Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Memoirist BS
Atlantic Boulevard
This afternoon, Jake and I had a slightly disappointing time tidepooling. Not much but snails, hermit crabs, and a few sad-looking anemones. This was only slightly disappointing since the sea was beautiful and, hey, on the North Coast, any sunny day after Halloween is pure gravy.
On the drive home, I exercised a father’s prerogative, attempting to inculcate similar values in my son. In other words, I played Soft Cell’s Sex Dwarf for him, stopping periodically to make sure he understood every delicious line of the lyrics.
Then I told him about the time in med school that Karen and I used a snip from the song, I would like you on a long black lead/You can bring me all the things I need, for our answering machine, figuring, “Hey, who calls us?” Our parents, our friends . . . either way, good joke, right? No. The first person to leave a message was my medical statistics prof. “Um . . . sounds like a fun party. I’m calling to let you know the time of the final has changed . . . ” Yeah, whatever. Oh, how I hated medical statistics.
But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. (more…)
The Joy of Duck
Guess what we had for dinner tonight.
Will someone please tell me what they’ve done to this bird? I’m imagining CIA interrogators at one of our Eastern European prisons (one of the ones that doesn’t exist) :
Tell us al Qaeda’s next target.
Quack!
Dimitri — use the nipple electrodes.
Quaaaack!
Yes, I know ducks don’t have nipples. (more…)
I’m the Daughter of a Traitor
Most of my family were thrown in internment camps during WWII by FDR for the “crime” of being Japanese-American. Of course, none of those internees ever committed even a slightly treasonous act but suffered the consequences of the loss of their civil rights.
On the other hand, my (now deceased) father’s story is a great deal more complicated. My great-grandfather was forced to leave Japan because he was a supporter of the old order. When the Meiji restoration occurred (the emperor seized control), he was on the losing side of the power struggle and emigrated to the U.S. where he was a successful farmer. He went back to Japan and bought real estate and lived quite comfortably. His daughter and her husband stayed in the U.S. and that was where my father was born.
He was sent to Japan at the age of seven to be educated. His parents stayed behind, so he was raised by his grandfather, a very strict but fair man. When the shit hit the fan in 1941, my great-grandfather publically stated that the Japanese government had their heads up their asses and would lose the war. The police questioned him but let him go. Actually, the Japanese government and military knew that it was a bad idea but, for extraordinarily stupid reasons, they went ahead and attacked Pearl Harbor anyway. Why would a government knowingly commit an idiotic and catastrophic mistake? (Sound familiar?)
In any case, my father, then 14, suffered beatings and abuse because he wasn’t a “patriotic Japanese citizen.” Determined to prove his loyalty, he ran away from home at 16 and found work making bombs in a Tokyo factory. I suppose he may have committed high treason for this activity. His bombmaking job didn’t last, however.
The U.S. firebombed residential sections of Toyko, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians who were NOT engaged in the war effort. People ran for the rivers but the heat was so intense, the water boiled and they were literally cooked to death. My father saw bloated bodies floating in the water with their skin peeling off their flesh. He escaped the same fate through sheer luck.
After Japan’s defeat and the subsequent economic dislocations perpetrated by Douglas MacArthur, my great-grandfather lost most of his money and had to sell his real estate holdings. My father eventually decided to go to the U.S. He was still a U.S. citizen.
When the Korean War broke out, my father was drafted by the U.S. Army. He served two years and was a model soldier. For the next 50 years, he worked hard, raised a family, and was a law-abiding, contributing member to society.
I believe that a rational person would forgive my father’s “treason.” He was young, his allegiance was to the country where he was raised, he was pressured as disloyal by his peer group, and he later served in the U.S. military (a rather ironic twist, imho).
This is my father’s odd history with bizarre twists and shifting patriotism (or lack thereof). FDR and the U.S. government are hardly the heroes in this story, but neither are the Japanese; atrocities abound for all.
So what country deserves the patriotism of its citizens? George Bush’s America? HAH! Not a goddamn one deserves my loyalty, but that’s a consequence of my family history and post Vietnam/Watergate cynicism.
Dream a little dream
Jona has been messing around with her dreams lately, trying her best to remember them. Sounds innocent enough, huh? BUT (cue scary organ music) that’s how it starts. Dreams are a risky business, but I’m not sure any of you will believe me. (more…)
Help me feed my family
Q: What is the earliest example of pornographic dialog in a television show?
A: “Ward, don’t you think you were a little rough on the Beaver last night?”
That one tickles me every time.
I grew up in the 60s and 70s, in a superficially traditional Leave it to Beaver-oid nuclear family. Our neighborhood brimmed with other Beaveroid households. Our dads worked traditional jobs, and our moms were housewives who fixed Coca Cola ham on Sundays and proto-Hamburger Helper dishes on weekdays. Tuna casserole wasn’t the punch line of a bad joke; it was dinner. (more…)
Weird Halloween
Not what I’d call my first choice for Halloween. Only decent stuff I could find at the viddy store: Evil Dead, Reanimator 2, and Ringu. And what does Jake want to watch tonight? To Kill a Mockingbird.
Um . . . not scary?
Maybe I’m in a bad mood because I’m using my kickass new gas range/oven and the house smells like natural gas. That’s not right, right?
At least I figured out how to use my kickass new dishwasher.
