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88

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#88. The worst physical pain I’ve ever endured was dislocating my shoulder. Twice.

Okay, so I’ve never broken a bone, as far as I know, so this has to qualify for my ‘feel-sorry-for-me-and-feel-my-pain’ story. Here goes nothin’.

So, the first time I dislocated my shoulder, I was playing hoops. Now, I’m no good at basketball. I’ve never been any good at basketball, and I didn’t want to be playing that time, either. If you’re particularly interested in learning more about my humiliation on that day, you can hop over to #16: Why I haven’t played hoops since I was sixteen. You know, if you’re into that sort of thing.

For our purposes here, just imagine that I’m playing hoops, trying to stay the hell out of the way, and avoiding actual contact with the basketball as much as possible. Mainly, I concentrated on playing ‘D’. I figured that as long as I couldn’t dribble or shoot, I might as well take a stab at blocking and rebounding. Or at least clogging up the lane, and farting when the other team came by. Any way I could find to help out, you understand.

Oh, and as long as you’re picturing, I was on the ‘skins’ team of a ‘shirts and skins’ matchup, which just put the cherry of self-consciousness on top of the humiliation sundae. It was not my finest hour, even before the injury.

On the other hand, being a skin saved my shirt, as it turned out. I knew enough about the game to put my hands up on defense, to dribble once and pass when I got the ball on offense, and to set up under the basket for blocks and rebounds. That much I could do. But I knew I wasn’t going to be shooting the ball, under any circumstances, so I trailed our team’s fast breaks. That way, I could be back on defense faster when the ball came the other way.

So, of course, on one of our fast breaks, I’m jogging around midcourt, when the other team steals the ball. One of their guys streaks full-speed down the right sideline. I turn around and sprint after him — by now he’s in front of me, and to my right, but swooping back in toward the basket. I look over my left shoulder and see a baseball pass coming his way. I’m in exactly the right spot, for once in my basketball ‘career’, as the pass has to fly directly over my head to get to him. I’m the last, and the only, line of defense. So, I raise my left hand up to intercept the pass.

The ball hits my hand.

The force jars my arm.

My left humerus slides out of my shoulder socket and jams itself down, between my shoulder blade and my neck.

I took about another three steps, looking for the ball and wondering why my arm wasn’t going where I wanted it to go, before I felt the pain. Which there was rather a lot of, not surprisingly. Eventually, I put the pain and the useless arm together, and slid down on the sideline, gingerly holding my elbow with my right hand, as though that would make everything all right. Or even marginally better.

Eventually, I took an ambulance — I know, I know, I didn’t need an ambulance, but I didn’t know what the hell was going on — to the hospital, and waited for two and half hours through waiting room nonsense, bedside banter, and X-rays. Once they were finally ready for me, the doc injected a local anesthetic into my shoulder, waited thirty seconds, grabbed my elbow, and yank!ed my shoulder back into the socket. It took all of two minutes, which left me desperately wishing that the assholes would have done that first, and then let me cool my heels in the waiting room. Fucking bastards. Okay, fine, the X-rays they could do first. Ten minutes for that, and then the yanking. How hard would that have been? Dickheads.

Anyway, the second time wasn’t all that exciting, I suppose. I was playing wallyball about four years later, in college, when much the same thing happened. I went up to block, someone dinked over me, and I reached waaaay back and made a desperation poke at the ball. My arm decided that was enough nonsense for one day and retreated again to its ‘summer home’ up near my scapula. This time, I got a ride to the hospital. (Hey, when I’m paying the hospital bills, I’m not splurging for an ambulance. We don’t need no steenking ambulances!)

I’d also experienced the pain before, so it wasn’t quite so harrowing. Plus, the doc got me in and out in under an hour, so generally speaking, I had a much better time of things the second go-round. Not that I’m interested in doing it again, mind you. It still hurt like a big angry bitch, and cost me several weeks of atrophy as I kept my arm in a sling for a month or so. And I’ve got enough atrophy all over my body as it is, thank you very much. I think I’ll pass.

