Topic: School

Author: Chris Dunn

As the familiar windows with the rounded-corner panes like giant cathode ray tubes slip past one after the other, each step bringing me closer to the reckoning I both dread and desire, I steel my courage with desperate gulps of oxygen, hoping still that this might yet be a dream - that I might still be saved from the sacrifice for which I volunteered. I walk close to the wall to delay the reveal for as long as possible, some sixth graders gathered at their designated pre-school rally point by the north doors, have taken noticed and their whispered and pointed jeers prod me forward despite my faltering steps. The road behind me is closed. There will be no retreat.

Unable to contain himself, and by now, well aware of the fate that awaits him, Marty charges ahead, bolting around the corner before I have a chance to stop him. I pull up short as I hear the wild hoard lay into him as they’ve done every day this week, rabid fourth graders with no mercy or restraint finding joy in tormenting a young pup for being different. I stare at the blacktop as I catch my breath by the sloping corner wall eyeing the driveway to my right that exits onto Laboiteaux away from the carnage I hear to my left. Perhaps, I could run. But, no. There’s nothing else for it but to plunge in. No matter how slowly you pull at the bandage there will always be that tearing moment of ripping release. I turn the corner.

Marty is fighting to make his way to the safety of the first graders running wild outside the other building, heedless of the proper dread a school day should impose on their boundless joy, but too many of my classmates ring around him for him to make any progress forward in the vicious scrum. They taunt and poke, pulling at his protective cap while showering him with abusive nicknames and unclever puns. I hear him, without judgment, throw me to the wolves that tear at his limbs. “You should see my brother!” he declares.

The implication is immediately absorbed by the mob, its import never in doubt for a second. They release the smaller billy goat gruff and turn as one gleeful firing squad to stare up the cold asphalt at larger prey. One of their own? Can it be? I see the sheer delight in Tony Peters’ eyes as they fall on me, seeing the out-of-place baseball cap sitting atop my head and instantly comprehending its purpose and the hidden bounty beneath. Like a frenzied shark, he thirsts for the kill, and this boy is one I’d call my friend. As a single solid organism, its sole purpose to revel in this moment of estrangement, they swarm towards me, fresh mockeries already on their tongues. Marty casts a quick glance back to see me engulfed as he races to freedom. I do not blame him. This was what I wanted.

There had been a time, the night before when I could have said no. The haircut had been proceeding as usual. I sat in the dining room, a towel pinned around my neck, mother administering my standard cut – shaggy but still in conformance with the standards of Catholic school: out of the eyes, off the collar and ears. I could have kept my fool mouth shut, but in my mind the echoes of my brother fourth graders tearing down my brother-actual day-in/day-out hammered me. My pleas for them to cease were futile. All efforts at reason and diplomacy had failed. But there was one thing I could do. One way to make the madness end and assuage the guilt I felt at my helplessness to stop my fellows. As mother paused to adjust her grip on the scissors, I met her eye. “Is it too late to ask for a buzz?”

Topic: School

Topic: School

I’ve had a lot of schooling. I got my bachelor’s in English in 1989, my associates in nursing in 1995, and my master’s degree in health administration in 2001. But it was my year and half of LPN school that probably taught me the most. 

I decided to leave being an English teacher and start nursing school in 1990.  The quickest path to transitioning to a career in healthcare was to become a Licensed Practical Nurse first.  As a nursing student I saw, smelled, and experienced things that I still can’t forget.  The memory of the first time I saw a pressure sore on the backside of a 90 year old patient, the kind that you can put your fist in, is with me to this day.  It was in LPN school that I first saw somebody die, watched open heart surgery, and got comfortable doing things I never thought I could do— things like giving an enema, cleaning and replacing a glass eye, giving injections, starting IV’s, taking out stitches, inserting urinary catheters, and doing dressing changes.  

My most memorable patient in LPN school was a 24 year old mom named Tracy.  She had been hospitalized for 6 weeks following a motorcycle accident and had her leg in traction.  When we did our medical surgical rotation it was unusual to have the same patient two weeks in a row.  During my first week with Tracy I became proficient at “pin care”, which involved using sterile q-tips dipped in saline and pushing gently around the metal pin going through Tracy’s leg.  Our instructor used the analogy of having newly pierced ears.  If you don’t clean and move the studs going through your ears, the skin will start to adhere to the earring post.  It was the same thing with Tracy’s pin going through her leg.  Actually it was more like a rod than a pin, and I as I did her pin care I stepped outside my body and watched myself in disbelief.  I said silently, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.  I can’t believe this is my job now.  I never thought I would be able to do something like this.”  

