You Really Bring Out the Seven in Me

My friend Susan and I have this standing argument about the number Five.

We had worked together for years at a Level I trauma center when, during a night punctuated by particularly unbridled chaos, it came to light that we had each assigned genders to the entire number line as first graders in the 1960s.

Our eyes met in disbelief.

Resuscitative efforts continued seamlessly as we ran through the first few together:  Ones are boys, Twos are girls, Threes are girls, etc.  There were a few minor haggles, but we were each able to imagine how the other may have confused some detail in her tiny mind back then - say, thinking Eights might possibly be boys, for example.

As if.

But the Fives?  Oh, please!  There is no wiggle room where a Five is concerned.  I was captivated by Susan's admission that she actually believed they were girls.  She just smiled and shook her head at the fact that I could believe they even resembled boys.

I'm sure our patients that night, even in their unconscious states, wished we'd switch to a subject that fostered a deeper sense of security - with perhaps a bit of intelligence woven in as a special bonus.

Today's class in Numerology reinforced the importance of number-wrangling in everyday life.  We simply do not realize each number's power until we're confronted early one morning by a disinterested fast-food worker protruding from a drive-through window, uttering words you'd never associate with two innocent orders of pancakes, two orange juices, and one cup of coffee.

"That'll be six dollars and sixty-six cents."

Whoa.

And then you get to transfer the Power of Crazy to your young daughter, staring innocently from the passenger seat, by inexplicably asking the lady at the window in your softest everything's-going-to-be-okay voice:  Do you sell pie?  Can you add a piece of pie to our order?  Or, how about, is it too early for french fries?

I do not even believe all the hoo-haw about the number 666.  But even typing it just now gives me icky pause.  A person puts three of those guys together and there is no telling how much mischief may result.  You definitely need to throw in a girl - a real smart girl, like a Nine - to keep things under control.

So I learned today in Numerology that my Life Path Number is Two, which translates to peacemaker, mediator, fixer - basically the person who facilitates the blending of personalities in most group situations.  Like a family.  Or a herd of disgruntled coworkers who can't decide which other group of coworkers they hate the most:  day shift or the entire Emergency Department staff.

Sometimes peacemakers appear to be spineless, but we're not.  We're just watching.  We are waiting for a sign.  And we're deciding important stuff, like which kind of cookies to bake for the entire Emergency Department staff in apology for the rude treatment on the night we got five traumas in a row and everybody, including the five traumas, wished they were somewhere else.

There's that pesky Five again.

I wish I'd learned about Numerology and my special calm-everybody-the-heck-down power before my throw-down with Susan.  I would have listened more and argued less about that one sticking point - since, my gosh - it doesn't really matter that Fives are most definitely boys, right?

I say Numerology is best taught to adults, who can look at their lives and say, "Oh, yeah.  I am a definite Six!"  When introduced too early, children may rebel against the notion of a Life Path and mess everything up.  I, myself, may have avoided every deal I brokered between siblings for decades.  Plus - what kid wants to hear she's a Number Two?  Eeewww.

As a Two, I keep things fair and balanced.  I compromise to maintain harmony, so I'm the ultimate team member.  I am a creature of habit and routine, good at following orders, but occasionally new resident physicians took advantage of my Two-ness by bossing me around.  Acting as a human buffer is one of my strengths, but if a physician's order spelled trouble for my patient, I morphed into a rabid Eight quicker than you could say let's keep those fluids wide open.

My mediator qualities were finely honed by 26 years spent in direct patient care - which, ironically, will not be necessary after retirement unless I set up a consulting business.  I could help corral difficulties that arise when loyal, down-to-earth Fours get all bent out of shape by the appearance of those dashingly daring, assertively ambitious Ones.

But then I wouldn't be retired anymore.  I'd be adding and re-adding birth dates - scared to death I'd give somebody the wrong Life Path Number.

I added up my daughter Abi's numbers and she's a Three, all right - a sensitive soul who entered this plane with sparkling, optimistic effervescence; a total delight to listen to who knows how to make others feel at home.  I added up my girlfriend Joan's numbers.  Yup.  She's a Nine - extremely compassionate, generous; a selfless person without prejudice - a magnet for people who need a friend.

It became official - I was ON board with Numerology.

