Well, my Internet connection got fixed and I was just sitting down to post something here when I got a call and had to go take my mother in to the emergency room at a nearby hospital. That's always good for at least six hours of not getting any work done. Her condition was not life-threatening and she's now back home and resting but she had something that needed fixing, it couldn't wait 'til Monday and there was nowhere else to take her. In fact, I couldn't help thinking that it was a lot easier to get a guy out to fix my cable modem than it was to get my mother in to see a doctor.
Every time I go to an emergency room, I come away with at least one observed story. This time, it involved a very lovely young lady of high school age and Asian extraction. She was dressed in a cheerleader outfit and had been wheeled in by a guy in matching (but for males) cheerleading garb. Sitting in the wheelchair, she somehow had to — and amazingly, managed to — keep an injured leg elevated at an impossible angle. It was actually perpendicular to the floor and if she'd pulled it back a few more degrees, she would have been seated with her leg behind her head.
She was being checked in and next to her, an elderly woman — I'm guessing at least eighty, maybe close to ninety — was being checked in for some ailment or other. While waiting for the triage lady to fill out some forms, the elderly lady turned to the cheerleader and said, "I was a cheerleader when I was your age."
The cheerleader didn't seem particularly interested but just to be sociable, she said, "Well, I hope your team won."
— to which the elderly woman replied, "I don't remember. I didn't even pay attention then. I hated sports. I just became a cheerleader because I wanted to be popular. That was all that mattered to me…being popular." Then she looked at the younger woman's leg still elevated in this astounding contortion and added, "You know, if I could have put my ankles behind my ears like that, I wouldn't have had to be a damn cheerleader."
True story. Anyway, I lost an evening and now I'm behind so there may not be a lot of posting here for the next few days. I'm going to post a video link, then go to bed. And when I wake up in the morning, I'll have some things to say about Walt Kelly Day. It's Walt Kelly Day, you know.