The next week Tracy was scheduled to be discharged.  One of her discharge orders was to have her catheter discontinued.  I had removed catheters a few times before.  It wasn’t a big deal.  You had to insert a syringe into a port in the tubing and remove the saline from the balloon inside the bladder that was keeping the catheter in place.  In fact, it was such a routine procedure that my instructor wasn’t in the room with me.  I had been checked off it by that time.  

After two months Tracy was anxious to have her catheter out and gone.  I followed all the steps in my mind, but when I got to the part where I was supposed to pull out the catheter I felt resistance.  I double checked the size of the balloon.  I made sure I had removed the right amount of saline.  I gave a gentle tug on the catheter again.  It was supposed to slide out.  That’s what had happened when I had done this before.  But it wouldn’t budge.  Tracy cried out in pain, and I stopped.  She urged me to just pull the damn thing out.   One of the hospital nursing assistants ran in because she had heard Tracy cry out.  When the nursing assistant saw what was going in she handed me some bandage scissors and said, “Why don’t you just cut the catheter and pull it out? That’s what the real nurses do.” Tracy agreed.  I told them I needed to find my instructor.  As I left I heard the NA and Tracy question the competence of “student nurses”.  

My instructor got the charge nurse who assessed Tracy and called the doctor.  They took Tracy down to surgery and a urologist ended up surgically removing the catheter.  Somehow it had adhered to the inside of her urethra.  My instructor used the whole thing as a teachable moment.  She pointed out to the class that if I hadn’t followed my instincts and stopped the procedure, I could have seriously injured the patient.  I still have nightmares about what could have happened.  

I learned in LPN school to trust myself and to listen to that still small voice inside.  I learned not to give in to peer pressure and that if something didn’t seem right, it was a good idea to stop and think it through.  

I never saw Tracy again.  She had been discharged when we came back the next week, but the charge nurse told me that she had said to tell me thanks for being her nurse.  

Topic: Books

Author: Chris Dunn

“Books are shit.”

I was absolutely shocked! I couldn’t believe he had said it. This was Karl, after all. Karl, who was responsible for half the books in my personal lexicon. Karl whose taste had informed mine since puberty. He’d recommend authors, I would read them. He’d loan me books, sometimes at the point of insistence. “Here, you need to read this.” I would eye his bookshelf and try to decipher what secrets he was hiding. Why had he never offered those books? He’d brought me Elric of Melnibone. He’d introduced me to Nine Princes in Amber. And here he was, with no real passion in his voice, his words just falling dead as if from a spiritless shadow, declaring it as simple fact, ‘Books are shit.”

It was such an odd turn, I had to unpack it. Karl had only recently landed what, to us, had seemed a dream job, working at Half-Price books. We’re talking rows and rows of books and RPG gaming supplies, DVDs and more. He’d have first crack at everything coming in and an employee discount on top of that! Soon he would have the richest, fullest library, and perhaps, I might gain some small measure of spill-off volumes for my own shelves. How had this dream turned nightmare? Whence came this dark cloud?

It turns out, it’s a little like asking someone who loves steak to work in a slaughterhouse. The first day, he explained, they sat him down to watch training videos. The first was titled, “For All Those Books…?!” It detailed how every day, sometimes several times in a day, someone would walk in with a box (or boxes) – the collection of a lifetime – expecting to be made whole, to find the answer to their current, financial woes on the shelves of their years, and it would be his job to tell them the harsh truth. They would not get half of half-price. They would be lucky to get one-tenth of half-price, and here was why. The video went on to explain, what would become his life for the next few months, forking over a few dollars, grabbing the rare re-sellable tome from the pile, and then chucking the rest in the dumpster outback – a dumpster often filled to the brim already with other people’s once cherished possessions. It did not take long for this practice to remove all the former magic that obtaining the latest work from his favorite authors had once kindled in his heart. Books were no longer special. The pang he felt for those books lying unread and headed for the incinerator, had to be muted and killed just to get through the day. It was a sad sight to see, like Tinkerbell’s dimming glow after drinking poison. I resolved never to work that close to the publishing industry! I would keep my love alive.

Recently, my father passed away, and I was faced with the actualization of a gnawing suspicion which had itched at the back of my mind for most of my life, what to do with ALL of his books – 6,000+ at my brother’s estimation, over 100 full shelves at my count. Even after all of his children and grandchildren and extended family took everything they wanted, there were still a numbing number of books to deal with. We held an open house, invited everyone on our lists and sat for hours as booklovers poured over his mighty works, most leaving with a box full to add to their own growing hoards. (Karl among them) Still, I had to go up the next day and box up the shipment for the library. We used all the boxes they provided, all the boxes my brother had on hand, and had to buy several more to carry the remainder.

