There's Now a Colon in D-Day

Have you ever chugged a whole bottle of grape cough syrup? If your answer is yes, please seek help immediately.

I haven’t ever downed an entire bottle of Robitussin, but I’ve recently done something very similar. Twice.

My six-ounce bottle of sodium, potassium, and magnesium sulfates was the same consistency as cough syrup, and had that same “grape” taste that leaves you wondering if anyone involved has ever eaten an actual grape.

I was instructed to mix it with ten ounces of water, and drink the entire sixteen-ounce mixture. The water did not help.

I did that once on Monday night and again yesterday morning. Why would someone drink a sixteen-ounce mixture of various sulfates, you ask? I found myself asking that same question about thirty minutes after I drank the first one.

Holy wow.

Allow me to explain. Yesterday was D-Day. On June 6^th, 1944, after softening of targets by air support, Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy, penetrating deep into France after heavy resistance.

And yesterday, on June 6^th, 2023, after sudden, severe, and overwhelming softening of the target area from heavy sulfate solutions, Sutter Roseville physician, Dr. Bul, met me in Procedure Room 3 with his colonoscope, and... well, you get the picture. (He also got a few.)

I obviously wasn’t at Normandy, but on Monday night after the first weaponized grape cough syrup kicked in, I might have chosen the hostile beach landing given the option.

Unpleasant colonoscopy bowel preparation aside, the procedure itself was fairly boring. This was my first one, so I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but it mainly consisted of laying on my rolling bed in a curtained-off waiting area ahead of time, bored out of my mind because my phone was with my clothes in the plastic bag that I couldn’t reach.

They had originally told me I would be semi-conscious, in and out of it, but very comfortable and not feeling anything. They were going to accomplish this by giving me a mixture of fentanyl and something else. I was understandably concerned by their drug choice, but the male nurse assured me it was “the good stuff.” Hmm…

A little later into my incredibly boring waiting period, they came back through my curtain and told me they had an anesthesiologist who could stay for the whole procedure, so they could give me the even better stuff that knocks me completely out and wears off faster. It was an easy sell.

Whatever he put in my IV definitely did the trick, because he said, “Off you go,” and I woke up about two minutes later and they were all done. As I was coming back around, someone in the room said something funny, and I came back with possibly the wittiest retort ever uttered in that procedure room to date.

“What were my demands?” I said, expecting the room to erupt in laughter.

The general reply was, “Huh?”

Um, OK, either I’m slurring really badly, or that was only funny in my head. What was the joke again?

Wow, what the hell was in my IV?

I don’t really remember the bed ride back to my private curtained waiting area, but after two of the best apple juices I’ve ever had in my life, Son Number One showed up to shuttle me home.

Easy peasy. So, remember gentlemen, there’s nothing to fear. And they’ve recently lowered the initial screening age down to 45 years old, so don’t wait.

And if you happen to find yourself needing to storm a heavily fortified beach for some reason, I’d highly recommend bringing along a supply of sodium, potassium, and magnesium sulfates to slip into your enemy’s water supply first.

Talk about softening up your target. It’s basically a gastrointestinal hand grenade.

Holy wow.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2023 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Walking is Hard Work

I would like to lodge a formal complaint against anatomy, physiology, exercise as a whole, or any combination thereof. I’m not sure who I should complain to here on earth, however, and I’m not about to complain to God about how my body works. That would be like complaining to Samsung about how my cell phone works. It’s so incredibly complicated and so, so far past my capacity for understanding it, that I have literally no leg to stand on there.

Speaking of legs to stand on, that’s what my formal complaint centers around. Since there’s no earthly authority in charge of this, I believe at this point that I’m just lodging a formal, public whine. So be it.

Here’s my problem: I’m a recovering engineer. No, not my engineer-ish social awkwardness. The other problem. The fact that after a technical college education and a lengthy career in engineering design and implementation, I understand the physical laws of the universe fairly well. At least, the physical laws of motion.

For example, and to my point, work is work. It doesn’t matter if I move one pound up ten feet in the air all at once, or if I move that same one pound up one foot a day for ten days. When I get to ten feet, the amount of work I’ve done is the same for both scenarios. The difference is in the amount of power that was required. Power involves a time component. Work does not. The social awkwardness problem comes in when I think people want an explanation of that concept at dinner parties.

The complaint, or whine, that I am lodging is that walking versus running should work the same. My problem is that I have recent empirical proof that it does not.

We just got back from Washington D.C., where we walked for six straight days. My main/only form of exercise is running. And when I say running, I mean jogging. And when I say jogging, I mean slowly. I run three miles, three days a week. That’s nine miles a week. I think that’s pretty good for a fifty-year-old guy who likes chocolate more than he should. At least, I thought it was pretty good.

Here's my complaint: None of my running prepared me for the walking, and the walking didn’t translate back to the running. Allow me to explain.

My feet hurt in D.C. My legs hurt. I was tired at the end of the days. My feet and legs don’t hurt after running. By the laws of the universe, if I can run three miles in a day, I ought to be able to walk at least nine or so, right? I mean, I don’t really know what the conversion is, because I’ve never timed my walking pace for a mile, but it’s got to be at least three to one against my running, right. I do both very slowly!

We walked a lot, but I don’t think we ever got anywhere close to walking nine miles in one day on the trip. The Smithsonians are big, but they’re not THAT big.

Anyway, we do all that walking, amazed at how tired we are from it, then come home and take a nice two-day break before resuming normal activities. If all the walking was inexplicably wearing me out so much, I should have been getting in better shape, not worse, right? Well, let me tell you, my first attempt at running was pathetic. Or should I say, pathetic-er than normal.

I was sucking wind! It felt like I hadn’t been doing anything for a month. And our sample size of test subjects is not just limited to one overweight, marginally-athletic fifty-year-old man. Our super-trim, very athletic sixteen-year-old, Son Number Two, was right there with me doing all the walking in our nation’s capital. He came home to a lacrosse scrimmage and was a pathetic mess trying to run up and down the field as a midfielder. It was sad.

I am not OK with doing all that work and getting seemingly no return on it whatsoever. Work is work in physics. It should be the same in physiology!

OK, enough whining. I obviously need to get back to work.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2022 Marc Schmatjen

 

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The Hot Dog Diet Plan

From time to time, I try to provide a public service with this column, since you receive basically zero useful information from me for a vast majority of the year. I’m here today to tell you I have solved the mystery of weight loss once and for all. You’re welcome.

