Mr Relaxation

My folks are back in town for a little while. Seems that Friday my dad had to have a cataract removed from his eye. He chose to do this under the steady hand of his eye doctor "up here" (as opposed to the other eye doctor he has "down there," in Florida), Dr Blaydes. This would be Dr S Blaydes.

Now, I think I mentioned this more than a while back, I live in a four-person family that are divided along two distinct camps where illness is concerned. The first camp contains my mother and sister. They are wonderful people, but they both wear illness like a jeweled crown. They love it. They love talking about it, and being the center of attention when they have it. Every cough is too loud, every sniff is exaggerated, and they can work whatever is wrong with them at a given time - and believe me, anything is wrong with them at any given time - into any conversation you start. "I'm going to go grab some lunch." "Well, I can't grab lunch, because I'd just throw it up." "Hey - did you see the news story about the war in Iraq? Twenty soldiers killed." "Well, at least they're out of their misery, and here I am still with this horrible headache." I'm not kidding. You start a conversation, they can work how bad they feel into it.

And no matter what may be wrong with you? Don't mention it. Because theirs is worse. "Look at this - I seem to have blood squirting out my eyeholes at regular intervals." "Well, at least you don't have this stomach virus, I can't move for the cramps!" My mom's intro into one of these is always, "You think that's something?" Then she'll go on to tell you what's wrong with her that's worse. It does no good to try to bring this quality to her attention. Once I was limping around on a foot so sore it could bear no weight, and when she noticed I was standing still upon one foot, she asked me about it and I told her I was in so much pain I couldn't walk. "You think that's something?" she started out. I said, "Well... yes! I do!" and lurched away like Quasimodo, leaving her only slightly stunned, but not understanding well enough to stop her doing it.

Now, the second camp contains my father and I. We don't talk about illness. We don't want people hovering around us. We're like dogs. When we're sick, leave us alone, or we may bite. Of course, maybe we don't talk about illness because we know it'll do no good, but it's still how we are. I've got the current gastrointestinal thing going on, which has moved, in my mind, from "a bug" to "stress" to its current "colon cancer" (it is National Colon Cancer Awareness month, you know - I have till the 31st to be diagnosed), and yet it was only this week when I decided to mention it out loud to someone other than you folks. This is because my mother kept goading me to tell her what was wrong, for she was convinced I was either sick, depressed, or "mad at her," and I made the mistake of blurting out that every morsel of food and liquid for approximately 3 weeks had run through me like it was doing the Jesse Owens 100 meters, to which she 1) told me about her sinus problems, and 2) has now asked me every time she sees or speaks to me how my bowels are doing. I tell her fine and leave it at that. Frankly, I'm just not strong enough to keep the conversation going.

And so, the cataract. My dad - who is not Mr Relaxation, btw, that comes later - had apparently had this baby invading his eye and growing there for quite some time, and never bothered to tell anyone about it. My dad's eyes are barely functional anyway, with his macular degeneration, and although he noticed that his right eye had gone from, say, 20% vision to approximately 0% vision, he was enduring it, coming to the realization that this was his time to go totally blind, and, like my colon cancer, he was staying quiet about it and worrying. Until finally the worry got to him, like hopefully it'll get to me before the 31st, and he hithered himself to his "down there" (Florida) eye doctor. Where the cataract was found.

And he chose to come "up here" to have it removed by Dr Blaydes. My dad likes Dr Blaydes a lot, trusts him in a way that I've only trusted my sadly-retired Dr Davies, the man who pulled on my toe as I was being put under anesthesia, then lovingly held my intestines in his capable hands and changed my life. And Dr Davies smelled wonderful. I can only hope my dad thinks Dr Blaydes smells as good.

As I said earlier, this would be Dr S Blaydes, who is the son of Dr E Blaydes, who was a legend in B'field when I was growing up. I've only found out in adulthood that Dr E Blaydes was also a legend many other places, namely the World of Opthamology In General, and was nationally known for his talents and trailblazing techniques.