Then I hit a snag with my friend Susan.  I had assumed that, as a kindred spirit, she was also a Two.  We took turns rounding up those coworkers for years - but she's a Nine!

Wow.  Now I know she was just being compassionate and selfless while listening to my arguments about Five.  Me?  I must have been pretending to listen while my brain weighed the merits of chocolate-chip vs. oatmeal-raisin.

After class today I invented my own Numerology:  I added up the approximate number of important people in my life, multiplied that answer by a few of their Life Path Numbers, and divided that by how long I might live.

My own eyes met in disbelief.

I don't think any one of us needs a fancy calculator to figure out just exactly how lucky we are.

(Ever feel like stuffing that pathetically skinny lion into that tuff tootling tugboat - lighting the whole thing on fire and sending it down the rapids over Lollipop Falls?  You must be a parent!  Next Friday I'll teach you how to write your OWN stupid stories for kids.)

Shouldn't Gas and Oil be Best Friends by Now?

The angriest Total Stranger I've ever met was a mechanic who fixed my car when I was sixteen.  It was amazing - the way his neck veins bulged and spittle flew everywhere as he threatened to call my father about the egregious wrong he'd uncovered.

The Total Stranger knew my father.  Everybody knew my father - but instead of being worried, I begged him to call.  I needed a translator to understand the crime I'd committed against my car's engine, but I also sensed I'd need bodyguard backup while retrieving my keys from Shaking Guy's fist.

I drove a ten-year-old 1964 Ford Four-Door.  'Four' and 'Door' are capitalized because Ford had neglected to bestow a given name on this model, so I made one up.  ("LTD" was already taken.)

During most of high school, I worked evenings at Bishop Randall Hospital - which meant I could no longer ride the school bus into town.  Dad cried every time one of his vehicles left for the demolition derby that broke out twice a day in the high school parking lot, so he decided he'd find a DEPENDABLE car for me.

DEPENDABLE (in my mind) = Soft-Top Convertible, Any Bright Color

DEPENDABLE (in Dad's mind) = Steel-Reinforced Sedan, Army Jeep Green

I nicknamed her 'Greep.'  Her front seat held eight friends comfortably with room for a cooler, but her most desirable feature was a $25 monthly loan payment to the First National Bank.

I tried explaining to the shaking, spitting, eyes-popped-out mechanic that I was forced to put that masking tape over the 'Check Engine Oil' indicator.  My work shift ended at 11:00 p.m. and driving home with that blinding red light could have caused a serious accident.  I just forgot the tape was on there for a couple of weeks.  Maybe more than that.  I, um, think we had midterms or something.

He did not understand my story at all.  He just kept spitting - and screaming, "There is gas in the oil!  There is GAS in the oil!  There is gas in the OIL!"... until his voice became a series of barely audible squawks and I could finally hear myself think.

Well.  You can imagine how red my face was in today's Car Smarts class when I figured out - after 40 years - why that mechanic went all Crazy Guy on me.  Totally my fault, so I really should go back to Wyoming and offer a fitting apology.  Perhaps I'll pay his entire nursing home bill if that pesky blood pressure problem hasn't already done him in.

Today's instructor spent four hours explaining routine car maintenance and told us what to look for when choosing a mechanic.  He didn't mention spitting, or other barriers to effective communication, but he explained camshafts and intake valves and compression ratios.  He explained the difference between 'burning oil' and 'leaking oil' - it was mesmerizing.

I'll probably dream about worn piston rings and valve stem seals.

But I'm not sure I could work this into a post-retirement hobby unless I only solve problems that I personally had with cars the 1970s.

Does anybody remember flat tires?

I had a VW that must have seen some axle-bending action before I met her, because one of her rear tires exploded about every six months.  Always at highway speeds and many miles from anywhere, but she was so light my friends just held up one corner while I changed the tire.  I'm not sure I even owned a jack for that car.

Once I was returning home from Casper with two friends when a tire blew.  We all knew the drill.  I eased onto the shoulder, rolled to a stop, and pulled the lever to open the front trunk for the spare.  Debbie and Nona hopped out, but this particular time our routine screeched to a halt:  we'd stopped next to a sleeping rattlesnake.

The snake was coiled up, perfectly still.  Nona froze.  Debbie thought the snake didn't look real, so she threw a handful of rocks on it.