So, I’m knocking on wood that I’m done with all of that. Both docs told me that since I’d had this happen, I’d be far more likely to have it happen again (and again, and again, and maybe require surgery). But so far, I’ve had only the one relapse. But I play quite a bit of volleyball, and I still block at the net, and there are still assholes out there who try to dink it over me. I’m dreading the day when reflexes take over, and I sproing my arm out awkwardly to get the ball, and end up back in a sling. I’m not sure I’ll be able to prevent it, or even see it coming.

Which is why I usually knee the guy on the other side of the net in the ‘nads when he goes up to hit the ball. Sure, it looks like it hurts like hell, but I’m positive that the other guy’s not feeling as much pain as I did. And besides, who gives a damn, anyway? Better him than me! Sure, I get tossed out of the occasional league doing that, but hey — I still have uninterrupted use of both arms. And in the end, isn’t it all about me, anyway?

87

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#87. My Myers-Briggs personality type is INTP.

For those of you unfamiliar with the nomenclature, that stands for Intelligent, Nobel-worthy, Terrific, and… um… Perfect! Yeah, perfect! That’s it.

Either that, or it’s Ill-tempered, Needy, Terrified, and Pissy. Or Poopyheaded. Or even Pantsless.

I choose to think the truth is somewhere in between those two extremes. And closer to which of them, I’m not going to say. Which probably tells you a lot right there. Dammit.

Anyway, I first took the Myers-Briggs test (and later, the Kiersey ‘Temperament Sorter’, which uses the same grading system) several years ago. In high school, maybe, or college. I don’t remember where I first saw it, but for a few years, I had a blank test that I could re-take whenever I felt like it. And it’s always come up INTP.

Well, okay, that’s a teeny little lie. It almost always has come up INTP. There was a period of about sixteen months when my now-wife and I were doing the long-distance thing. I’d graduated from college, but she was still stuck there, several hundred miles (and therefore dollars) away. We took turns flying to each other’s place, and ended up seeing each other about once a month. I was in a new city, and muddling my way through grad school (which I got booted from after a year). So I have to admit to being not quite myself for a while. Sad. Weepy. Pitiful. I took the test then, and scored myself as an INFP, the only time it’s happened. But I think it’s just because I was in full-on pining mode, with a side of crying-like-a-baby ‘wah!’ I eventually recovered. Despite what you might hear.

So, if you’re interested — and even if you’re not; how the hell am I supposed to guess what you want to read? — here are some details on the scoring system. There are four ‘axes’. (That’s plural of axis, folks, not plural of axe; this is not a postal workers’ exam) Each axis has one of two values, and you’re scored on the axis based on how you answer exam questions designed to get into your little head and figure out how you like to act. I don’t have any of the questions handy just now, but here are the axes:

• Extrovert vs. Introvert (Do you want to kill some of the people, or all of them?)
• Sensing vs. iNtuition (Do you see dead people, or just know they’re there somehow?)
• Thinking vs. Feeling (Are you a heartless bastard, or a drooling moron?)
• Perceiving vs. Judging (Um, I don’t know… Liberal or Conservative, maybe?)

Anyway, even without the questions, most people can guess which way they’re more likely to go in most situations. The cool thing — to me, anyway — is that people have studied all the different combinations (that’s sixteen, if you’re having trouble with the math), and discovered (or invented, or just plain made up; I don’t really care) traits that each type of person is likely to have. And now, several decades later, whole books have been written to try and help people of each type understand themselves, and look out for stupid shit that they’re likely to do, and to find a job that won’t make them want to torch the damned office. So that’s pretty cool. You know, if you buy into that sort of thing.

And I have to say that I do. I try not to get sucked in by voodoo and pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo, generally speaking. And maybe that’s what this is; I honestly don’t know how rigorous the research behind this system is. But I do know that my type fits me awfully well — I do just about all the things the books say I might do, and I regret doing just about the whole list of shit that it says I might end up regretting. Or going to jail for. Ick.

