Monday, April 11, 2011

I went in to the hospital on Saturday to see a longtime patient of mine. As I was riding up to the 7th floor two guys, both with huge beards, got on the elevator with me.

Guy #1: "It's just shit. I mean, all that shit, ya know, and no real shit to show for it. I'm tired of this shit. Shit, I'm gonna tell her that, cause neither of us needs this shit, and it's just gonna cause more shit, and at some point, shit, it's time to find some other shit to work on. I just don't give a shit anymore."

I remember the first time I stood in line to buy movie tickets in Galway, back in the 70s, and two middle-school age boys were behind us. I hadn't realized that f**k could be a noun, an adjective, a verb, and an adverb, all in the same sentence, before that point.

It's sort of like "da kine" in Hawaiin pidgin. My husband always found it amusing to watch some guys working on something and one would keep saying "Hand me da kine", each time (apparently) meaning a totally different tool. And, each time, the guy he was working with knew which "da kine" he was talking about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_kine. Sadly, I can pretty much understand what the guys in the elevator were talking about too.

After working in the ED for years, I think I could understand what they were talking about. They were likely good friends, too. Because a good friend will know what you are saying without words, through all the shit.

They were having a fantastic time. An effing fantastic time. Another effing beer man. When Bob effing fell out of the effing canoe in the effing rapids, that was so effing great. Put some more effing wood on the effing fire. Give me another effing beer. Man, this is so effing effing. Oh man, that the effing sun coming up?

In a previous workplace, they had all sorts of training (i.e. indoctrination under the guise of management courses) with acronyms like SFS for Strive for Excellence, etc. We snarked and called it Super High Intensity Training.

I'm just curious what the significance was of mentioning they both had huge beards. I happen to also have a huge beard, and I am infamous because my language has less offensive colorful metaphors. Actually, this is particularly the type of bastardization of the English tongue I find myself fighting when I converse with college students where I teach.

I resolved to swear less after a friend and I were wondering why a building had spikes on it and a helpful passer-by informed us that it "was shit to keep off the pigeons and shit, because of all the pigeon shit and shit."

Welcome to my whining!

This blog is entirely for entertainment purposes. All posts about patients may be fictional, or be my experience, or were submitted by a reader, or any combination of the above. Factual statements may or may not be accurate.

Singing Foo!

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