So, how… How do I avoid Karl’s grim pronouncement? How do I avoid that very logical despair? I just have to work to remember the joy in the man’s eyes every time he opened a box from Amazon as if it was a gift from the universe just for him. Remember how he delighted whenever one of my own titles arrived with their glossy covers. He was my editor and my greatest supporter. I asked him as I was growing up in the shadow of those towering bookshelves, “How can you possibly read all these books?” And he’d explain, “Oh, most of these aren’t ‘reading’ books. These are ‘buying and having’ books.” So, even though there is no room in my home for all those tomes, I’ll box them up and ship them to the Friends of Library, confident in my imagination that they will find new, happy homes.

Clap your hands with me if you believe in books!

Topic: Moving

Topic: MOVING

I’m not a fan of moving.  I’ve always hated it.  My mother died on Valentine’s Day 2016. My father remained for almost 3 more years without her and passed away on the last day of November 2018.  Now, my siblings and I are tasked with moving all the stuff out of our parents’ house, getting it ready for sale.

In truth, my brothers and sister and nephews did most of the work of moving.  After we divided up all the big pieces of my parents’ furniture we got word from my brother that we needed to get a lot of the items out of the house quickly, because an inspection was looming.  I wanted to hire movers.  My brother Marty wouldn’t hear of it.  So, on Super Bowl Sunday 2019, my nephews, my sister and Marty delivered pieces of my past to my condo in Hamilton.  It wasn’t as easy a task as any of us had anticipated.  The patio set, and the dining room table chairs were easy enough, but the sleeper sofa was heavy and unwieldy.  Evan and Marty carried it up two flights of stairs to my office, removing the feet trying to make it fit through the door.  They tried approaching from various angles and wrestled in vain with the great beast of a couch for about an hour.  I was useless, as I was nursing a bum knee.  My husband who was recuperating from an illness wasn’t much help either.  Marty joked that some people will do anything to get out of moving furniture.  Since we couldn’t help with moving, I asked myself what would Dee Dunn, my late mom, do in this situation.  I ask myself this question at least once a day.  She would put out a modest spread for the movers.  I set out chips and salsa and cookies and soft drinks.  And even though it was only eleven o’clock on Sunday morning I set out some booze too for the movers. 

Around noon Marty came down drenched in sweat and asked, “How badly do you want that couch to go in your office?”  When I told him I either wanted it IN the office or back to my parents’ house, we agreed that he would remove the door and the door frame.  We would fix it another time.  It worked.  The full-sized couch with the brocade upholstery and pull out full-sized bed has a place of honor beneath my diplomas. 

Every piece had a flood of memories attached to it.  When I looked on my back deck and saw the simple wrought iron patio set with two matching chairs I saw my mom and me sipping our drinks, Dewar’s for her and some Bacardi and Diet Coke for me, while watching the kids play in the yard.  I think of the times I schlepped that patio set in my car to one community theater venue or another.  The patio set served as set pieces for at least half a dozen theatrical productions that mom and I were involved with over the years.

The sofa is the same spot where I slept when I was going through a painful divorce in 1998 while waiting for my new place to be ready.  I slept on it again as both of my parents lay dying.  And other family members kept vigil on that same sofa, watching and listening to their ragged final breaths.  We sat on it and received friends and loved ones at my parents’ respective wakes.   It was where we sat as we celebrated their lives and told their stories.

The sofa has arm rest covers that my nephew Thomas as a little kid used to put on his head and pretend that he was a knight.  I thought of all the green room speeches my mom gave as a director where she’d bring one of those arm rest covers to the theater.  Mimicking Thomas, she’d put the cover on her head and say, “I’m a knight!” with great fanfare.  Her lesson to the cast was if you believed you were a knight or whoever you said you were once you got onstage, the audience would believe it too.  I’m glad the arm rest covers came with the couch. 

But the piece that has the most profound effect on me is the large oak antique dining room table with four matching chairs.  It has leaves so it can become a great table accommodating up to 12 -16 people for a sit-down meal.  We had fancy dinners, and my mom set the table with a lace tablecloth crocheted by my Grandma Donnellon and cloth napkins.  It was a buffet table for so many gatherings-cast parties, the famous Dunn Christmas party, baby showers, wedding showers, birthday parties, and just about any excuse for a party my mom could invent.   We put down newspaper to protect the wood and used it to color Easter eggs and carve pumpkins.  Mom held theater board meetings and did table readings for plays on that big table.  When it didn’t have the leaves, it was used for simple meals.  We never watched tv while we ate dinner.  We had a meal every night, and we sat around this same table and talked and laughed and debated.   After mom died, dad turned the table with all the leaves in place into a vast desk of sorts.  He managed to cover every square inch of table space with his papers and stuff within a month of mom’s passing.  

