Why Have the Disease When You Can Worry About It Without Really Having it?

I am a hypochondriac.

I don't watch medical shows on TV, because when I do, I have all the symptoms of that week's disease about two seconds after the closing credits roll. I watched HOUSE for three seasons before I gave up. Most of his diseases were so exotic even I couldn't develop symptoms. But after three seasons House's dyspepsia did me in. So, in a way, it was a disease that killed that show for me as well.

About a month ago, my brother had surgery in which a couple of stents were placed where stents are placed to open up whatever stents open up. Naturally, since that time, I have had chest pains that radiate down my left arm. I had these same pains ten years ago and went through all the steps people go through with these pains and was declared free of any kind of heart issues. Since I was officially declared free, I stopped worrying about the pains. Now, they're back and it's because I am incapable of not sharing other people's maladies.

Today, as I sat at Barnes and Noble innocently working on a play, the two ladies sitting in front of me doing the volunteer Christmas wrapping thing started discussing a friend of theirs who had passed away. Not a heart attack, but something to do with chest pain.

I wanted to take their wrapping paper and just...wrap the hell out of them.

I have three little lumps of something in my right palm. A year ago, I showed these lumps to my dermatologist. She smiled and said, "Oh, we don't usually do anything about these lumps. Unless there's pain, we just leave them alone."

I've gone a year not worrying about the lumps.

But recently, it occurred to me that it was my dermatologist telling me there was nothing to worry about.

What the hell does a dermatologist know?

So now I'm worrying about the lumps again.

Last Christmas, I was feeling some muscle pain in my neck and skull area. Went to my doctor at Lahey Clinic on CHRISTMAS EVE! He looked at me for about 32 seconds, felt my head, told me I was fine. And I was.

Until this week, when the pains returned.

Now I'm worrying about the pains again.

Maybe it's a Christmas thing.

Every slight discoloration on my body must be melanoma.

Every headache must be a brain tumor.

Every chest ache must be a heart attack.

Every cough must be lung cancer.

I need an episode of HOUSE where, at the end, Hugh Laurie looks into the camera and says, "Nobody is sick. Everybody is well. You, particularly, Neary, have nothing to worry about."

That'll last me a while.

Until I overhear another symptom in the line at CVS.

Well, at least at CVS I can pick up something to take for the ailment.

Whatever it may be.

I am a lunatic.

Gus Bernier ("Uncle Gus")

It's that time of year when what has become depressing about the holiday season triggers memories of holiday seasons past when the holiday season was the Christmas season and hardly anybody was afraid to utter the phrase, "Merry Christmas."

Now, when you utter the phrase, you are being bold and defiant.

Jesus.

Oops, there's another un-utterable holiday phrase!

And it's his birthday!

I digress.

So as I fight, fight, fight to return this time of year to its former stature (i.e., better than Thanksgiving), I remember a guy who contributed greatly to making Christmas Christmas for me back in the day.

Gus Bernier. Just a guy who pretty much ran the old WMUR TV station in Manchester in the fifties and a bit into the sixties. I got the impression he showed up in the morning, opened the door of the station, cranked up the broadcasting equipment, and then did everything until he went home, probably after eight or nine in the evening. He did the news and weather, I'm pretty sure about that. And he had a kiddie show, called "The Uncle Gus Show," which ran a while.

But the reason I remember him, and the reason I bring him up today, is that I believed he was Santa Claus.

Yeah, I said "believed."

Sometime in December each year when I was extraordinarily young, Gus did himself up as Santa, sat behind a WMUR desk, and transformed himself. The show would open, as I recall it, with what had to be a miniature igloo or something being dusted by WMUR snow. There was a window in the igloo and the camera zoomed in to the window, then opened up on Gus as Santa. He had an elf, named Ooglook (forgive the spelling, I have no idea), who could have been a man or a woman, and who had the voice of a bursting steam pipe. Bernier's voice was perfect--booming, happy, blustery. He would spend the first part of the show talking to us kids, directly into the camera, as if each of us was his own personal visitor. The television was like Santa's lap, and, since he came on at about 5:00, we watched and listened as we had dinner, or "suppa" as we called it back then.

