Run For Your Lives, Here Comes The Colon Scope!

Welp, after 11 days in the hospital, my mom finally came home today and she's doing well. She had to have the slack yanked outta her chain a bit towards the end of her stay there... for her own good, but that's a whole nuther story. It's reached that point in our lives where a parent and child sometimes switch places... it's not a real easy swap either.

Eh well and C'est la vie, cousin.

A few of you have already heard this story, but it just seemed like a great time to wheel it out again because... well just because. The whole hospital thing and all that with my folks and sometimes a little levity goes a helluva long way in life.

Alright, my folks (Dad is 80 and blast to be around and my Mom is... is "interesting" lol) decided to each go have a colonoscopy done on the same day and naturally needed chauffeuring to the hospital and back home, and seeing to it that all questions were answered and asked and etc. etc... so it was "I" that got this task. First of all I couldn't believe that they both wanted this done at the same time, and knew that it'd be, at the very least an interesting day, and most probably would generate at least one good story. With proper mental preparation... I lovingly performed my sonly task, and hauled my folks in to a duo of colon scopes.

To give you the cutting edge feel for this story you gotta know a bit about my Dad. Dad is 80 but his mind is about 40... sharp as a tack and a hoot to hang out with now that I've grown up and realized just how smart Pop is. But my Dad's one thing that he's stumbled with his whole life is his inability to get the proper word out for the thing he's describing. Either that or he so horribly mangles a word that you just gotta make a good guess what the heck he's talking 'bout and go with your gut feeling. I call it "Dad Breaking Out In Norm", after the comedian Norm Crosby who made a comedy career outta torturing the english language. Best of all, he's a good sport with me being reduced to tears at some of his Normisms, usually laughing along with me... but sometimes falling to his standby response to me "Oh you damn honyock..." No, I do not know precisely what a honyock is, other than my Dad decided that "I" was one at times from about 14 years old to present day.

Okay so Mom and Dad are getting their things done and I take off and eat a late breakfast at a restaurant, 'cause I know when they get done, they're gonna be starved to death and THE ONLY place they'll eat is Ponderosa... and Ponderosa makes me sick. Really. So, I go back to the hospital and they've just wheeled Mom out and she's totally incoherent and not much entertainment at all for me, but then... THEN they wheel Dad out and he's always a riot when he's 'bout half lit on any kinds of meds. We've witnessed him wrestling little monkeys with hammers, among other things, while coming out of morphine induced, post surgery stupor.

So I'm in the little recovery area with Dad (Mom is 1 curtain away) and I ask him if he had fun and all the usual stuff like that... and I get the "you damn honyock" response And I ask him if they found anything cool while they were looking around in there and he says (Normism number one coming) "Yeah... they found 3 Pollocks"

Now see, most people would be quite alarmed that a doctor had found 3 saltwater fish in their parents lower innards during an exam... not me. After wiping my tears with the 3rd Kleenex I said "I think you mean Polyps, Dad, but if it WAS Pollocks...that's cool too" I got another "Honyock" and my folks came around, we gathered up their paperwork and we left, yes, for Ponderosa.

We get to Ponderosa and I tell 'em that I already ate and I'm gonna run across the highway to the Tractor Supply store and shop a little bit, and I'll be back in about 45 minutes to pick them up. So I do, and I get back to Ponderosa and they're about done eating, and I'm sitting with 'em and visiting. Now the place is absolutely packed, I think every table is filled 'cause it's right at noon, and a couple stops by the table that are friends with my folks and chat a little bit. The man asks my folks what they're doing in town today and my Dad (Normism number two coming up and quite possibly the ULTIMATE Normism) says.... "Shirley and I both had Colostomies done this morning"

Folks, let me tell you something. There is NOTHING... NOTHING that can quiet a busy restaurant quite so efficiently as my Dad, or probably anyone for that matter, announcing loudly that he and his wife both had a colostomy done that morning and thru the miracle of modern science... there they were at noon sitting in a restaurant eating buffett food like crazy.

I sit there staring at an imaginary spot on the table top for quite awhile, trying to scrape it away with my thumbnail, and I say to Dad "Colonoscopy". But he doesn't hear me and I glance sideways a little to see just how much concern the neighboring restraunteurs are showing at the news... and as near as I can tell... concern is not what they are showing.

Eh well... I loaded 'em back in the car and took 'em back home and all is well with the world.