Like almost every guy over forty, I am constantly waging a half-assed attempt at losing a little weight. Deep in the back of my brain, I know exactly what I need to do to shed unwanted pounds, but pizza and chocolate covered almonds exist, and that’s where the problems arise. My portion controls usually revolve around how big my plate is, and if there are seconds available.

There was one specific time in my life when I actually needed to lose weight in order to be allowed to go on vacation. We were scheduled to ride the mules down into the Grand Canyon, which is a thrilling, spine-chilling, hair-raising, intensely painful, once-in-a-lifetime adventure that I would highly recommend to anyone with a large life insurance policy.

You had to be under 200 pounds in order to ride, which was a bit of a challenge for me, to say the least. I came up with a diet plan that worked, mustered the willpower to pull it off over many months, and climbed the little step ladder onto Lucy the Gigantic Mule’s back at 196 pounds.

That was five years ago, and back then I lost the weight by cutting out excess sugar and eating a Mule Salad for lunch every day. If you are unfamiliar, and Mule Salad is a large bowl of lettuce topped with lite Italian dressing and despair.

I have since searched the burger joints of North America and found all that weight I lost, re-lost some of it, and re-found most of it again. This last month, however, has been a different story. I have cracked the code on efficient, no-nonsense weight loss, and thankfully for all of us, the Mule Salad is not in the equation. I have replaced it with a pastrami-wrapped hot dog covered in cheese.

You heard me. I have invented the pastrami cheese dog diet, and it works like a charm. You still have to cut out excess sugar, unfortunately, but you get to eat hot dogs instead of salad! Like I said, you’re welcome.

Here’s the entire diet plan, free of charge, that helped me drop more than ten pounds in the month of August:

 

Breakfast: Fruit smoothie and maybe some sourdough toast with butter and jam if you’re in the mood.

Daily Hydration: Coffee and LaCroix

Lunch: Nathan’s bun-length hot dog, wrapped in pastrami, with melted cheddar cheese, sliced dill pickle, ketchup, and mustard on a standard-length regular hot dog bun.

Afternoon snack: Nuts (not coated in chocolate) or a piece of fruit, if required.

Dinner: Whatever is for dinner, in a sensible portion.

COVID: Eighteen days of COVID, insane cough, crazy fatigue, becoming a completely worthless heap on the couch, sleeping all the time, not eating anything for a week and then only soup for five days, lots of Gatorade.

Dessert: Only on special occasions, no more than twice a week.

 

There you have it, folks. It’s a simple diet plan with amazing results. The only problem is, I’m not sure I would wish it on my worst enemy.

Except for the pastrami cheese dogs, that is. Those come with my highest recommendation.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2021 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite T-shirt is at SmidgeTees

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Exam Questions

Few things are more impressive in their function than the combination of medicine and technology. In most cases, it’s impressively good, like laser eye surgery, MRI’s, and cyborgs.

In some cases, it’s impressively bad, like when our three sons became “medically independent” at the age of twelve under the idiotic HIPAA rules and now they all have their own user names and passwords to access their secret medical records that I am not supposed to know anything about and I’m not supposed to have access to their accounts except for the fact that if you let a twelve-year-old set up their own medical user name and password, no one, including the twelve-year-old, will ever know what they are, and also I am not allowed to know anything about their medical records or activities right up until it comes time to pay for them and then all of a sudden I am allowed to be involved and no one can seem to see why that is the dumbest thing in the world.

But I digress.

One of the lesser but nonetheless impressively good features of modern technology and medicine is the ability to log into your medical account and see all your files and notes that they take during your doctor’s visits.

I had a yearly physical appointment the other day, and just for kicks I read the notes afterward. While the technology is cool, I do have a few questions about the notes themselves that have me wondering just how precise this whole “physical exam” system is.

For starters, my body mass index was listed as 29.27, which really meant nothing to me until I read further and saw that I was in the 25-30 = Overweight category. I would generally agree that I’m overweight, especially after my impressive Halloween candy intake this year, but a closer look at the numbers had me questioning the data.

Noting that I was on the high end of Overweight, I found a BMI chart that told me I was only two pounds (or six Snickers, in Halloween math) away from being Obese. It’s not just that “obese” for me is unrealistic, but that the chart wants me to lose 40 pounds just to get out of Overweight and into Optimal. And I can lose as much as 80 pounds and still be in the Optimal category.

Now, you may not know me personally, but let me assure you, if I lost 80 pounds, I would look like I was just freed from a two-year stint in a POW camp. I’m not putting a lot of weight in the BMI chart. (See what I did there?)

Under GENERAL in the notes, I was listed as “well developed, well nourished, in no distress, and alert.” I will take all of that as a compliment.

However, under HEAD, they wrote, “skull is normal in size and shape.” Nothing could be further from the truth. My head is abnormally large and dented and scarred from years of poor timing and/or decision making. I think my doctor may have just been trying to be nice, but facts are key here.

EYES: “normal in appearance.” I would agree with that, but would also like to add “kind, bright, and wise.”

EARS: “external ear normal.” Again, they are rather large and I think she was just being nice. Same situation with my nose.

LUNGS: “normal chest excursion.” I have no idea if that was a typo, but if not, then I don’t know anything about how my lungs work.

HEART: “regular rate and rhythm.” Maybe here in this office, but you should feel it when I try to take my 29.27 BMI's on a run!

Under MUSCULOSKELETAL and EXTREMITIES, I am proud to report that I have a normal spine ROM, no cyanosis, no clubbing, and no edema, assuming all of that is good, since I have no idea what any of it means.

MOTOR FUNCTION has me a little confused. They noted “grossly normal strength.” On the one hand, “grossly” would suggest that I am super buff. On the other hand, “normal” is not a word associated with an excess of anything. I am either offended by this, or pleased with my workout efforts. I’m not sure which.

As confusing and questionable as all that was, the note that really had me wondering was under CORTICAL FUNCTION. My doctor listed me as having “normal intellectual function, normal memory, and good judgement.”

C’mon! These are the notes on me, right? It’s as if they got my file mixed up with someone who can keep a thought in their head for more than ten seconds, can remember what they had for breakfast, and doesn’t have an impressively long list of bad decisions that haunt them to this very day.

Technology is great and all, but having notes available online is only helpful if the notes are true. Trying to be nice about it isn’t helping anyone.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to go eat a salad.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

 

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Google Nesting Place

It was recently announced, in what can only be seen as the beginning of the end of the world, that Google has made the obvious strategic move to team up with Nest.