But I think it helps me to understand myself, and what I’m doing, and when I’m being a dickhead, and when I need a kick in the ass to get myself moving again. And I’m happy to learn all of that from books and online tests and shit like that. I’m an Introvert, remember? It’s not like I want to find out about myself from other people. Gross! Who knows where you people have been?

86

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#86. I was the first grandchild on my mother’s side of the family.

Now, maybe you don’t realize the full implications of this fact. My mother is one of three sisters. For close to thirty years, my grandfather was the only male in the house. He was cast adrift on a sea of estrogen and marooned on a remote, uncharted isle, surrounded by jump ropes and purses and used lipstick dispensers. A male child was big — huge, even. Plus, I was the first child for him — and grandma, and mom and the sisters — to fawn over.

Clearly, I was spoiled.

And yet, I shrunk from the attention. (With a few notable exceptions, which we rarely speak of. Let’s just say the dog was an unwilling but quite effective participant, and leave it at that. It’s best that you don’t know the details. Really.)

For whatever reason, I really didn’t like all the cheek-pinching and cootchie-cooing. Which was unfortunate, because there was a hell of a lot of it there for a while. Sure, by the time I can remember much of anything, both my aunts had had sons, but I was still the first to talk, and walk, and read, and all of that. Really, it was quite a bit of pressure to keep up the string of firsts. My cousins were fairly precocious, you see. And before I was very old, there were two more of them, for four in all. I had to fight them off to get the ‘firsts’ I wanted. Oh, sure, I let them have a few — I passed on ‘first to get up at three in the friggin’ morning to hunt animals‘ and ‘first to get arrested for waving a knife around for no good reason‘. Oh, and ‘first to fake his own kidnapping‘. I let them have that one, too. How gracious was that? I should get a medal or something.

Needless to say, ‘first to graduate college‘ was still on the table when I was ready. It was never really in jeopardy, I’m afraid.

But it was quite a childhood. The adults looked on me to lead by example. Well, except the one aunt and uncle, who were sort of Jesus freaks. They could see early on that I was going straight to hell, I think. But I fooled the rest of them. So it was a lot of responsibility. And in the end, I preferred to sit and read, or play by myself. There really wasn’t a lot I could do for them, I’m afraid.

So maybe I didn’t suffer the full brunt of the first-born syndrome, mainly because I just refused to participate fully. But being the first had its perks, so I guess I made out all right. I was the first one allowed to sit at the ‘big person’ table at Thanksgiving (until the cranberry flinging commenced… yeah, that set me back a couple of years). And the first to leave the nest, and make his way in the world.

Actually, I’m the only one to stay gone, I think. As of now, I’m pretty sure that all four of the others are still near where we grew up. A couple of my cousins are even living with their parents, though they’re well into their twenties and with wives and kids of their own. (Male kids, by the way. Three of them and counting. God help us all.) Oh, wait, though. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. That ‘living with their parents’ thing isn’t as bad as it sounds. They’re not living in the same house. Oh, my word, no. No, they live in trailers a couple of hundred feet from their parents’ house. Yeah, see, they’ve got their own trailers, down near the pond. They’re just on their parents’ land. It’s like their own little compound.

Um, you know what? Just forget that last part. Go back to thinking they’re living with their parents, squatting in the attic or basement or something. It might be the wrong idea, but Jesus Christ, it’s a helluva lot better. I really wonder about those kids sometimes…

85

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#85. I’ve been placed under anesthesia exactly once. I had seven teeth removed.

Okay, so I should probably explain that, before you go around thinking that I’m some gap-toothed hick moron. (As opposed to a braces-straightened, fully-toothed city-slicker moron. Guilty!)

Anyway, speaking of the braces, they were the reason that I had so many teeth removed. I forget now how old I was, but I was probably in middle school or so. A few of my ‘baby teeth’ were still holding on for dear life, and the local dental braintrust determined that if the adult teeth came in, they’d never be able to straighten things out. (Apparently my cakehole is just too cramped; it’s the first — and last — time someone suggested that my mouth was too small. Usually, I get just the opposite.)

