BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

It’s still painful to talk about. I know it has been a whole week now, but it seems like it was only yesterday. The horror of it all is still fresh in my mind, and I find myself waking up in a cold sweat as the nightmares plague my slumber. I guess that’s what I get for surviving…

It was cold. Especially for Florida. Of course, it was also early November and George Bush had stopped denying global climate change, so those were just the dice Momma au Naturale dealt us. The Sunshine State caught in the grip of a cold snap of epic proportions. Unbelievable as it may seem, when the sun dipped below the horizon the mercury would plummet into the danger zone. Yes… the 50’s. I actually had to wear my hoodie.

EK, John, and Murv - Prior to the ill-fated Trick or Drunking Expedition

Earlier in the day, provisions had been running low. That’s how it is with Corona and lime when you are at a festival in Florida. One minute there’s enough, the next, not so much. We scraped together a twenty from my wallet and handed it off to the provisions maven. We never saw her again. Who knew a Jackson could take you that far…

Well… Not far enough, because that’s about the time the trolley broke down. Any seasoned Festival-goer knows that when the Trolley breaks down you’re as good as dead – but we weren’t ready to give up. Steeling our resolve, we grabbed our plastic cups and set out down the pass to go “Trick or Drunking.” We’d heard a rumor that Pirates had set up camp below, and if we could make it there, perhaps they would share their rum with us. Or not. One never knows about Pirates, but we had to try.

The trip was arduous. We lost three on the way, not sure if they succumbed to the cold, were eaten by the rogue bear, or simply turned back. Eventually, however, we made it to our destination. After much parlay, the assignation of Piratey names, and selling off E K to the “Feral Cathouse” run by the Buccaneers, we were accepted into the fold and beaten severely about the head and shoulders – and livers – with rum that had been shown a picture of fruit punch. But it wasn’t allowed to look for very long, as it was only supposed to pick up a hint of the fruity punchiness…

Sometime during the darkness, a roving band of strange women, each dressed in black and adorned with bright red lipstick, descended upon the Pirate camp. Even the Pirates cowered, powerless against their overwhelming osculation. And yes, they scurried about like little pixies, kissing all of the male types and leaving gihugic Angelina Jolie lip prints on our faces.

We were sore afraid, and a bit titillated as well, but that’s a different story.

Eventually, seeing as we had brought the strange women upon them, the Pirates made us walk the plank. Being on land already it wasn’t much of a plank, however, there was the mountain, for we eventually had to return to our base camp at the summit.

John – as in John Gramling… Yes. THE John Gramling – downed what was left of his punch drunk rum and pointed at the distant lights in the sky. He burped, hiccuped, and then said, “I ain’t climbin’ that mountain.”

E K, who had been kicked out of the “Feral Cathouse” for torturing the clientele looked ahead and replied, “Psshaw! It’s just a gentle incline.”

“It’s a damn mountain,” John repeated.

And so we braved the cold, the wind, and the bear, stalking off into the early morning darkness (it was after midnight) and climbed the Altoona Mountains there in Florida. Just her worship THE E K, and me…

We never saw John again. Rumor has it RD ate him when the Pirates finally ran out of rum, but then, RD is like that. (You’d understand if you’d ever met RD…)

And there you have the true story of The Gramling Party. I’m sure that mountainside is haunted now… By John and a case of Corona. Maybe I’ll go back and look for him some day. I’m pretty sure he forgot to take the lime with him…

More to come…

Murv

Honestly, this is probably one of those “had to be there” sorts of stories… Be that as it may, I’m going to go ahead and tell it. Why? Because I was there. I can’t help it if the rest of you didn’t check your schedules and missed it… So, anyway…

I’m getting up there in years. I’m not what you’d call old, although most of the O-spring’s friends think I am. I’m actually right there at middle age. Just a couple of months shy of that half-century mark, where life really begins. However, as we age, even if we are simply reaching our prime, other bullshit goes on inside us. Things like our immune systems getting tired a little more easily. So, to boost things, we do silly stuff like get flu shots. I know some folks out there who REALLY think it’s silly and refuse to get flu shots at all. More power to them. They just need to stay away from me with their germs, because the simple truth is, nobody is really as immune to common illnesses as they think they are. I guess the long and short of what I am prattling about is this: I get a flu shot every year, and 2011 is no different – especially since I am about to go out of town to a gathering of bunches of people where I will be signing books, shaking hands, and being exposed to all manner of bacterioviralmorphingpowerranger pathogens.

As it happens, the insurance that covers our family is of the sort that covers such immunizations 100%, so I recently headed out to the post office, dropped off some stuff, then continued up the block to the local Walgreen’s and got myself into the queue for a flu shot. As I waited, an older lady possessed of a white cane arrived with a friend, and they got themselves into the queue as well. While we sat waiting – it was a hell of a busy day at the Walgreen’s – I couldn’t help but overhear the older woman talking about how nervous she was, and how she was going to scream when they gave her the shot.

Eventually the pharmacist came out, packing a gihugic hypodermic that looked like a hunk of telephone pole with a sword sticking out of the end… Okay… not really. But I’m pretty sure that’s what the blind lady was imagining. As it happens, I was first up, and it had taken quite a while before the pharmacist had been able to come out to the “inoculation area,” so she was a bit harried about finding a place to give me the injection. You see, oddly enough the blind lady and her friend were sitting behind the blind where they normally do this sort of thing. I told the poor gal to just, “Grab, Stab, and Plunge,” adding. “It’s just a shot, not surgery.”

This elicited a ton of laughs from people who were in line for various things, up to and including more flu shots. However, it’s not the part you had to be there to appreciate.

Upon hearing my comment, the blind lady called out from behind the blind, “I don’t know how you can do it. I’m going to scream like a little girl.”

I replied with a serious question, “Would it help you to feel better if I screamed, too?”

“Maybe,” she said with a nervous chuckle.

Moments later the pharmacist had, in point of fact, Grabbed, Stabbed, and Plunged. Me, not really seeing shots as that big a deal, I didn’t even realize she had done so until she was sticking a band-aid to my arm. I asked, “Oh, so you’re done?”

“Sure am,” she replied.

Not wanting to disappoint the lady on the other side of the blind I said, “Hang on a sec…”

Then I screamed.

Yes.

In the middle of Walgreen’s.

Employees came running, shoppers peeked around the endcaps of nearby aisles, and everyone in the immediate vicinity who had been “in on the joke” burst out laughing – especially the blind lady behind the blind.

On my way out I wished her and her friend a good day. She chuckled and said, “You, too… And thanks for the entertainment…”

Another satisfied customer.

More to come…

Murv