Google will now be inside your thermostat.

I'm not sure that's a great idea. Do I need to point out the massive failure that was Google+ again? If they can't set up and manage a simple thing like a world-wide social media and networking site to compete with Facebook, what makes them think they are qualified to determine what temperature to keep my living room?

Do they even realize that my wife lives in the house? Sure, Google probably has a lot of smart people behind the scenes, but if they are foolish enough to think they can remove the manual aspect of temperature management inside my home, they obviously didn’t get too much common sense with all that book learnin’!

I mean, do the Google engineers even comprehend the fact that 72 degrees is apparently a completely different temperature, depending on what temperature it is outside. Or in the car?

Do the geniuses at Google understand that my wife thinks 72 degrees is not the same temperature in the summer as it is in the winter?

Do they know that having it be two degrees colder or warmer in an adjacent room or near a window can completely negate whatever temperature it is on the couch?

Something tells me the Google Nest won’t understand the gravity of the situation when my wife says, “It’s cold in here.” The Google Nest can’t possibly learn to read her body language and tone of voice.

Should it immediately spike the thermostat to 95 degrees and retreat to the garage for two hours, or should it bring her a blanket, kiss her on the forehead, and ask about her day? I’m not sure the Google engineers will be able to write that decision tree into the code with any success.

As I understand it, computers work mainly by computing things. I would assume the Google people need to somehow write some code of some kind to run the thermostat, and I assume that code will need to compute different variables.

Off the top of my head, in the last thirty seconds, I developed this short, very incomplete list of variables they’ll need to consider in order to choose the correct temperature for my wife:

Tone of voice

Posture

Current temperament and mood

Sarcasm level

Actual outside temperature

Perceived outside temperature

Actual current inside temperature

Perceived inside temperature

Season

Weather

Dew point

Relative humidity

Current temperament and mood of children

Wind speed and direction outside

Temperature of garage she just spent seven seconds in

Clothing layers and thickness

Square inches of exposed skin near the ankles or wrists

Shoes vs. boots

Do the boots have fur?

Actual draftiness

Perceived draftiness

Activity level in the last hour

Sock type and thickness

Are the socks “cozy” or just regular?

Hydration level

Pre/During/Post dinnertime?

Amount of wine consumed

I just can’t see them figuring all that out.

But, never mind all that. There’s one central problem that will cause all the rest of these problems to be moot: The Google Nest will be mounted to the wall.

How is it possibly going to duck out of the way of a flying shoe if it’s foolish enough to suggest that she might want to put on a sweater?

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

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The All-Cake Diet

I’m developing a new diet with the help of Son Number Two. It’s called the All-Cake Diet, and it’s mind-blowing. I’ll probably write a best-selling book about it someday.

Here’s how it works:

You start with a middle child who is the epitome of growth mindset and creativity. Make sure that child can play two or three instruments, is good at sports, can crochet blankets and sweaters, likes to shop for plywood and 2x4’s to build better-than-third-world-quality forts and structures, enjoys outdoor recreation and whittling, is good at puzzles, can rewire household electronics to make ad hoc surveillance equipment, enjoys blacksmithing and soldering, has a strong entrepreneurial streak, and isn’t afraid to make a working blender out of a water bottle, flattened nails, and a 3000-RPM DC hobby motor.

When you have that child in place, have them somehow develop an interest in baking cookies. Encourage this delicious new hobby as long as possible until the natural escalation occurs to cupcakes, and then finally, to full-scale cake baking.

At this point you will need to have shifted at least half your monthly grocery budget over to the flour/sugar/butter/cake mix line items.

Eat his practice cakes and tell him they are delicious, because they are.

When it’s his birthday, buy him books on cake decorating and a vast assortment of cake decorating tools. (At least enough to start one or two mid-sized commercial bakeries)

Be prepared to watch countless hours of Cake Boss and Next Great Baker, actually enjoying them, but at the same time marveling at how far down the spiraling vortex of entertainment we’ve traveled that these two shows even exist, and trying to imagine, if you had traveled back in time, how you would explain to your then-young grandmother that we now have multiple television shows about baking cakes.

Eat more practice cakes.

Take him to the craft store to buy something called fondant, which is, apparently, flat cake icing that does not need to be refrigerated and comes in a very expensive cardboard box, because there is no way anyone could justify charging that much for flat cake icing.

Eat more practice cakes.

Marvel at the volcano cake he decided to make for his little brother’s birthday, complete with an interior dry ice chamber to create “smoke.”

Take him to the store to buy dry ice. (And, obviously, more cake supplies.)

Eat a volcano cake.

Take a delicious one-day detour into the world of apple muffins, then return to cakes.

Learn, one morning, as he is measuring the driveway, that he plans to make a cake model of your house.

Spend the next few days cleaning up the kitchen non-stop as sheet cake after sheet cake come out of the oven and into the freezer in preparation for the big project.

During the build, hover in the kitchen to collect the cake scraps that get discarded during the house shaping process.

When the project is complete, invite the neighbors over to eat your delectable model home, which comes complete with the garage, backyard, pool, play structure, and even the dog.

The next day, thank the good Lord the house was too big to finish and there are leftovers.

Eat your garage for lunch.

So on, and so forth.

I’ve got to tell you, this new diet is amazing, and I would highly recommend it, especially if you’re as big a fan of cake as I am. I’m loving this, and I’m really seeing the results.

I am, of course, using the term “diet” in the sense of “what you eat,” and not “a way to lose weight.” Cake makes you fat.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go eat my front yard for dessert.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

The Roar of the Antioxidants

I know what you did on Sunday night. No, not that. The other thing. Yes, on New Year’s Eve you declared to yourself and the rest of the party guests that you had a resolution. Some of you may have even remembered what it was the next morning.

This is the year you’re finally going to eat healthy.

You fool. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. Sure, healthy eating sounds great and all, until you really hear it. It made me deaf.

I was like you once. All full of New Year’s resolution, ready to kick those junk food habits and eat clean. It was going to be great. A few years ago on January 1^st I fired up my new healthy diet. And what’s healthier for breakfast than a fruit smoothie? Answer: nothing.

Bananas, apples, peaches, cherries, blueberries, strawberries, and even some spinach thrown in there. How could I go wrong? Just toss it all into my wife’s Vitamix blender and flip the switch.

