

1. A child gains the strength of the Incredible Hulk and Thor combined when someone tries to hold them down and clean a wound. 

2. The power of Greyskull gets added into the mix when the stitching needle gets involved.

3. I don’t like watching people get stitches.  At all.  Granted, the guy was a great stitcher-upper, but I still wanted to punch him in his face while watching him stitch up my son’s hand.

4.  There’s always someone in the waiting room who’s apparently been there for days that knows the story of every other person there and is only too willing to tell it to you if you should accidentally make eye contact.

Occasion 2:  No fault of anyone.  Vomiting, high fever, labored breathing and an unusually lethargic child culminated in a call to the pediatrician, who upon hearing the symptoms, recommeneded an emergency room visit.  (why do I even have a pediatrician again?)  Upon leaving work to pick up the family and then driving like a madman to the hospital, of course there was no fever, and my kid was laughing and smiling and telling us that he felt fine when we got there.

At this point there seemed like little reason to stay but of course all the symptoms came back as soon as I got home from work that evening and started to relax, so back to the emergency room we went.  For some reason I barely remember this visit.  I remember that it didn’t take quite as long, but we were still there long after you should quit feeding Mogwai.  Diagnosis: light case of bronchitis, possible mild infection. Recommendation:   Breathing treatment.  Things I learned:

1. Stay at the emergency room if you are already there.

2. Ask a nurse enough questions about “what does this do” and “what are those for” and “which bone is the tibia again” and she will eventually quit coming to your room and will send someone else to get stuff.  (our room this time had a supply closet in it).

3. Children, at least mine, do not like having a mask put on their face with a hose hooked to it that spews a smoky mist.  He did not care that Daddy was not afraid to do it, or that Mommy was not afraid to do it, or that it would make him feel better.  All he knew, and I quote was, “I don’t like that mask.”  I remember this exactly because he said it about one hunderd million times, including long after the doctor had left and the mask was hanging up on the wall.

Occasion 3:  Loving husband gets two Aleve ready for wife with a headache, sets them out for her along with a glass of soda to take said pills with.  Child reached pills before wife.  Wife looks for pills, questions child sitting near alleged pill location, who replies “I ate that blue candy.”  We knew that Poison Control sticker by the phone would come in handy at some point.  PC said take him to the emergency room, while they called ahead and told them to get a charcoal drink ready.  Two and a half hours later (long after I imagine the pills would have already had an affect) we finally get around to the moment of truth.  2 hours after this, with most of the drink downed we got to go home, with a warning that things would be nasty in the morning.  Things I learned:

1.  The hospital obviously did not consider this be as big an emergency as Poison Control did.

2. Charcoal can absorb posions from your stomach, but it has to be mixed with chocolate milk first, to even get kids to consider drinking it.

3.  Mixing it with chocolate milk, apparently makes no difference.  Although I must admit, the cup of crude oil-looking goo, was not something I would have voluntarily drank either.

4. Neither promises of toys ( “You can have your new Thomas train when we get home if you drink this up”) or threats of no toys (”We’re going to take away all your Thomas trains if you don’t drink this”) were enough to encourage my son to down his Big Gulp of choco-Coal.  And no, Daddy wasn’t man enough to take a sip and tell him that it tasted good.

5. I’ve never been happier that I was at work than when my wife emailed the following morning to let me know that she woke up to a child who seemed to have developed oil leaks at both ends of his body.

So to sum up, I still hate emergency rooms, but at this point I’m much more likely to be the old lady who knows everyone’s malady, than I am to be the fresh faced newcomer, in awe of the wonder of the emergency room.  I’m also aware that what I had previously mistaken for hopelessness and despair was simply resignation to a fate slightly better than death.

Now I understand that trucks have to deliver things for consumers like myself, but when a truck driver decides that it is time to back his truck into a narrow driveway off a major highway, my blood begins to curdle. This deep thinker manages to block all 4 lanes for a fury feuling 6.5 minutes during rush hour yesterday. As he engaged in the 37th reverse of his 87 point turn, I began to wonder what the man was thinking. I imagine it was something close to the sounds of elevator music and children playing.