Don’t remember the exact conversation, but it was something like this:
Nurse: “I was taking my dogs to go swim.”
Me: “Swim? Wasn’t it raining?”
Nurse: “Yeah, it was torrentulous.”
Now, I know torrentulous is not a word, but every once in a while, something comes along that is so delicious, so perfectly goofy and descriptive, that is has to be integrated into one’s personal lexicon. The moment she said it, my vocabulary expanded by exactly one word.
First She – “I’ll bring the needles….”
Second She – “You bring the handcuffs….”
Me – “…uh….”
Second She – “And we’re sisters….”
First She – “Ooohh…this is gonna be fun.”
The sisters – both ER nurses – said we should hang out. This is what they came up with. Scared me to death….
* * *
“Dispatch, this isn’t a motorcyle accident…she just drove into the guardrail.”
A deputy, arriving at the scene of what had sounded like a particularly nasty motorcycle accident. See, it’s funny because driving into a guard rail IS an accident. It’s the very definition of an accident. In fact, in our traffic crash report books, there is a specific slot for…wait for it…DRIVING INTO A GUARDRAIL.
Him: “It’s too porous.”
Me: “Porous? Or textured?”
Him: “Well, that’s what I meant. Textured and porous mean the same thing.”
Said to me on a day, during a situation, addressing a problem. That’s the most specific I can be. Get me drunk and I’ll tell you more.
By the way, they don’t mean the same damn thing…at least not according to Merriam-Webster.
Textured: something composed of closely interwoven elements. In this case, a textured surface.
Porous: permeable to fluids.
“Oh…I didn’t know why you were here. They’re always coming around, arresting me for stupid shit.”
Said by a man who wanted to know why I was knocking on his door. I told him I was doing address verification…which we do on registered sex offenders.
“Does your head get cold when it’s shiny?”
I was stunned silent, Dr Pepper in one hand, donut (I swear it really was a donut) in the other.
“My cousin told me if it’s shiny, it doesn’t get as cold.”
– a random man in a convenience store today, while I was on-duty.
* * *
“Hell, if I’d known he had a warrant, I wouldn’t'a been speeding.”
- a driver I stopped for speeding. One of his passengers had an arrest warrant out of another county.
Part of an actual conversation about using Thomson prison in Illinois for terrorist suspects….
“Well, it’ll get ugly when the families start moving here,” he said.
“What families?” I asked.
“Of them…of the guys.”
“Of the detainees?”
“It’s happened before,” he said.
“The families of the Gitmo detainees will move…from Pakistan…to Thomson?” I asked, incredulous.
“You’ll see.”
This was his entire argument. Nary a thought that most Pakistani families, terrorist related or not, can’t afford indoor plumbing, much less the cost of a 7,000 mile move, or that families of anyone considered a terrorist and held at Gitmo are probably on a list somewhere and thus banned from entering the U.S. This is why terrorist suspects can’t be moved to Illinois…because the families will start moving in. Damn them! As a clever cover, they’ll buy houses and go to school and trim the lawns in the summer. And three times a week, they’ll go to the little ol’ prison at the end of the street to visit their family member…and plot to blow our shit up!
Look, there might well be legitimate arguments for not bringing Gitmo detainees to the U.S., but this heaping, steaming pile of crap ain’t it.
“Mark is cool…Standard is ghetto.”
Said by a local ER nurse.
Okay, it’s probably not funny to the 99% of you who have no idea that Mark and Standard are tiny, tiny, tiny, did I mention tiny hamlets near here. They are in a county that another ER nurse, who lives in Mark, calls ‘Hazzard County,’ which makes me laugh my ass off. Mark and Standard are both the kinds of places that have a population of about 24…counting all major cats and dogs, and the kind of place where, when you roll in, you hear the Deliverance banjos. So to differientiate by saying one is ghetto is hilarious…at least to me.
“Santa is fake…wrestling is real.”
Said by a fellow officer during a really, really reeeaaallllly long slow night.
Text from my wife: ‘I’m at a church hall, listening to a polka band.’
Text to my wife: ‘You’re a wild woman. Don’t get arrested.’
Text to my wife: ‘They any good?’
Text from my wife: ‘I guess. The old people think so.’
I laughed so hard Coke Zero came outta my nose. Hmmm. Maybe you had to be there. Not there in the hall with the polka band, but…well…never mind.
He grinned. “Great song, ain’t it?”
I nodded. “Sure. Not much Hendrix that sucks.”
He bounced his head in rhythm. “Damn straight. You know this one? ‘Voodoo Chili.’”
“…uh…what?”
He pronounced it ‘chili,’ like the food.
See, the song is ‘Voodoo Chile,’ as in ‘child,’ not ‘chili’ as in pass the water my mouth is on fire.
Remembrance and Regrets
The Cancer Chronicles