Holy horsepower, Batman, this thing could blend a brick. And wow is it loud! I mean, I’ve made my fair share of margaritas over the years, but those old blenders never sounded like this. Even crushing ice with the “frappe” button when the Oster was switched to “high” wasn’t half as loud as this Vitamix just chopping up some fruit.

Sweet mother, I’m only at 7 on the 10 dial. What the hell does the “high” switch do? Oh, it makes the blender sound less like a NASCAR engine and more like one of the jets on a 737, that’s what.

Wow! This thing is insane. Our antioxidants are going 400 mph. I just made a fruit smoothie in 2.6 seconds. I love this blender!!

Turbo smoothies became a morning staple, and eating clean was going great until one night a few months ago my whole family started getting agitated and walking around the living room saying things like, “Where is it?”, “Who has it?”, and “Is it in the couch?” Everyone was annoyed but me, and I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about.

“What are you looking for?”

“The watch!”

“What watch?”

“You don’t hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“You’re joking, right?”

Now they were all staring at me incredulously instead of looking for some watch.

“You don’t hear the watch alarm going off in this room right now?”

“What watch alarm?”

“You have to be kidding.”

“Here it is,” said one of our boys, finding the offending digital watch under the corner of the couch. He held it up. “Hear it now?”

“Hear what?”

At this point they all can’t believe what they’re hearing (or more to the point, what I wasn’t), and I think they’ve all conspired against me in some half-assed and altogether idiotic plot to make me think I can’t hear anything. Then they handed me the watch. Holding it in my hand, I was still convinced I was being punked. But when I held it up to ear – literally pressed against my ear - I could finally hear the beeping. Faintly.

Hmm… that can’t be good.

A few weeks ago I took the boys to their annual check-up visit at the doctor. As part of the initial tests, the nurse put headphones on them and checked their hearing. All three boys laughed and told the nurse that I was the one he should be checking. He offered to check my hearing when he was done with them, so I put the headphones on and prepared to raise my hand when I heard the beep.

It was a long time before I ever raised my hand.

At one point, I stopped and told the guy I thought the headphones weren’t working. He assured me they were working fine. He knew they were because everyone else in the room could hear the beep coming from the headphones – located ON MY HEAD – and I still hadn’t raised my hand.

Apparently, as kids we are supposed to be able to hear sound frequencies between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz. Your standard middle-aged man can hear between 20 and 16,000 Hz, and an old man should be able to hear between 20 and 8,000 Hz.

Normal conversation happens at 4000 Hz and below, which is good news, because I could hear the beeps below 4000 Hz. It’s above that where my problem lies. I seem to be just fine from 20 – 4000 Hz, but severely iffy between 4000 and 5000.

Above 5000 Hz I have the hearing of a grapefruit. Nada. Zip. I max out 11,000 Hz below my own age group, and old-timer grandpa can hear 3000 Hz more than me.

Drastic measures need to be taken. Hearing aids? Of course not! Hearing aids are for old people. I’m just going to stop using the Vitamix. Fruit smoothies have obviously destroyed my hearing, so fruit smoothies must go before I start hobbling around with a cane saying “Eh?” to everyone I meet.

Be careful what you wish for. Eating clean has been proven to be incredibly dangerous. That’s why this year my New Year’s resolution is to get back to my old habit of eating Oreos for breakfast. Oreos are silent. Oreos can’t damage your hearing. It’s science.

Happy New Year,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

My Dog is Full of Crap

A month ago, my entire world was consumed by dog pee when our new Lab puppy had a urinary tract infection. It was really great. She was expelling nine to ten times her body weight in urine every hour, fortunately only inside the house.

We got that cleared up with twelve rolls of paper towels and two cans of carpet cleaner for the house, and for the dog, an evil-smelling remedy of apple cider vinegar and Greek yogurt. Personally, I would have rather eaten the carpet cleaner.

Amazingly, even after ten days of ingesting that demonic concoction with her food, her poop remained normal.

All that has changed now.

Now, my world revolves around her poop. Now, a month after the pee issues cleared up, she is experiencing some issues in the bowel region. To put it in layman’s terms, we’ve got poopy puddles and potty problems, people.

By the grace of God, however, she has not pooped in the house.

{sound of me knocking on every wooden surface in the house}

I will spare you the less than appetizing details. Suffice it to say, her poop has been anything but normal lately. If you decide to visit our backyard in the next few days, I would strongly suggest bringing some hip waders and a military-style gas mask.

She’s also having trouble “going” all at once, and has been gracious enough to wake me up multiple times the last two nights to allow me to experience her GI tract problems with her. She’s so thoughtful for a canine.

I just hope this passes quickly, because I am out of ideas. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what she could have eaten that would be causing such bowel-related stress. She has been religious about sticking to the standard Labrador retriever diet. This past week she has only eaten:

Thirty sticks

Six pounds of leaves

One plastic outer coating off a cheap baseball, and half the stitches

Just under three acres of grass

One wayward hotdog, whole

Thirty gallons of pool water

Seventeen pounds of bark chips

A handful of lamb lung toasters –I am not making that up – Treats that consist of little pieces of dried lamb lung with waffle marks on them!

Three-quarters of a foam squishy ball

One pair of swim goggles

Fifty or so Rice Krispies

More or less half a roll of duct tape

Somewhere between six inches and a foot of polyethylene pool noodle

Thirty-six square inches of dog bed plush top fuzz

One paper towel

One Lego man’s head, with space helmet

Half a tennis ball

One gravity-stricken slice of a quesadilla, with sour cream, whole

Two feet of nylon rope

And approximately six hundred little shriveled red plum things off the ground from our neighbor’s tree.

Oh, and about five pounds of actual dog food. But she doesn’t really seem to eat that, so much as suck it in, the way a jet engine sucks in air.

I mean, who knows what could be causing this, what with such a strict diet? Your guess is as good as mine.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2017 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

HIPAA Critical, Part II

Does anyone have the number for the idiot or idiots over at HIPAA that I can send my gas receipt to? I just had to drive across town to Son Number One’s pediatrician for a special office visit so that he could get his own health care web access all set up... you know, because he’s twelve now.

When you turn twelve these days, at least in California, you’re medically independent. For everything except the bill, that is. The bill they still send to me, even though I’m not allowed access to his medical records anymore. Funny how those HIPAA folks made a nice loophole for actually collecting the money and all.