It was real.

They screamed and bolted in opposite directions, while I inadvertently serpentined the car down the road - unable to see past the open hood. 

We lived to drive - and to make other stupid mistakes - another day.

Once on a deserted highway in Arizona, I flipped on the blinker and started to pass a gigantic tumbleweed that was rolling way under the speed limit.  The man in the passenger seat marveled loudly at my stupidity, which should have been my clue to end that relationship pronto.  Was I supposed to follow the five-foot weed all the way to Phoenix?  Should I have honked?  Luckily, a tire blew and changed the subject for us.

I met the second-angriest Total Stranger in my twenties.  A highway patrolman stopped me on a stretch of I-80 between Elk Mountain and Laramie, and when I saw the shakiness, the neck veins, the spit - I figured it was something I had done.  I glanced at the dashboard - no bright red lights.

I hoped he wasn't having a stroke because I'd just started nursing school and at that point was only able to feed him Jell-o and offer an 8:00 pm backrub, were he ever hospitalized.

Apparently, I was going 103 miles an hour.  At midnight.  In the winter.

Whoosh!  What a relief!  I could explain!

You see, Officer, my Scirocco's speedometer only goes to 85.  After that I have to watch the tachometer - so I honestly couldn't possibly have known my speed!

I handed over my law-abiding-person license, but that just made him angrier.  When he could speak, I learned he had a daughter my age.  It seemed irrelevant at the time - but eventually I had my own daughter, and I can simulate stroke symptoms pretty quickly when I insert her into that same situation in my mind.

I believe I've earned that soft-top convertible.  I'll drive it at acceptable speeds, both hands on the wheel, and keep a lookout for rattlesnakes - all the way to a dealership where I'll trade it for something super safe.

The salesman's smile will sum it all up:  "Yep," he'll tell himself, "I have a mother your age."

(Two, four, six, eight - how can we procrastinate?  Yay, Sponge Brain!  Yay, Stretch Pants!  Yay, YAY, NUMEROLOGY!  Right here.  Next week.)

Pardon Me, Miss - Your Pentacles are Showing

Tarot cards, often depicting situations from carnival workers' dreams, were invented long before families used board games to vie for superiority in shag-carpeted dens. ("Think you're too good to pay a Community Chest fine?  Get in that jail, Mr. Double-Hotel-on-Marvin-Gardens!")

Ah, those were the days.  We were learning to be adults - from adults who were well-polished children.

We didn't have a tarot deck when I was young, but we did have an ancient Ouija board.  All three felt pads on the pointer thingy's feet were worn completely off from heavy use.  It wasn't that we relied on the pointer thingy for insight - we used it to exercise control over siblings who were trying to spell out the answers they wanted.

Not only did we develop world-class wrist muscles, but our spelling skills grew exponentially with every teasing sentence out of my brother Randy's mouth.  "That's great, Beverly - you're going to marry an ASTERNAT."  Etc.

Today's Tarot Reading class brought back those Ouija memories.  When I chuckled about it to a classmate, she blanched.  "Oh, my God," she said, "that instrument of the antichrist wasn't in my childhood home, nor is it allowed near my children.  Do you still worship the devil?"

I stared until her original color returned, then revealed that only insane people believe an actual spirit takes over the Ouija pointer thingy.  (When Ouija-ing by ourselves as kids we just mustered up faint finger tremors and kept one eye open to make sure our knight in shining armor's name really was PAUL FROM THE BEATLES.)

As I began comparing Ouija with Tarot, this classmate was one step ahead of me.  She whipped out her deck.  "Angel cards," she said.  "Nothing can hurt me with these."

My own deck is one I'd purchased for this class after perusing approximately seven thousand options on Amazon.  There were scantily clad everything in lots of frightening circumstances, but I chose the Enchanted Forest Animals.  They are adorable!  And not one spiky ball on the end of a bloody chain in the whole bunch.

All I had researched about tarot before this class was how to pronounce it, so I was caught off guard when the teacher announced we'd start by doing tarot readings for the persons to our right.

The Angel Deck Lady scampered away, which left a neighbor who was clearly upset about something.  I didn't need cards to divine that - she had built a little fortress of used tissues that I had no interest in penetrating.