So, they scheduled an appointment for an oral surgery. The plan was to *plink* three offending baby premolars out of their homes, and then dig waaaaay down into the holes to excavate the corresponding rooted teeth. Ditto for a fourth adult premolar whose baby partner had already given up the ghost. Seven teeth in all. One grisly surgery. Coming soon to a reality channel near you!

The day of the surgery came, and I was whisked off to the oral surgeon’s office. A couple of nice, pretty assistants prepped me, setting me up with a rather painful IV and some dressing. That’s when the laughing gas tech came in. This particular office administered anesthesia intravenously, presumably because the mask is just a tad too humane. But I already had a drip in my arm; no room at the inn. No matter. The guy found a vein in the back of my hand, and prepared me for nighty-night.

Him: Okay, you’re going to feel a little prick.

Me: Doc, I’m not that kind of patient, okay?

Him: Son, I don’t have to use your hand. I can inject this shit anywhere I want.

Me: Point taken, doc. I’ll be good.

Him: Good choice. Now just a little prick… and the needle’s in. You all right?

Me: As good as it gets for having a little prick in your hand, I guess.

Him: You promised to be good.

Me: Ah. Right you are. Sorry.

Him: Okay. Now I’m going to inject the anesthesia. I want you to count backwards from one hundred.

Me:: Sure thing. One hu… *snore*

Next thing I know, I’m propped up on a couch in a waiting room, with seven less teeth, an aching jaw, and a sore arm from the half-assed IV. My parents came to get me soon after; apparently in the meantime, I was chatting up the nurse. Well, as best a half-drugged fourteen-year-old boy with gauze packed in his mouth can, of course. Which is to say, that was about the best shot I ever had of picking up a random girl. But my parents took me away before I could get her number, and fed me milkshakes for a couple of weeks.

And then they slung braces on me and made me wear those for a couple of years. Bitches! Enduring one horror just to run screaming into another. When the hell did I sign up for that!?

Anyway, things have been okay mouthwise since then, I suppose. Even if I am the Twenty-Eight-Toothed Freak of Nature now. The docs showed me the ones they took out, too — all spindly and rooty and gory. It was so cool. They were like a foot long. I swear the roots must’ve been lodged in my forehead before they yanked ’em out. I might even still have ’em, somewhere.

A couple of years later, they told me that my wisdom teeth would probably cause similar problems. I thought about another surgery, but I called in to the office, and found that my nurse friend had moved on. And I had few enough teeth as it was, so I politely declined. The wisdom teeth have grown in now, and I haven’t had any problems, so I think I’m in the clear. Which is almost too bad — now that I’m older, and I’ve got a few years of drinking under my belt, I want to try going under anesthesia again. I bet I could count all the way down to twenty now. At least.

84

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#84. My parents divorced when I was very young, then remarried. To each other!

Or, as I like to say, they had ‘reconcilable differences‘.

I’m not sure I have anything else to say about this, actually. I just wanted to get the cheap joke in…

No, really. They don’t talk about it much, and I was two or three at the time — too young to really remember them being divorced. I think they were only apart for a year or so. Apparently, they couldn’t do any better, after all. I guess all the other fish in the sea were busy just then.

And anyway, I’m sure it didn’t have any lasting effects on my fragile, still-developing psyche. What impact could the whirlwind around a rocky relationship, parental separation, tentative exploration, and relieved sweaty reconciliation possibly have on a young toddler’s subconscious? Really, what are the odds of any of that year’s worth of fury and tears and abandonment and confusion embedding itself in my little brain, in nooks and crannies that I can’t reach with the flashlight of conscious thought? How ridiculous is it to imagine that much of what I do or say or feel is driven in part by the events of that time, though I can’t bring myself to remember any of it? Honestly, that’s preposterous.

See? I told you I didn’t have anything else to say.