Why did I have to drive all the way across town? Well, they want to make it so the twelve-year-old has their own personal user name and password-protected access to your health care plan’s website, but ironically, you can’t set that up on the website. You have to physically go to the doctor’s office and bring the actual twelve-year-old with you, so they can repeatedly ask why they had to come if they’re not having an appointment. Do you know why you, as the parent, have to go, too? Because twelve-year-olds CAN’T DRIVE, that’s why!

As if this galactically stupid monumental waste of our time is not asinine enough, the poor doctor’s assistant, who has approximately two bazillion better things to be doing, has to go through the ridiculous process of showing the twelve-year-old all the fun features of the new website he now has access to. The guy actually tried to show my son how to set up an appointment. My son and I looked at the guy with the exact same blank stare.

My stare meant, “Are you being $#&%’ing serious right now?”

My son’s stare probably meant, “Can I change the background image to a dragon?”

Prior to that, the guy had actually asked my twelve-year-old what he wanted his user name and password to be. Here’s how that would have gone if I hadn’t been in the room:

“What would you like your user name and password to be?”

“Huh?”

“Your user name. Right here. What do you want it to say?”

“I get to choose??”

“Yes.”

“Cool! Make it FlamingNinjaDeathRay.”

“All right. How about a password?”

“I dunno.”

“It has to have at least one number or character.”

“OK. Make it FlamingNinjaDeathRay2000##**##.”

“All right. You’re all set.”

Thirty seconds later

Me – “What happened in there?”

Son – “I got a website.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, I have a user name and password.”

“OK. What are they?”

“SamuraiDeathFlame, or something.”

“Is that the user name or the password?”

“I dunno. I’m hungry.”

Since I was in the room, we now have a user name and password that one of us will remember. Now my big grown-up twelve-year-old can finally take charge of his health care, as it was always meant to be. I logged on for him when we got home. (Don’t tell HIPAA.)

While I was on his amazing new health care web access portal – which looks exactly like the one I have, just conspicuously without the ‘Bill Pay’ option – I noticed that the doctor’s office had two online forms that they wanted my medically-independent son to fill out, since they sent them to his new account that I’m not allowed to have access to.

The first questionnaire started like this:

Please answer the following questions. It will help your clinicians spend more time discussing those specific issues that concern you.

Please list all medications, vitamins, inhalers or supplements your child is currently taking:

Actual answer – None

What his answer would have been – I don’t understand any of those words.

Please list your child's medication or food allergies, if any:

Actual answer – None

What his answer would have been – Cough syrup, peanuts, cauliflower, mayonnaise, carrots, and celery.

Has your child had any major medical problems since his or her last check up?

Actual answer – No

What his answer would have been – I have a wart on my toe and my dad is freezing it off and it hurts like crazy when he puts the cold thing on it, but I don’t know when my last checkup was and I don’t know when I got the wart and I also skinned my knee really bad playing kickball.

At that point I stopped reading the questionnaire, deleted it, and went ahead and changed his password without telling him.

I’ll bet you folks at HIPAA never saw that one coming. I’ll send you the gas receipt. And just so we’re clear, you can reimburse me, not my son.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2017 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Whoops, We HIPAA'd your TDaP

I’m confused, California. I just want to make sure I’m perfectly clear on what’s happening here...

I have a son in the sixth grade, attending a public school in our great state of California. Next year, if we’ve paid off the right people, he will go on to the seventh grade. Our public school district, operating in and under the authority of our great state of California just sent me, his parent, a notice about his immunization requirements for school. What?

The letter starts like this:

Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, continues to threaten students in California. To help stop its spread, all incoming 7^th graders are required by law to have proof of a whooping cough booster (TDaP) vaccine, or file an exemption, in order to attend classes this year. Students will not be allowed to attend classes without an immunization or medical exemption signed by a physician.

Then you guys ask me, his parent, to please submit an immunization record for him. You see, this is the part that confuses me. He’s twelve, for goodness sake. You know he’s twelve because you know his birthdate, and you’re in charge of teaching him algebra, so I assume you guys can also do birthday math. So why are you sending this letter to me?

Don’t you remember the letter that your HIPAA folks sent me a few months ago when he turned twelve? Do your HIPAA people and your school district people not talk to each other over there?

How in the world am I supposed to tell you anything about his immunization record? Your HIPAA department just informed me that I don’t have access to his medical records anymore now that he’s all grown up, being twelve and all.

By the way, how old are your HIPAA people over there? I have to assume they’re all over one hundred and fifty years old. Is that why you chose the ripe old age of twelve? Because the people writing these laws are all from the good old days when everyone left the farm at twelve to get a job and needed to prove to their new employers that all their liniments, tonics, and salves against consumption and winter fever were up to date?

Anyway, if you want to know about his immunizations, you’ll obviously need to talk to him. Which leads me to the next thing I’m curious about. Are you just tired of having anyone over the age of twelve attend school?

Students will not be allowed to attend classes without an immunization or medical exemption signed by a physician.

So, in case you’re slow on the uptake, let me recap this for you. You told the twelve-year-olds that their parents aren’t in charge of their medical decisions anymore. Then you told them that they have to do a medical thing or they can’t go to class. So, what you did there was tell twelve-year-olds that they are now in charge of deciding whether to go to school or not.

I would assume you school district folks have met twelve-year-olds before. You must see the problem here. Or do all your old-timey HIPAA people just want them to go get jobs? I can’t figure you guys out.

Speaking of that, there’s one more thing in this letter that I can’t figure out. I don’t mean to get all logical on you or anything, but you started the letter by saying that whooping cough continues to threaten students in California. Then you said to help stop its spread, students are required to have proof of a vaccine, or file an exemption?

So, just so I’m clear, one of the ways you plan to stop the spread of whooping cough is by collecting vaccine exemption letters? Was there even a meeting on this, or does Phil in the back cubicle just write down whatever the hell comes into his head and then sends it out to the parents?

Again, not to get all logical on you, but the only way that makes any sense is if the non-vaccinated kids are required to carry their exemption letters with them at all times to hold in front of their faces when they cough. Since my twelve-year-old regularly forgets to carry anything that isn’t physically attached to him, I don’t see that plan working.

Anyway, good luck getting my son’s vaccination records from him. He doesn’t know the name of his doctor, the name of his doctor’s medical practice, the name of our insurance provider, his insurance plan number, the telephone number to any of the aforementioned offices, the fact that he even has a vaccination record, or the name of his school district.