After this, he would go to his workshop, and show us (and our parents, who, in those days, had "suppa" with the kids) all the new toys he and his elves had "built" at the North Pole. For some reason, which we kids neither understood nor tried to understand, he would tell us (and our parents) that if we wanted to take a closer look at the toys he had built, all we (and our parents) had to do was visit his "friends at Mattel" or wherever. Sponsorship taken care of.

And that's pretty much it. He was as believable a television character as any of the greats--Ed Norton, Barney Fife, Archie Bunker, Cartman--and when I woke up as a very young child and found gifts under the tree, it was this guy I believed had visited the house the night before, left the gifts, ate the cookies and milk.

To me, that's an astonishing accomplishment for an actor.

Well, making me believe, I mean. The cookies and milk--any actor could do that. Most would.

Thanks, Gus.

Merry Christmas.

Heidi

So...

I'm going to miss Heidi.

Heidi was my brother and sister-in-law's dog. I never learned her breed. I always thought she looked just like a small deer. So whatever that breed is, that's what she was.

Didn't matter.

What matters, at least from my standpoint, is that Heidi made me a dog lover.

I went damn near fifty years not really caring about dogs, one way or the other. Cats, I couldn't stand. Cats made me nervous and I didn't like to be nervous. Dogs didn't bother me. I never cared all that much about them, but they didn't make me nervous so...they didn't bother me.

Well, a couple of dogs made me nervous. One German Shepherd on my old paper route made delivering the Globe on Sidney Street a walk in Hell on a daily basis. But dogs in general--they were okay.

Then Heidi moved in downstairs on Andrews Street, and it didn't take long before I knew what they meant when they would talk about man's best friend.

Heidi had a terrifically mild and friendly temperament.

Unless you were a guy with a beard, or a guy smoking cigarettes.

Those guys would piss her off.

And if you were a bearded guy smoking a cigarette--head for the hills!

But with us, with the family, with friends, with neighbors, Heidi was a sweetie.

I was fortunate enough to dog sit for Heidi a few times, and just the notion of allowing a dog to be in my apartment when I was SLEEPING was proof that I had taken the leap into canine-appreciation land. My favorite moment when taking care of her was when it was time for a walk. All I had to do was reach for the long leash and she'd be leaping up and down like a 37-year old single bridesmaid going after the bouquet. After I held her down to link the leash, she'd lead me to the front or back door, lean up against it, panting with anticipation, and then we'd hit the yard or the sidewalk and get a breath of air. Loved doing that with Heidi.

Heidi was something of an apartment building explorer. Both my mother and I, at different times and in different apartments, woke to Heidi staring us in the face, first thing in the morning. She had found her way downstairs to my mother's apartment, and upstairs to mine, and seemed damned pleased that she'd done it.

Heidi knew me. Heidi knew I liked her, and she'd always come to greet me when I'd visit the downstairs apartment on Andrews Street or the house in Derry. But, after a couple of vain attempts on her part to get me to allow her to lick my face or my hand, she learned, she knew, that this is something that just wasn't going to happen with Uncle Jack. It was a tacit understanding between us, and, after about a month or so, when she'd greet me, she would never reach out in that way again. And it was fine.

Heidi has been sick, and she went away tonight.

I am forever grateful to Jim and Tracie, who took such good care of her, and to Heidi herself, for opening up her world to me.

So long, Heidi.

You did a very good job.

Love...

Uncle Jack

Shrink Wrap

I need to hire someone to open things for me.

Otherwise, I will probably kill myself, accidentally or intentionally.

Shrink wrap.

Who the fuck invented shrink wrap?

Not regular, thin shrink wrap that you find on CDs and magazines that consider themselves worthy of shrink wrap.