I never went to Dr E Blaydes. This is because only old people, with real eye problems, and rich kids went to him. We didn't go anywhere rich kids went, we went to Dr S in a neighboring town, who was a friend of my dad's and gave five-minute examinations that went something like, "Better here, better there? Do you like number one or do you like number two?" Then he wrote you a prescription and you got to go to the small room and pick out your glasses from the approximately three styles of frames he had. Two weeks later you got your glasses, and it was such an adventure, falling off curbs and missing when you grabbed for the door handle of the car, because your glasses were too strong. But you got used to it in about a week. If you were wearing your glasses all the time, like you were supposed to.

The running joke about going to Dr Blaydes was the waiting. He had loads and loads of patients, hundreds by the day, and apparently they all had the same appointment time. Patients would get there in the morning, start waiting, and eventually start up conversations with other waiting patients. "What time is your appointment?" "10:30." "Mine too!" "And yours?" "10:30." "10.30." "10:30." "10:30." And on and on. You could get there at 9:00 and be there till six. But you were seen by Dr Blaydes. And it was worth it, provided you took your lunch along and didn't get hungry.

But there was another reason that Dr Blaydes was a legend in B'field. And it was monumental. Dr Blaydes once did eye surgery on no less a person himself than Perry Como. Yes, Perry Como, Mr Relaxation.

When I was a little girl, ours was a pro-Como household. I don't know that we had any of his records, maybe Mom had one in there with her Percy Sledge and Ray Charles, but we all liked Perry. I can remember my sister and I, in our pajamas, sitting in the floor watching him on TV. The way he sat on the stool, one knee up, the other leg stretched in a standing position, leaning on his bent knee and singing softly into the microphone.

Perry was nice, you could just tell. Perry was the celebrity you could invite to dinner. Sure, Dean Martin might tell funny stories, but he'd get drunk and something would get broken. And Sinatra, forget it. He'd punch out your grandma. And Andy Williams just never seemed sincere. He wouldn't let any of the guests on his TV show sing by themselves, he always had to sing with them. Perry would entertain the adults, be nice to the kids, and, hell, maybe even help you wash up the dishes afterwards.

I was only 10 or 11 when the whole Perry Como Getting His Eye Surgery thing happened, so I'm a little sketchy on the details. In fact, I don't even know how many of the details were divulged when the story appeared in the paper. I don't know if Dr Blaydes went out to California to operate on Perry or if Perry winged into town here. If he did, he did it on the sly; no one saw him. So either it happened somewhere else, or nothing was reported until Mr Relaxation got back home after the surgery.

It didn't matter, though. It was a Big Deal. I mean, my little town is small even now, but back then it was miniscule. The thought that we had a connection with a real-live celebrity, especially one as big and wonderful as Perry Como, caused a real buzz.

I'm sure that made even more people flock to Dr Blaydes for their eye care. Not us, though. We had to stay with Dr S, and spent our years from elementary to high school falling off curbs and missing door handles.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Acrowinners! We have acrowinners! So, what suggestions did you have for me to improve my embouchure?
- Honorable Mention goes to Michelle with her, "Napalm alloy, liberally massaged, offers friction." Maybe napalm is my only answer, Mitchie.
- Runner-up goes to LilyG with her, "Nice and long, moist, orgasmic fellatio." Oh, Lily. I still can't believe it. It was incredibly funny, but I just can't believe it.
- And this week's winner goes to - well, it's a tie. You know how I hate to declare ties, but this week there were two that made me actually haw-haw-haw right out loud. So kudos to our co-winners, Flipsycab's "Naked and liquored, munch on Fritos," and Kellie's " Need agility? Lebanese Mouth Origami. Fabulous!" Now, like I said, both just keeled me over. I think I'd be pretty good at Flipsy's, not so sure about Kellie's, but it conjures up a great picture. (I also liked Flipsy's suggestion about masticating flutes.)
- Thanks to all who play - you make my week!