Basically he knows the name of his school and the exact time of each recess.

But I think everything will work out fine, you know, because he’s twelve now.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2017 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

The Gift of Life - Repost

This year for Christmas I got my wife new non-stick cookware that I will personally use almost one hundred percent more than she will. For some reason, that made me think of Christmas three years ago when I gave my wife a new shower mirror for me.

Here’s the explanation. Enjoy!

December 25, 2013

Of all the modern-day Christmas miracles out there, the one that stands out the most to me is the female of the species. Sure, there are many miraculous things about women - childbirth, ability to multi-task, speed of emotional state changes, willingness to ask directions, and the list goes on and on. But I’m talking about a very specific skillset that women have, that gets highlighted during the holidays - The ability to wrap gifts.

Sure, anyone with opposable thumbs can wrap a box up with paper, but women possess the unique ability to do it without having it end up looking like it was done by a drugged chimpanzee with an unnatural love for Scotch tape.

I am a reasonably smart guy, insofar as I can brush my own teeth and dress myself. I can drive a car, heat up canned food without burning the house down (knock on wood), and even do algebra problems with less than two variables. I was trained by a world-class university in California to be an engineer, and they even gave me a diploma. (Although it was never signed... When I asked them about that, they said, “Just take it and go!”)

Legitimate college diploma or not, you would think that a man who can set his own alarm clock would be able to get better at gift wrapping as the years went on. Sadly, that is not the case. I seem to be getting worse, actually. I don’t even bother trying to put bows on gifts anymore. The bow was meant to increase a gift’s appeal – adding to its beauty. My attempts at bows have the exact opposite effect, making the gift look even more like it was attacked by wolverines prior to ending up under the Christmas tree.

I apparently lack every skill necessary to make a present look attractive, because I can’t even use gift bags correctly. When they first became popular I thought gift bags were my salvation, until my wife informed me that you must put tissue paper on top of the gift, and have some of it stick out of the top of the bag. Sounds simple enough, and she makes it look so easy, but try as I might I cannot even put a simple piece of tissue paper in a bag and have it protrude properly. It always ends up looking like I am giving you an unwanted bag of used tissue paper instead of an enticing and mysterious gift.

There is an upside to my total lack of skill with wrapping paper, however. I am never asked to help with the Santa gifts. We want Christmas to remain magical for as long as possible with our boys, and even my five-year-old would know something was amiss when he saw my ridiculously lopsided end folds.

I only had to wrap one present this year. I took my time, concentrated, started over a few times, and it still looks like I wrapped it with my feet. I am just never going to be good at it. While I may be horrible with the wrapping paper, I must say, I am a genius when it comes to the gift itself. This year I got my wife the gift of life. My life.

What better gift for a spouse than a gift that helps ensure her partner will be around for many more years to walk through this crazy world with her, hand in hand? What magical gift is this, you may ask? The answer is simple. I bought my wife a new shower mirror for me.

Confused? So was she. Go figure.

It’s really quite simple. We have a mirror in our shower that I use to shave. It’s a 6-inch round plastic-framed mirror that is attached to the shower wall at my face level with a suction cup. The suction cup is getting old. Twice in the last few months, the suction cup has failed to do its job of sucking, and the mirror has fallen off the wall and loudly down onto the floor of the shower. Both times this happened it was the middle of the night. When the shower mirror bangs around at the bottom of the shower in the middle of the night, the glass shower walls have an amplifying effect that makes it sound as if a truck has just driven through the wall of the bathroom and completely destroyed the shower.

When I hear a truck drive through the wall of our house and obliterate our shower in the middle of the night, I sit bolt upright in bed with my heart going approximately five thousand beats per minute. Over the roar of the blood jack-hammering in my ears I hear my wife mumble, “It’s just your shower mirror,” as she casually rolls over to go back to sleep. I have no idea how she stays so calm, but I am positive that my heart cannot take a third shower mirror suction cup failure.

So, to ensure that my wife has a live husband going forward, I bought her a new shower mirror. This time with a more permanent wall attachment than a suction cup.

Thoughtful? I thought so. All she said was, “Oh look. You gave yourself a new mirror. What a great gift for me.”

I assumed that she would have immediately understood the underlying implications of a long and happy marriage that will be given to us by this simple new mirror, but her tone of voice seemed more than a little sarcastic. Hmm…

Well, it might not have been the most well-received gift ever, but at least the wrapping job sucked.

Merry Christmas, baby.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

HIPAA Critical

Son Number One just turned twelve years old. I have a news flash for you. Most eighteen-year-olds are idiots. What do those two things have in common? Health care, obviously.

Eighteen-year-olds are, by definition, still teenagers, and therefore some of the most irrational and irresponsible creatures on the planet. Teenagers are worse than toddlers, actually, because their brains work exactly the same, but teenagers have cars.

Why am I focusing on eighteen-year-olds? Because they shouldn’t be in charge of anything. Whomever decided that eighteen was the age to become an adult probably just couldn’t stand having the kid living in their house any longer and wanted to be legally allowed to evict them.

Since twelve-year-olds are younger than eighteen-year-olds, do you know who else shouldn’t be in charge of anything? Twelve-year-olds, that’s who. Makes sense, right? Well, not to the government, I guess. Those braniacs just put my twelve-year-old son in charge of his own health care decisions.

I was not expecting that to happen, because I am a rational adult human, so it never even occurred to me that something as asinine as that would even be possible until I tried to log into our health insurance website the other day. Son Number One was missing from my list of family members on the plan.

I just figured it was a website maintenance issue, since we had just gotten home from his doctor’s visit. After further investigation I found out that HIPAA decided that twelve was the perfect age for health care independence.

HIPAA apparently stands for HighAndMighty Idiots Parenting AllOurKidsForUs Anonymously. Who comes up with these crazy acronyms, anyway? The folks over at the government health care office have made it illegal for me to have unfettered access to my own child’s medical records.

Hmm... Well, that seems really dumb. I know my sons’ doctor had nothing to do with this, because he is a doctor, so he has an actual, working brain. Unfortunately, it’s his office that gets to deal with the aftermath of this HIPAA stupidity.

My twelve-year-old is now in charge of his own health care decisions. OK, fine. One health care decision is whether or not to pay for your health care. I’ll let you give him a call about billing for that office visit. He doesn’t have a phone, or a credit card, or any money at all, or a clue, so good luck. When you do get a hold of him somehow and ask him for money, he’s going to talk to you about Star Wars, so be ready for that conversation to not go your way. If you try to call me to get payment, I’m afraid I’ll be forced to refer you to the rigid HIPAA guidelines. Sorry.