I raised my hand.  We don't even know each other.  How can I explain what's happening in her life?

By the tarot.  Our teacher told us to trust ourselves and reveal whatever came to mind when we studied the cards.

Sheesh.  I am so bad at this stuff.  I limped along through the sad neighbor's 'present circumstances' card, which looked to me like somebody she loved was far away.  Yes, yes - she assured me - her son had just run away from home because his parents are divorcing.

I put the cards down and asked the age of her son.  It seemed a good jumping-off point for some world-class venting, but she stared at the deck and asked me to reveal the 'future.'

Naturally, it was the Death Card.  She gasped.  "Do you think I'm going to die during my colonoscopy tomorrow?"

Oh, gosh.  I raised my hand again and told the teacher I was wildly out of my element, so she suggested we switch and have the neighbor do a reading for me.

My first card from the neighbor's deck, representing the past, was a little worrisome:

There was not much reassurance from my soft, fuzzy deck:

My neighbor raised one eyebrow.  "You're hiding something, aren't you?  A feeling, perhaps?"

I smiled back.  Got me.

My 'present circumstances' seemed pretty straightforward:

Ooh, goody - the Nine of Grapefruit!  I love citrus.

"No," the neighbor lady said, "the pentacles stand for money.  It looks like you are being greedy."

I did a quick Forest Animal check:

Hmmm.  She may be on to something.  That fox is pretty nicely dressed.

In my head the Ouija board was joined by the Magic 8 Ball, a few years of therapeutic counseling sessions, and several thousand fortune cookies.  The teacher's first instruction from today's class summed it all up beautifully.

Trust yourselves.

Every magic source we seek allows us to 'interpret' signs based on where we've been, where we are, and where we want to be.

The woman with the Kleenex fort clearly saw her own demise during a routine outpatient procedure, whereas I wished I'd gotten the Death card - it clearly represented a new job on my horizon.

My third card, representing the future, was SO exciting - it showed exactly the way I've always wanted my hair to behave:

But my classmate couldn't promise this would be true.  "Ask the animals," she advised.

So I did:

I was shocked.  Look how much happier that pig is - and she doesn't even have hair!  All I need is a pink dress, a teeny crown, and some pine trees.

Kleenex Lady sniffled.  "You're so lucky," she said, "I wish I'd gotten those cards."

Wait - how many times do we say that?  "I wish I'd gotten that house - those legs - Bill Gates's money.  Instead I got this house, Bill Gates's legs, no money."

Good news!  It's all in the way we 'interpret' what's dealt.  (And we can spell out whatever we want - with or without a sibling's permission.)

I stared again at the Death card.  Yup.  Pretty scary.  So I found the Magical Forest equivalent and tried again with my neighbor.

Oh, look - they're just playing dead!  Like when you have well-regulated drugs for conscious sedation during a totally benign procedure with a practically ZERO complication rate!

She donned her readers and took a closer look:

She smiled.  "You're right!  I think the one lying down there by that nurse is going to be just fine."

I gave her a little hug before she sprinted home to start her bowel prep.

(Wish you could mimic those crazy sounds your car makes on the way to work in a rainstorm during rush hour?  Bring your kazoo!  Car Smarts right here next Friday.)

The Origin of Road Rash REVEALED!

The world's very first motorcycle sprang fully formed from the head of an idiotic inventor who wanted more excitement from the wheel.

Something involving chrome.

Other inventors had already discovered axles.  As a result, giant pyramid rocks were easier to push around, baby skin stopped burning when buggies were rolled under shade trees, and piecrusts became consistently more uniform in thickness.

But the idiotic inventor wanted to go fast.

I learned in today's "History of the Motorcycle" class that just a few modifications to a standard bicycle brought that inventor's dream to life.  And the small motor wedged between his legs necessitated a frantic attempt to invent BALANCE.

Several continents owe their robust economies to the invention of the motorcycle. Somebody had to pound all that horseshoe metal into handlebars.  Then somebody had to grow more horses after motorcycles sped by and sent the animals into cardiac arrest.

Emergency rooms were invented to treat not only the back problems of those who dragged dead horses off the roads, but the inner leg burns caused by whatever heated up enough to make a motorcycle go so fast.

