MUSING
I remember it was very late, maybe midnight. Usually the pain would come and go in waves, but this time it wasn’t going away. I was sitting on the floor of my bathroom, crying and begging Odin, Zeus, Jesus, Allah, Shiva, the flying spaghetti monster, and even Joe Pesci to make it stop. It wouldn’t. I needed to get to emergency, but I didn’t think I could do it myself. I tried to make some calls to people I thought may still be up, with no luck. I would have to dig down deep and do it myself. Somehow I managed to drive myself to emergency, I don’t remember much of the trip, but I do remember asking the security guard not to tow my car as I was checking myself in.
I sat down at the triage area, and the nurse started checking me in. I told her that I had a kidney stone. She checked my blood pressure and all that jazz, and then asked me a question.
“On a scale of one to ten, what would you say your pain level is?”
Well, using my episode on the bathroom floor as a guide, I told her it was and 7 or an 8. The pain had subsided a little bit. That was my big mistake.
So I sat there in the waiting room, I think around an hour had passed, we were getting into the early hours of the morning. That’s when a scruffy looking man wandered in. At triage he told the nurse that he had a terrible migraine, and when the pain question came up, he answered “10.”
The man sits down and strikes up a conversation with some other guy who was waiting, also scruffy looking, possibly homeless. He admitted to the guy that he didn’t really have a migraine, but if he told them that, he would have a nice place to sleep for the night, and as a bonus he would high as fuck on free painkillers.
So another half hour rolls painfully by, and lo and behold, they call his name. I’m still sitting there in pain. Eventually they call me in, and I end up on a gurney right beside him, only separated by a sheet. I got to hear him complain that he didn’t like the painkillers they were giving him. He wanted something more powerful, and the nurse waited on him hand and foot.
You see this all the time in day to day life. There are people out there that spend all their time and energy to try and cheat or manipulate the system. I don’t understand that mentality, or how someone like that can look in mirror, and be proud of what they see.
A few years ago, someone was telling me a story about a friend of theirs who lived in the Okanogan. This guy loved to golf, but he didn’t like to pay for it. So here’s what he would do:
He would just show up at a golf course and insist he had a reservation, even though he didn’t. He would then proceed to scream and shout, causing a enough of a scene that they would usually just let him play for free, all the time apologizing profusely for the “mistake.” This is also not an unusual behaviour. After all my years in retail/customer service, I can tell you that this is all to common.
Why do people have to be so shitty? Maybe because they can. Have you ever noticed that some people just seem to be able to get away with outrageous amounts of bullshit? I’m not sure what kind of personality trait is the cause of that, but I don’t have it. I never get away with anything. Allow me to present a quick scenario:
Boss: Jer! What are you doing tuning your ukulele at work? Get back to peeling potatoes!
Jer: But Hubert is tuning HIS ukulele as we speak! Can’t you hear the plunking and plinking right behind you?
Boss: Never you mind what Hubert is doing, you just watch your ass or you’re gonna get shit canned!
~fin
-Jer
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