At our recent office visit, he got the first of his HPV shots. It’s a two shot process, and he needs the next one in a year. Good luck with scheduling that. Like I said, he doesn’t have a phone, but he does have a gmail account for school, so I guess you could try sending him an email. But be warned, if you include the word ‘papilllomavirus’ you’re going to lose him. He’ll just assume it’s a language he doesn’t know and then he’ll go play kickball.

You could keep it simple and say ‘come to the doctor,’ but he has no idea where your office is. Seriously, it could be a block from our house and he still wouldn’t know. He knows where Blaze Pizza and Cold Stone Creamery are, though. Maybe you could meet him at one of those places. I’m afraid I won’t be able to drive him over to your office, because I don’t want to risk being seen as coercing him into anything under the HIPAA guidelines. Your best bet would be to actually send someone over to the middle school with the syringe and corner him at lunch.

Since I’ll need to let him schedule his next appointment, if you guys aren’t willing to track him down, you should see him back at the doctor’s office when he’s about thirty-eight years old. He probably won’t be going to a pediatrician any more by then, so you may have seen the last of him thanks to HIPAA.

Also, I’m just perusing the six-page health care instructional handout you mistakenly handed me during the office visit. I left it for him to read, but it ended up wadded up with his gum stuck to it. I guess he wasn’t all that interested in reading up on his most pressing twelve-year-old health care issues. Perhaps that’s because he’s twelve. Tough to say.

Anyway, most of the immunizations and testing page was illegible due to the Juicy Fruit, but I did notice there were sections on nutrition, screen time, and sleep. Now that my twelve-year-old is in charge of all this stuff, and since he apparently has no interest in reading your helpful tips, you might want to come over and talk to him. He’ll be the one in a twelve-year-old boy-shaped divot on the couch, catatonic in front of the TV, surviving on root beer and pita chip crumbs from the cushions.

Maybe we could get the school nurse to give him some advice. That is, if he decides to go to school at all. Am I allowed to insist that he goes to school anymore, now that he’s all grown up? I guess I should check the governmental regulations on that.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Curls for the Core

Son Number One said the funniest thing he's ever said the other day. He asked his mom if we had any weights.

“Weights?” she asked, while trying not to laugh directly into his face. “Like dumbbells to lift?” *partially stifled snort*

“Yeah.”

“Uhh... Yes we do. Why do you ask?”

“I want to start working out. I need to work on my core. I can't even do a sit-up.”

*red-faced, snorting cough and quick turn away* “That’s great, honey.”

Please don't misunderstand. We are not normally in the habit of laughing at and mocking our children. I mean, not unless they do something incredibly stupid. Then, they’re just bringing it on themselves.

Anyway, this wasn't one of those times, so we were fighting very hard to keep straight faces. You see, the request for free weights and a workout routine would have seemed completely normal coming from Son Number Two, and would have been odd but believable from Number Three, but Son Number One? He doesn't like to move.

If you want to get him to groan, moan, whine, and complain all in one sentence, just wait for him to be sitting and then tell him he needs to get up. Want to hear him howl? Ask him to come upstairs to talk to you. He’s only eleven years old and he already sounds like he’s ninety.

Very early on in his first season, he asked his soccer coach if he could just go ahead and be goalie all the time, because as he put it, "I don't really like to run much."

Years later in his athletic career, Son Number One was told by his mean parents that he would be on his elementary school's cross country running team. After an intense period of whining we answered his main recurring question of “Whyyyyyyy????????”

“Because we participate on school sports teams and cross country is the only sport at your school.”

The other obvious reason was that his parents are all about any school-sponsored way to keep their kids out of the house for as long as possible, but we didn’t mention that part.

Son Number Two was told that he would be on the cross country team as well, and his response to the news was different than Son Number One’s, although it did involve him.

“I’m going to beat him!” was all he said.

We had very little doubt. Number One’s love of running had not yet blossomed at that point. Still hasn’t as a matter of fact.

At their first cross country meet, Son Number Two’s goal was to place in the top twenty runners. He met his goal. Son Number One's goal was, and I quote, "to not come in last." He also met his goal. By one runner. He was second to last. I think he beat a kid who was walking the course while playing Minecraft on his iPod.

It’s not a lack of ability. He can run really fast. I’ve seen him chase his brother when he’s angry. The boy’s got some jump. It’s just a lack of drive. That’s what makes baseball the perfect sport for him. The running is very short and far between episodes.

So given his eleven-year-and-counting streak of not wanting to give too much effort, we were more than a little surprised when he asked us for workout equipment. To his credit, we’re on day three of workout mania, and he hasn’t abandoned the five-pound weights yet. But I will maintain a cautious level of optimism, based on this conversation this morning:

“I just did a hundred curls on each arm.”

“Hmm... really feeling the burn, huh?”

“What?”

“Well, A) maybe we need to get you bigger dumbbells, and B) I’m pretty sure that didn’t help your core. You should do sit-ups.”

“That’s the problem, I can’t do sit-ups very well.”

“Exactly.”

“What do you mean? I don’t get it.”

“I know you don’t son. I love you.”

“Whatever. You’re weird. Can I go watch TV now?”

“Sure. Find something really funny. It’ll help your core.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.”

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

I Love Lucy - Part I

I had a mild heart attack when Lucy stumbled on the Devil's Backbone. That was shortly after I had a full-fledged aneurism at a place called Oh Jesus Corner, where Lucy hung me and most of herself out over a 1900-foot drop-off as she made a casual right turn.

By the grace of the aforementioned savior, I survived, and I would love to tell you all about my trip to the bottom of the Grand Canyon on a mule, but I’m much too sore to type. Everything hurts.

When I weighed in at the Bright Angel Lodge on Sunday afternoon, I was thrilled to discover that I’d made the cutoff by four pounds. At one hundred and ninety-six pounds, I was cleared to ride the mules. Hooray! I thought to myself. Looking back on that now, I’m thinking I might have been smarter to hit the bacon cheeseburgers a little harder and bring it in at two hundred and five. Then I would have been forced to walk down and I wouldn’t be as sore as I am right now.

