I’m madder than a production artist with a broken computer that he himself clearly broke over the fact that I can’t type when my right arm has been incapacitated.
Look, you all know the ol’Screecher’s doing everything he can to stay alive week after week because I know how upset you’d be if I didn’t bring you my brilliant prose every Sunday on BrooklynPaper.com (I’m talking to you, Jim from Cobble Hill), every Friday in your local Courier Life publication except the Downtown one (for shame, Downtown editor!), and every Saturday on BrooklynDaily.com (a column so good,you can read it thrice!), so it’s really important that I head over to the VA hospital to get my now-monthly oil change.
Now, I’ve told you before that for reasons beyond my comprehension they moved me to the geriatric wing, even though I’ve got the blood work of a 10 year old. But now I think I know why — turns out the doctor over there is my biggest fan!
“Screecher!” he screeched as I wheeled in atop my trusty steed Tornado. “I’ve been waiting for you!”
After telling me over and over again how he doesn’t miss a column and reads it three times a week, he insisted I get one of those ammonia shots so I don’t die the way Jim Henson did. I told him that there was no way I was going to get a shot that would give me ammonia, and that’s when he set me straight.
“Carmine, it doesn’t give it to you, it makes sure you don’t get it,” he said.
With that, I was game, but when he took out the needle that had to be extra long to get through my girthy arms, I started doubting that I made the right decision.
“Wait a second, doc,” I screeched. “Is that for me?”
But before he even answered me, he stuck it in and I screeched to the high heavens. You probably heard that.
Thankfully, everything else checked out fine (as usual) except for the fact that the doctor thinks I’m morbidly obese and can afford to lose a pound or 200. I told him I’m trying to lose weight, but I’m not particularly proficient at it.
So I headed home, and that’s when my arm really started bothering me. I called the nurse and she told me that most people don’t suffer the way I was after getting the shot, but some do, and if I just took some Tylenol and put some ice on it I would be fine.
Unable to move my right arm, I asked my lovely wife Sharon to go and get me some Tylenol and then get an ice pack and hold it on my doctor-inflicted wound. That’s when all heck broke loose again.
After she handed me the Tylenol and headed to the kitchen, I heard another loud screech (you probably heard that one, too!).
But I was in so much pain myself, all I wanted was my ice pack! I screamed louder than her to bring it in, and she came running in with it in one hand and her other hand holding a napkin on her arm that was bleeding profusely. She dropped the ice pack on the bed and headed into the water closet to stop her bleeding.
Turns out when she reached into the Frigidaire, she got a massive paper cut from the cardboard box that holds my Italian ices I keep through the winter in case the heat makes the apartment too hot (which happens more often than you might think).
She stopped the bleeding and came in to treat her patient who needed that ice pack on my shoulder pronto.
Ol’ Florence Nightingale did her job diligently, holding the ice on my shoulder until I fell asleep. And when I woke up, the pain was gone! So I celebrated with an Italian ice.
Now’s the point in the column where I give you another one of my patented Screecher Pro Tips for Seniors:
How many times has this happened to you: no matter how hard you try, you can’t go to the bathroom.
My answer to this old-age problem is to enjoy another helping of what I call my “Mott Street Breakfast.”
Pour yourself the biggest cup of Maxwell House you can, then grab about half a loaf of Italian bread, preferably freshly baked form the oven. Next, sit back and dunk the bread in your coffee, slurping it down until all the bread and coffee is gone.
In about an hour, nature will take its course. I guarantee it!
Screech at you next week!
