I was on the bed pan when it all started going south. No, it wasn’t that going south. I was facing east at the time I do believe. It was my blood pressure going south. I was in pain. I was lightheaded. I was dizzy. Then I was passing out I guess. It gets a little fuzzy here because, well, I was passing out. They brought in the crash cart. Three or four sets of hands transferred me unceremoniously from hospital bed to wheeled gurney, bed pan and all. Not quite sure how they managed that. I was on my way back to the emergency room, at high speed, some nurse grabbing at my flimsy hospital gown as it fluttered back in the breeze, displaying for all the world to see my sweaty naked blubber and private parts. Blood pressure still dropping, somebody said. Raise his feet, somebody else said. Unseen hands turned a crank or pushed a button or did whatever to make the gurney tilt down on the head end and up on the feet end. Suddenly I was being wheeled down the hallways of the hospital feet over head on a gurney, crash cart rolling right on alongside, tubes trailing from my arms looping back to the bags of blood and sustenance. Somebody had snatched those from the tall chrome coat-rack looking things and hung them on the gurney. The bed pan was painfully bending my bottom and there was a tube the size of a fire hose stuck into that other critical piece of my bodily plumbing. You know the place that I mean. I had a tube stuck in my dick. That’s a long story.
The point of all this is that sometimes when you think things are really bad in your life, you should just always remember that they could get a lot worse. Well, maybe putting it that way didn’t cheer you up. What I mean is, when I was on that cart in the hospital, I wasn’t blowing my stack about the fact that my local congressman had embarrassed himself claiming the First Lady of this United States had a fat rear-end. That was just his way of making conversation at a church social. And anyway let’s face it, that congressman has a butt twice as wide as that First Lady did. Believe me, I’ve seen it, and it ain’t pretty.
When I was on that cart in the hospital I also wasn’t worrying about who won the last election, or why the boss does that neck-stretch and twitch thing when he’s stretching the truth to his investors, or how did I manage to add up 59 and 40 and get 109, thusly putting my employer into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. (That didn’t actually happen, I only wish it had). Suddenly, those things just didn’t seem all that important. Yes I know that fat little dude in North Korea is developing nuclear weapons, but doesn’t anybody remember the Cuban Missile Crisis? That was scary too, and we lived through that. The Soviet Union had nuclear weapons for decades, as the Russians still do. So does China, India, Pakistan, and Israel. So does Great Britain. Yes they are supposed to be our ally, but based on what’s trending on Twitter, they might want to launch them at us. Who could blame them? And who knows, probably the Principality of Liechenstein has nukes by now. They might need them, you know, to fend off a resurgent and belligerent monarchy in Monaco. You get the drift. They’ve all had them for years. There is nothing you can do about it. And there is nothing you can do about North Korea either, other than vote for a president that you hope will take care of it, although it would help if you voted for a president who is not crazy.
Yes, there are other thoughts that should give you comfort in hard times, not just the realization you might die tomorrow. There is also history. Look what this country has been through. I already mentioned the Cuban Missile Crisis. And after that was over our CIA kept failing to assassinate Castro. There were poisoned pistachios. There were exploding cigars. Funny how that explosive-filled conch shell on the bottom of the sea where Castro might maybe scuba dive never worked. It’s a big ocean out there, fellas. Richard Nixon, in those disturbing days of Watergate, got so drunk and depressed that his Secretary of Defense told the generals to check with him before launching any nukes on the president’s order. It could have been just another Nixon scheme to avoid impeachment. Under President Ronald Reagan we fought for our very lives against the mighty island nation of Grenada, population 100,000. And what about Saddam Hussein, threatening us with his weapons of mass destruction from the high-tech command and control center inside his little hidey-hole in the ground. How well I remember when Saddam’s Press Secretary, Baghdad Bob, reported the crushing defeat the Iraqi Army was dealing at that very moment to our own military forces. So silly he was; so much fun. Nevertheless, I am so glad we don’t have such silly press secretaries serving this great nation of ours.
When I feel stressed out, like the walls are closing in on me, like I can’t stand that dumb stupid job one more day (or worrying that I’ll lose that dumb stupid job someday), like the world is coming to an end, I feel like stuffing my face with pizza and guzzling chocolate milk all day long. At times like that I try to remember that hey, my little daily problems are not really that important. They’re only minor annoyances in the big picture of life. And when I see people running around waving their arms and jabbering and screeching like their hair is on fire, worrying about work or politics or the fact that their favorite football team just lost to the Chicago Bears of all the unbelievable teams they could possibly lose to, I want to counsel them. I want to advise them. I want to encourage them to relax a little, take a breath, and calm down. I want to tell them it really isn’t so bad. Well, losing to the Bears really is pretty bad. But it isn’t that bad. Look at what other people deal with. Look at what this country has been through. And don’t panic yet. It certainly isn’t as bad as finding yourself rolling through the halls of a hospital while in excruciating pain and suffering personal humiliation, head below feet on the gurney, still on that bed pan, trying oh so desperately to poop uphill.