I mean the kind of shrink wrap you get on utensils and batteries and DVDs and things like the LAN adapter I received from Amazon today. Maybe it isn't even shrink wrap. It's hard and plastic. But it's wrap. And it looks like it's been shrunk around whatever it's covering.

AND YOU CAN'T FRIGGIN' OPEN IT!

Oh, you can. Of course you can. Otherwise nobody would ever be able to put a battery into a camera or radio. But when you do open it, you take your life in your hands.

First of all, you need a box cutter or a very sharp pair of scissors to cut through the shrink wrap. Or the hard plastic. Or whatever the crap it is. But there's no real avenue of entrance for your box cutter or your scissor(s). You either cut through the shrink wrap into what is usually the instructions for whatever it is you're buying, thus tearing the instructions to shreds, or you decide not to cut, but rather to poke a hole into the wrap and slide the box cutter or scissor(s) up the side of the package. When you do this, it is entirely possible your box cutter or scissor(s) will miss the poke, and poke you, which is what happened to me when I tried to get to my LAN adapter opened yesterday, puncturing my palm. There is nothing enjoyable about a punctured palm, let me tell you.

What's even worse is when you buy a box cutter or a pair of scissors and they're all shrunk up into shrink wrap and the only way you can get to your box cutter is by using a box cutter or a pair of scissors, but you can't because your box cutter and scissor(s) is (are) shrunk up in the shrink wrap and....AAAARGH!

I used to like Graham Crackers.

I still do.

But I don't like opening a package of Graham Crackers. Not since shrink wrap.

It's depressing.

Opening Graham Crackers should not be a depressing experience.

I mean...they're Graham Crackers!

Remember when things used to be wrapped in paper? And aluminum foil?

That was nice.

That was safe.

Reynolds Wrap won't kill you like shrink wrap will.

I hate shrink wrap.

I really do.

The Stuff Is Winning

Okay, I tried to work on the stuff yesterday. And I succeeded, to a certain extent. I went out to my hallway and picked up all the cardboard boxes I would have thrown away a long time ago had I not felt guilty about recycling them. See, it's not a concern for the environment that moves me toward recycling--it's guilt. But, you know, guilt pretty much drives every other action of mine, so there's no reason to be surprised that guilt drives this one.

Anyway, I gathered up all the cartons and boxes (are they the same thing?) and took a box cutter and went to work. Got them all cut up and packed in a bigger box to put in the recycling bin tomorrow.

So that was good.

But it was just a small strand on the full head of hair which is my stuff. And it took me an hour or so. And then I had to go to my directing job.

So today, I went at the stuff again, and the stuff just laughed at me. It didn't smile. It didn't smirk. It laughed. Out loud.

"Who the hell do you think YOU are to try to get rid of us?" the stuff said. "We are your STUFF, and we do not go down without a fight! Har Har Har!" (That's how stuff laughs. Har Har Har. I have no idea why.)

So what I ended up doing this morning was what I always do when I feel the need to get rid of stuff but when the stuff laughs at me.

I moved the stuff from one part of my apartment to the other, thereby clearing stuff from a portion of the apartment, allowing me to fool myself into thinking I have actually done something about the stuff.

But I have not.

Because there it was, on the other side of the apartment. Laughing.

And it took me two hours to realize it.

So, there is a certain amount of guilt removed by the work done.

But the problem remains.

And the stuff laughs.

Har. Har. Har.

Stuff

I have way too much stuff.

And I just don't know how to deal with it.

In fact, that's the reason I'm writing this at this moment. Because, by writing this, I don't have to deal with my stuff.

And I've determined that it is, in fact, really, really time to deal with my stuff.

I am terrible at throwing things away. Somehow, the Depression mentality embedded in the generation previous to mine has embedded itself in my brain. I look at something--a piece of stuff that is no longer pertinent to my existence--and if it isn't shattered beyond comprehension, I tend not to toss it, but to store it. I guess I think that in some sort of Stuff Afterlife, there's gonna be a Stuff Resurrection when all this useless stuff is going to be refurbished and useful either to me or somebody else.

