My past gives me presents. December 30, 2008

I was trolling around my hard drive searching for something I may or may not have written late one night high on REM when I discovered an archive of backups from… well, grade nine. I was reading some of the stuff I wrote, and aside from it being embarrassingly blunt and generally thin on diction, Past Daniella has really impressed Present Daniella. Like, I was a funny person. So, I came across a character sketch I wrote for English 9-10 and it is brilliant. Weirdly, I was all ready to edit it up and sharpen the wit-cil and make it Present Daniella Calibre but as I read it through, things I was thinking of saying (instead of whatever I was thinking at age 14, which was obviously shallow observational stuff..) WERE ALREADY THERE. I suppose I’ve spent the last five years becoming a real person because I haven’t changed at all when it comes to writing aside from perhaps gaining a better grasp of perspective. So if you all won’t mind, I’d like to immortalize this. The prompt was to write a complete sketch based on a list of odd last names.

Mr. Lazer was probably made fun of in his childhood years, although being mistaken for a superhero made him swell inside with joy. Currently, he worked for Northern Paper Products. He has a lovely wife, Marlene Lazer, and three little Lazers at home. More importantly, paper.  Mr. Lazer was in charge of slicing the paper into the proper size,  81/2×11, which was his specialty. Those 81/2×11 sheets were Lazer-cut so to say. Mr. Lazer always chuckled to himself about that. Himself meaning he never really had any friends at work. He assumed like the rest of the population they’d assumed it was just too awkward to talk to someone who had a name that was a noun and a silly one at that. And that he probably felt too awkward about his name to laugh it off. But he didn’t care. He loved his job.

Lately, Mr. Lazer was feeling dizzy. He thought it was nothing and went on with his day. His dizziness seemed to be located in his head. Not that most dizziness isn’t, but Mr. Lazer seemed particularly convinced the source of his impairment was his head, more specifically his eyes. The top of his eyes. He passed it off as a headache, popped an Advil Liqui-gel and went on to cutting his paper into the precise 81/2×11 size.

His dizziness was starting to effect his work, he noticed, when a colleague who had never before conversed with him approached, complaining about pentagonal-shaped legal size in bright white. Mr. Lazer assumed he was mad and didn’t really pay attention to his mindless drabble. But he knew something was up. He just didn’t feel like this colleague deserved the satisfaction of letting him know.

Leaving, Mr. Lazer called the wife who promptly made him an appointment with the family optometrist,   Mr. V. Humour, MD, who confirmed a case of late-blooming myopia with the uncommon dizzy side-effect. The dilemma was, to keep his job, Mr. Lazer had to face the perils of lazer eye surgery or to lose his job and wear corrective lenses. Mr. Lazer was outraged. But, he thought, the condition could have been caused from prolonged exposure to bright white and his shifts were all during the day when the sun shone through the rickety factory air vent and burnt his eyes raw like snow on a sunny day.

For the sake of his retinas, Mr. Lazer scoffed at the surgery and its copyrighted name and took graveyard shift.

Maybe I can sell this to pay for medical school.

ER- hop! December 27, 2008

Hop!

There I was, in a wheelchair. My right foot was covered in snow but the size didn’t measure up to my left swollen ankle. Isaac took off my socks and pushed me through the entrance to ER. I couldn’t tell if I was happy or shocked that I had recognized the security guard at the door – the chinese McNeil kid with a giant afro who also helped minimally to organize Richmond Idol in grade 12. How did he end up here? 

 

A filipino nurse registered for me. He might’ve been the most annoying guy trying to make me laugh. 
“So what happened?”
“I rolled my ankle when I was playing badminton.”
“Badminton? In the snow?”
I paused. “Yeah. In the snow. It’s fun, try!”
“Snowboarding?”
“Sure, let’s go together tomorrow.”

 

Then I waited again in the general waiting area. Three elderly blacks sat in a row – only the lady in the middle was covering her face with her dry raw hands, saddened.  The two on either end seem to chat carelessly, glanced at me occasionally, “why is this girl crying so hard and watching the basketball game on TV at the same time?”

 

“Agnes Kwan, station 1 please.”
This boy in his light blue Superman shirt was nicer. I contemplated at each question whether he was deaf. His eyes  were never off my lips. He reminded me kindly that I really should carry my wallet with photo identification cards and my Care card. I was classified “low extreme injury”, I’m still not quite sure if that’s laughable. But this know:

“Where were you?”
“A badminton facility, Richmond pro on Minoru road.”
He looked at me with more curiosity, “So this was indoors.”
“Yes.” Stupid filipino nurse.

 

“It’s probably the tendon at most.” I didn’t know what else to say when the boys and I were waiting yet again in another space – again, a TV at a corner, uncomfortable worn-out seats and some old magazine sitting like land mine of germs and diseases. 

 

Migrated to F25 Bed. Then I waited there another 15 minutes for doctor Chan, who came to tell me that I will wait for someone to bring me for an X-ray. Another maybe 10, 15 minutes of waiting. I called mom, Daniel, and Eric. I wished the boys came with me to F25 bed, which was allowed, because talking to someone helped me stop crying. Eric felt bad that he made me run on the court, rallying. I told him I have always been prone and needed to work on better footwork. Also, asian ‘kankles’ didn’t quite help the situation.

 

The same nurse that brought me to F25 pushed the wheelchair through the Do-Not-Enter door. I passed by Nuclear medicine section, many fire hazard signs, no patient, no doctor, not glaring white but dimly lighten hallway with its glory taken away by the snow and maybe Boxing Day.

 

A doctor like a silver rat helped me to the x-ray room. He never offered help and ordered me to try and hop to the bed.  I laid down. “No, sit up please.”
“Ow!”
“I won’t press on it.” Dude, you just did.

 

The x-ray machine turned on. I’d hate to say, I could only relate the sound of it to the awakening of a robot. A box of light with shadow of a cross at the center and a red-beam horizontal line focused on my ankle. He played with the ankle, seemed as though the red-beam had to be perpendicular with a certain bone. No more noise.

“Okay. Do you remember where you were?”
“F25.”

I never knew which facial expression to display or where to put my hands when I passed by the waiting room where the boys, well, waited. Then I waited again.

 

Doctor Chan came back but to another patient. She also busted her ankle – no crack, just rest for a few weeks and visit maybe the physiotherapist. Chan turned around behind me because the silver rat put me facing the wall.  ”No crack.”

 

“Well, you probably heard what I told the other girl. Pretty much the same thing.”
Thanks.

 

He also told me that I have this kink-bone that’s probably normal and due to a previous recent injury. I confirmed his statement.

“Goodbye, thank you.”

I hop!