Halloween never used to be my favorite holiday. That would be Hannukah, for obvious reasons; second favorite, July 4th. Call me a revolutionary at heart. That, or a pyromaniac. What is it with me and incomplete sentences today? I seem to be hung up. On them.
Maybe I’m gearing up for a month of crappy speed-writing.
Here’s what I remember about childhood Halloween: almost nothing. My only costumes were cheapy store-bought rigs with simple gowns, masks held in place with rubber bands that always broke way too early. If I have my goody sack in one hand and I’m holding my mask to my face with the other, how do I knock? With my foot, naturally. Some neighbors objected to my door-kicking technique.
I watched the Charlie Brown Halloween Special every year. I don’t know why; I hated every aspect of that show, from Charlie Brown’s pathetic “I got a rock,” to idiotic Linus’s Great Pumpkin religion, to Snoopy, who nowadays makes me think those dog-eating cultures have the right idea.
I carved unimaginative pumpkins, mostly for the seeds. Yum. Soak in brine, rub off most (not all!) of the stringy orange guts, then roast in the oven until crispy. Chew up whole. Your colon will thank you for the fiber load.
No, I had to hit adulthood to fall in love with Halloween.
My favorite Halloween: second year of med school, Karen and I held a Reanimator Halloween party. We played a video of Reanimator for our friends, who were told to bring food shaped like body parts. Our friend Dean brought a chocolate cake shaped like feet. Karen carved out a watermelon, made it look like a head (pumpkin-style), filled the shell with fruit salad, and stuck a bunch of yellow Gatorade-filled hypodermic needles into the watermelon rind.
I have to finish cooking dinner. Nothing fun, unfortunately: pork chops, yams, and broccoli.
D.
Technorati tag: Halloween
A moving experience
Freshman year at Berkeley, I lived in a boarding house. I took breakfast and lunch at the International House, and my house mom fixed me dinner Monday through Friday. On the weekends, I had to fend for myself. More on that some other time. For now, let me leave you with one suggestion: bran flakes do not make a tasty crust for ling cod.
Say hello to my little friend
So Candy has a thing for Harry and the Danglers, eh? Candy, I dedicate this one to you.
For the first year or two after we got married, Karen and I lived on campus. I focused on my preclinical course work while Karen built lasers and TA’d undergrad chemistry.
One night, I noticed something new about my nuts.
“Karen. Look at this.”
“What?”
“It’s never done this before.”
“Oh, Christ, Doug. You could have warned me.”
“Now, come on. Look at it. Does this look familiar?”
Teeth clenched, lips not moving: “I don’t know.”
“You’ve looked at it. Doesn’t this look weird? . . . I mean, you have looked at it before, right?”
She made a careful study of my scrotum. Next to my right nad, I had a balloon-like swelling. It didn’t hurt, but it certainly didn’t belong there.
“I think there’s something called a hydrocele,” I said. “Or maybe a spermatocele. Or maybe it’s a hernia. Or a tumor.”
“You’re the medical student. Why are you asking me?”
“I was hoping maybe it had always been there, and I just hadn’t noticed.”
“Doug, your hands are down there a hell of a lot more often than mine are. If anyone would know, you would.”
Good point.
I decided to go to the student health center on campus. There had to be a night nurse there, right? Maybe even a more advanced medical student, someone who had seen a few testes. Maybe even a doctor.
By the time I got there, I was anxious as a tom cat in heat. I charged in, found the nurse, pulled her aside into the hallway. We were all alone, she and I, but I didn’t exactly want to do this in the waiting room.
“Look at this, would you? This just isn’t right.”
I dropped my pants and framed it with my hands, just like this:
Only instead of a smiley hacky sack, I had my hairy nut sack well in hand.
“I was getting ready for bed when I noticed it,” I said. I moved it this way and that, gave it a good going over like I already had a dozen times that night. “It’s never been like this before, I’m sure of it. My wife doesn’t even recognize it. I was getting ready for bed, and, like, I don’t know, maybe I was scratching myself, I mean it’s not like I’m scratching myself all the time, but this time when I did I felt this big swollen thing that had no business being there. I mean, look at it. I’m a medical student, but I don’t know what this is. I dunno, maybe a hydrocele, or a spermatocele, or a hernia, or, oh God, please don’t tell me you think it’s a tumor. You don’t, do you?”
I looked away from my right nut and looked her in the eye for the first time. She kinda looked like this.
“I — I — I’ll get the nurse.”
She was an undergrad, eighteen years old tops. Probably a volunteer.
“Um, sorry,” I said as I stuffed my goods back in my pants. “Busy clinic like this, I’ll bet you see that all the time.”
She backed away, stricken. I never saw her again. She didn’t call, didn’t write. As for me, my little visitor disappeared by the next morning. He never showed up again, either.
***
This is my entry for Demented Michelle‘s Halloween Trick or Treat Prank Contest. It’s not much of a prank, but it’s all I got. And, gee whiz — if I’d been putting her on, it would have been one hell of a trick, eh?
D.
Two penis anecdotes from the hallowed halls
Today, Beth wrote about her new doctor, who sounds like my kinda gal (professionally speaking). I considered blogging on my philosophy of patient care, but then I thought, Naaaw. I’m gonna tell two dick stories.
Both tales come from a year I revisit in nightmares: internship.