Right now, as I stare at the top of my refrigerator, I am looking at two cookbooks.

First of all, I have no need for one cookbook. I cook, but I don't cook by the book.

And even if it makes a tiny bit of sense to keep a cookbook in the house, why would I need two cookbooks, especially since one of them is torn and tattered and anything worth cooking inside probably wouldn't taste good anyway because of the decrepit shape of the book?

I currently own five televisions. Maybe six. I'll have to look in the back of the closet.

Radios. Boom boxes. Tape recorders. Walkmen. (Walkmans?) Telephones. Answering machines.

In a now-fully digital world, I refuse to let go of my analog past.

And I won't even start with the books.

Magazines. What is it about a magazine which, when I finish reading it, obliges me to think I need to keep it? (There's a sentence there, somewhere, just look for it.) Maybe it's the gloss. I can barely throw out non-glossy items, how the hell can I throw away something that's shiny and sparkly and has a picture of Reese Witherspoon on the cover?

And, on another matter entirely, when have I EVER finished reading a magazine?

Why do I even subscribe to magazines?

Wait a minute, now...as I recall, a few months ago, I threw away a whole slew of VHS tapes. Not commercial tapes, mind you, but old VHS tapes I used to record TV shows. So somewhere in the dump, if you're interested, you can find VHS tapes full of old SEINFELDS and NYPD BLUE episodes.

What I need to do, is to get myself in whatever mode I was in when I threw out the VHS tapes, and begin to throw out everything else.

And I'm not going to get into that mode by typing this.

So...here I go. STUFF! GET READY TO MEET THE DUMPSTER!

Wait...who's that on the cover of Entertainment Weekly?

Jennifer Connelly?

Well, I guess I can hold on to just this one...

Surrounded by Idiots, Part One

So you're driving. You're toodling up the ramp, aiming for the highway. Maybe it's 95 in Burlington. Maybe it's 495 at Woburn Street in Lowell. Maybe it's 93 in Stoneham.

But you're toodling. And you're in Massachusetts. What's worse, you're FROM Massachusetts. And what's even WORSE WORSE, you were BORN in Massachusetts.

So, as you're toodling, what's going through your head is this:

I am driving.

I am from Massachusetts.

I was BORN in Massachusetts.

I have the right of way.

Always.

ALWAYS.

So you toodle up the ramp, and you don't look in your rear view mirror to see what vehicle, most likely driven by someone nearly as human as you are, is heading in your direction. You don't look because you are a Massachusetts driver and YOU HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY.

Trouble is, there's a very good chance that the vehicle containing a human or humans nearly as human as you are is heading toward your ramp and the human who is driving is likely ALSO to be a Massachusetts driver.

IDIOT ALERT! YOU BOTH CANNOT HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY!

And here's what you do if you're toodling up that ramp heading towards doom and destruction.

You put your foot on the gas. And you enter the highway. And you keep not looking. Because you know, because you are you and you are an IDIOT, that you are not going to be demolished by that SUV or SEMI. You know that. Because you are from or you were born in Massachusetts and you are an IDIOT.

And you know what? You are right. Because the human driving the vehicle you are about to CUT OFF, despite not having the right of way, is ME.

And I will back off. And I will let you on the highway. Because I, also, am an IDIOT.

However, I am an IDIOT who wants to LIVE.

After I allow you on the highway, I will then spout off a series of sentences featuring a certain f-word which you can hear on premium cable. I will curse you to within an inch of your life.

But you will live.

As will I.

Because while I am an IDIOT like you, I am an IDIOT who understands your IDIOCY, and who knows how to deal with it.

It doesn't make for an easy, quiet commute.

But I get to where I am going.

And I get to use the f-word. Loudly. Uncompromisingly. Enthusiastically.

Which is, somehow, soothing.

In an IDIOTIC kind of way.