The History of the Motorcycle also led to the History of the Messy Breakup.

For one excruciatingly tense semester, my college roommate managed to hide a second-degree burn she'd acquired from the muffler of our other roommate's boyfriend's motorcycle.

Yes, I went to Peyton Place University.  (Ask me to sing the PPU Fight Song!)

A tub of strange salve stayed buried in the plastic toiletry bucket she hauled back and forth to the bathroom; rolls of gauze cowered beneath her mattress.  Worst of all, she kept her right leg fully clothed in spite of Phoenix temperatures that refused to dip below 100 degrees, even at night.  If I squinted, her one-sided capris turned her into a peg-legged cheerleader.

But she kept that fakey smile going and used her littlest hi-how-are-yew? voice the whole time.  The stress level in that dorm room was so high that Woofer, our little break-the-rules songbird, ate through a bamboo bar on her cage and tried drowning herself in our break-the-rules fish tank.

When the boyfriend's true colors burst forth in a series of cad-like events, the burned roommate confessed to the spurned roommate and neither spoke until we could finally drive as fast as possible away from each other that summer.

Messy.  Messy breakup.

Early motorcycles were used by military policemen in Europe to catch bad guys.

So the bad guys invented faster motorcycles.

The policemen, not schooled on the finer points of fuel consumption and wind drag, invented motorcycles with little sidecars to hold an extra policeman.

The bad guys got away.

Someone pointed out that while it was fun going fast on motorcycles in a futile attempt to arrest bad guys, it would be super fun to go fast on motorcycles for no apparent reason at all!

So somebody invented Sturgis, South Dakota.  Somebody put two motorcycles together, attached a roll bar, and called it a 'dune buggy.'  Somebody invented the helmet and somebody else beat him to death with a kickstand.

I took care of trauma patients in ICU for a couple of decades.  We called motorcycles "donor cycles" because the best organs were harvested from patients who had not been wearing helmets when they crashed.

You know how some parents fight for - or against - early sex education in schools?  I'm proposing a more basic anatomy lesson aimed at keeping kids alive long enough to even consider having sex.

The lesson, recited on the heels of the Pledge of Allegiance, goes like this:  "I know in my happily beating heart / that all the chaps and leather jackets and gloves and boots in the world / will decidedly not keep my tiny eggshell skull / from cracking open like a melon / when introduced to two thousand pounds of late-for-work metal / whose driver is applying mascara / while approaching a four-way stop."

Depending on the school district, you could even add a little "amen" at the end for religious purposes.

I will admit that working as a nurse warped my daughter Abi's childhood just a tad since I insisted her first helmet be strapped on as she emerged from the birth canal.  The ultrasound measurements were wrong - the helmet covered both eyes - but that soft spot remains intact to this day.  (The downside was that we had to guess at her hair color until it emerged from the helmet's ear holes at around second grade.)

Humans still struggle with balance.  When we are young we crave the rush that comes from standing on the bumper of a moving car - but when we have young, our life's mission is to deny them that very experience.  We become smarter with every single thing we survive.  We worry ourselves into knots giving our Little Ones the shortcuts, clearing every highway in hopes of preventing bad things from veering into their lanes.

And then they leave for college and get a couple of roommates of their own.

I loved going super-fast when I learned to ski.  So did Abi.  But when I watched her go fast, I was the adult who had learned the truth about the stationary nature of trees.  And - still - I let her go.  In spite of my instinct to preserve her unbroken bones, I knew what was happening in that little space between her stomach and heart each time her skis left the planet to catch even the teensiest bit of air.

Balance.

I had a funny feeling that the motorcycle's inventor was not somebody's mother, and my suspicions were confirmed in today's class. 

In 1885, Gottlieb Daimler decided the scenery was passing much too slowly.  He'd not heard about cranial nerves, so he took a two-cylinder, coal-powered, steam engine and attached it to a wooden bike.  He also didn't know about spinal reflexes, so he went ahead and climbed on.

And all his mother could do was worry.

Here's hoping she was comforted many nights by dreams revealing an odd, box-like contraption cradling her stubborn child's head.

I happen to find it beyond incredible that mothers can sleep at all.

(Need help figuring out what just happened in your life?  Easy Peasy!  Next week I'll tell you how to interpret Tarot cards.)