The table was not used for meals or entertaining until Thanksgiving 2018.  My dad had signed up for hospice for his cancer in September of that year.  A couple weeks before Thanksgiving, Dad said he wanted to have Thanksgiving dinner in his own house and on his own table this year.  I nudged him that he would have to clear the table for the first time in years if that was going to happen.  By God, with some help, he did it.  I made a Thanksgiving feast and set that big ass table with the lace tablecloth and the cloth napkins.  The last real meal my father ate in his life was Thanksgiving dinner at that table. 

He declined rapidly after that meal.  It was a last supper of sorts.  And now this beautiful table sits in my dining room, and we move on.  There will be meals and parties and more memories made here.  We move on.

Topic: Moving

Author: Chris Dunn

As I sit here catching my breath, with Tony come and gone, and the tiniest space made by the removal of old shelving units about to be filled by the arrival of new shelves brought by my brother, I reflect on how moving used to be easier. Sure, there are always logistic hassles to overcome in any moving endeavor: renting a U-Haul, bribing enough friends so that the work doesn’t take days, scheduling it all to fall in that brief window when you have access to both locales and authority to come and go as you will, but I’m just talking about physical fatigue. Moving in and of itself used to be easier!

We’re emptying out my parent’s house in preparation for sale. Everything needs a place and each of us is taking in all we can. Marty’s bringing me down a set of bookshelves, and a dresser, and a sewing machine, and an end table, and TV stand and a TV among many other things. I would’ve had to hire movers – as my sisters planned to do – but Marty wouldn’t have it. He got giant U-Haul enlisted some youthful muscle and took it upon himself. When he gets here, all I’ll be able to do is watch and perhaps move things out of their way. I made the mistake of helping him carry a monk’s bench to his car earlier in the week and it aggravated a hernia and caused me cramps for days. Jill’s in little better shape, complaining of twinges in her sides whenever she over exerts. We talk about yoga and physical action plans to correct the downward course of our physical trajectory. “Yeah… We should really get on that.”

Was it really so long ago, when Tony and Tonya moved down from Fairfield with Bobby and we divided the third floor up to accommodate them? I remember carrying a TV in from the truck all by myself. It can’t have been very recent since the TV wasn’t some simple flat screen, but rather a bulky CRT. Only 24” but I barely heaved it through the door alone even then. I immediately dropped it on the couch and went in search of water and someone to bitch at about how I was deteriorating. Little did I know…

Every year things get heavier, and new aches and pains assail my frail form. Sometimes when the weather is right my knee will ache for hours, and if I don’t stay hydrated, I get awful cramps in my shins that wake me out of what passes for “sound” sleep these days. I’m falling apart, but I’ve always felt like that, I guess. My 40-year-old self wasn’t up to the level of my 30-year-old self, my 30-year-old self wasn’t up to the level of my 20-year-old, and my 20-year-old self was a lazy tub!

As I lamented my sorry state to Tony about moving the TV alone and having to abandon it just inside the door, so my back didn’t give out, I suddenly remember something very important. Tony was in the kitchen setting up the iguana cage as I was kvetching about my poor body. His disinterested grunts made me wonder what he had to be so interested about otherwise. Some stupid cage… Iguana cage…

“Oh shit!” I exclaimed aloud and raced to the front of the house. This got Tony’s attention and he followed wondering what could cause me to move with such energy. There was no time to explain.

You see, earlier when they had first arrived, Tony had handed me a pillow case that was tied shut. Something warm writhed within, and I quickly realized it contained the newest animal addition to my household. Rex (later re-sexed and named, Regina. See earlier story, “About a Pet…” for more on Rex) an iguana that Tony was taking care of while Karl, her real owner, got a place of his own. Not knowing what to do with the critter until her cage was set up, I dropped the pillowcase on the couch, the same couch where I had dropped the TV! Nearly in tears, I heaved the television aside, certain I had crushed my friend’s pet and inaugurated our new living arrangement with about the most ill omen imaginable. The pillowcase was still as I picked it up. I furiously tore at the knot, but when it opened, I found the bug-eyed lizard none the worse for wear. Apparently, it’s flexible body and the couch cushions provided enough give for her to survive unscathed. I exhaled a long sigh of utter relief and sank to the floor holding the struggling lizard to my chest. Her tiny claws scratched my face and arms, but it was no less than I deserved.