I can’t sit at my computer to type this, because my butt hurts too much. Actually, technically I should say the bones at the tops of my legs where my butt should be hurt. Tragically, I was born without a butt. A butt would have surely helped with all the bouncing on that pile of pointy iron bars the wranglers had cleverly disguised as a leather saddle.

I can’t stand up to type this, because my thighs hurt too much, and my knees simply don’t work anymore. Apparently I have tendons or ligaments or nerves or something on the outsides of my knees. I had no idea they were even there, but it turns out they are incredibly allergic to riding a large animal down a steep hill for more than six minutes. Unfortunately, there was still a lot of riding left after the first six minutes, and the wranglers are very strict about their “don’t get off your mule and lay down on the ground” rule.

During our orientation, before the mule torture began, Scott, the bowlegged lead wrangler, told us that the mule rides have been operating in the Grand Canyon for one hundred and seventeen years. After about twenty minutes of riding I began to wonder why someone one hundred and sixteen years ago didn’t say, “You know what, this is silly. Let’s just walk.” I began to wonder that because nineteen minutes into the ride, a rock about the size of a basketball rolled down the cliff directly at one of the mules in the middle of the line. This caused four mules behind Lucy to try to hurl themselves over her, and consequently, over me.

Lucy was the tallest and widest mule in the group, likely due to my just barely clearing the weight limit. Presumably because it’s a pain to get cowboy boots on and off, they measure horses and mules by the “hand,” which equals four inches. Based on my public school math, and the fact that my stirrups were two or three feet above eye-level when I was standing next to Lucy, I’d estimate she was about two thousand hands tall.

Lucy was big and wide, but unfortunately, the trail we were on was anything but. When the rock came down, we were on a section of trail, carved into the cliff, about a half a Lucy wide. The four mules that needed to pass us - at two hundred miles per hour - each decided to take a different route. Lucy, not knowing what the problem was, but not caring either, was not about to be left behind. Just like children on a playground, if one of them starts to run, they all run. They don’t ask questions. The mule that was climbing over Lucy and the one that was under her legs were both left in the dust when she exploded away from the scene of the crime. The two mules that had managed to squeeze past her were understandably surprised when she just used her brute size to shove both of them up the trail into the five mules that were in front of us before all the excitement began.

The end result was ten mules all piled up at the next turn in the trail, kind of like a giant game of equestrian Jenga, all occupying a space you would be very hard-pressed to fit a mid-sized sedan into. Amazingly, no one was hurt in the melee, and we were able to extricate ourselves and our mules back out into a straight line again, albeit in a very different order than we had started.

The trip just kept getting more exciting after that.

Anyway, I’ll tell you all about the rest of it next week, provided my butt bones heal up enough for me to sit for any length of time. For now, about the only way I can be comfortable - and I’m using that term very loosely - is if I lay on my back while shoveling Advil into my mouth and washing them down with beer. As you can imagine, it’s hard to do that and type at the same time.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Fall for the Head Fake

My cell phone rang on my desk the other day, and my heart immediately sank when I saw the name on the screen. It was my boys’ school. Just great! One of them probably threw up, or more likely, set something on fire, and now I have to stop my work day and go pick them up.

“Hello?”

“Yes, Mr. Schmatjen, this is the school nurse. We have Son Number Three here in the office. He hit his head on the big giant brick wall out in the middle of the playground, but he’s fine.”

Yes! Just a head injury. My day is saved! “Well, I’m relieved to hear he’s OK.”

“Yes, he’s fine. It’s just school policy to call home whenever there’s a head injury.”

Wow. How do I not get more calls? That kid’s head is a magnet for hard objects. “Well, that sounds like a very good policy. So, just to be clear, it sounds like what you're telling me is this isn't going to affect my day at all?”

“Uh... No, I guess not. Again, he appears to be just fine.”

Hmm... Perhaps I should sound more concerned. “Well, as long as both his pupils are the same size, go ahead and kick his little butt back in the direction of his classroom.”

“Uh... Yes, he’s not showing any signs of serious injury. We’ll send him back to class. There will be a note coming home with him today. Again, just school policy.”

“Great. I’ll be sure to read that. Thanks, gotta go.”

“Uh... Would you like to talk to your son? Mr. Schmatjen? Sir?”

*Dial tone*

By the time I went to pick the boys up after school was out, I had forgotten all about the morning’s head vs. wall incident. It wasn’t until we were all home for an hour or so that I got around to looking through their folders.

School District Health Services Head Injury Letter

“Oh, yeah. Hey, buddy, how’s your head?”

“It’s OK. But I threw up in class today.”

*sound in my head of record scratching to a halt*

“You did what now? Before or after you hit your head?"

"After."

"Hang on, buddy. I need to read something."

School District Health Services Head Injury Letter

Since symptoms of a concussion may occur within 24 hours, we feel it is important for parents to have the following information:

OBSERVATION

Children should be kept under observation for the next 24 hours. The child should be encouraged toward quiet activities during the observation period.

Hmm... So screaming up and down the street on his scooter right after school wasn’t the right call?

TREATMENT

Apply ice for 1 hour to relieve pain and swelling.

We’ll call that one taken care of, more or less.

Give only clear liquids until no vomiting for at least 6 hours.

Well... He just ate a burrito when he got home from school, so I’m going to have to say I failed on this one.

Keep him awake for the first hour or so, after which time he may sleep if he want to. Awaken him every 4 hours to see if he is arousable, recognizes his parents, and to see if his pupils are equal size.

Well, he doesn’t seem sleepy, but I can tell you right now I won’t be able to wake him up if he does go to sleep. He’s the hardest sleeper we have. On any given night I can pick him up, slap him, and roll him down the stairs without waking him up. So how am I supposed to know if he’s normal or concussed?

I guess we could try to keep him up past his bed time, but that will end up being a problem with about half of this list of symptoms. Specifically:

Unconsciousness, “in a daze”, or unable to awaken child

Inability to recognize familiar people or objects

Slurred speech

Double vision

Staggering gait or loss of coordination

Every one of those things happens to him if he stays up even an hour past his bed time. So, I can’t let him go to sleep, and I can’t keep him awake. What now?

“Why didn’t the school call me again when you threw up?”

“Oh, it was just a little. I was bending over like this right after lunch, and I burped, and a little came out. It wasn’t a real throw up.”

*sound of School District Health Services Head Injury Letter crumpling up*

“Go ride your scooter some more while I make you another burrito. Don’t forget your helmet!”

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2015 Marc Schmatjen

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