THINGS I HAVE LEARNED…PART II

The re-education of Alan continues:
Recently I have learned I have the best doctors in the world. They really do have my best interest in mind and treat me as a friend not just a patient…mostly because they are friends at this point. Why else would I always get a heartfelt note from one of them in my Christmas card each year saying “Thanks for making my ex-wife’s alimony payments again this year”.
Speaking of Christmas cards…you know when you’ve hit a certain point in life when you get fewer cards from family members (because they’re all mostly dead these days) and get more from doctors, lawyers and pharmaceutical companies than anyone else. I get a warm fuzzy feeling every year usually just after Thanksgiving.
I have discovered that medical people need to learn to ask better questions. Asking someone like me if I feel like I want to kill myself or do harm to other people is not a valid question with which to extract important information from. Once asked they only leave me with two possibly rational answers A) “No I felt like spending close to seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars I didn’t have at the time and nearly two years of rehab and physical therapy to fix myself so I’ll feel and look better when I put a fifty dollar gun to my head.” And B) “I hadn’t thought about hurting anyone until you became the nine-hundredth person to ask me that stupid question so far.” Please people…think before you put your mouth in gear.
I have also begun to learn that once you’re told you shouldn’t have something you want it even more…even if you never liked it to begin with. Add to this the fact that when we get older we get this nostalgic twinge for things that don’t exist anymore. I’ve never been much of a fast food eater. I’ve eaten healthy most of my life and even more so when I was heavily into body building so explain to me why lately these days I have a perverse desire crawling around in my head.
I want so badly to walk into a Taco Bell with a bag of cheap hamburger buns and order eight tacos and tell the kid behind the counter “I don’t want the shell, just put the filling on these” and see what his reaction is. One of the few things I have missed from my childhood is the “Bellburger” (AKA: taco fillings in a bun.) I loved those things. Think outside the bun my ass.
I wish they’d bring back Bob’s Big Boy. That was the only hamburger worth eating and now I have to drive to California to get one along with their world’s greatest onion rings. Since I can’t drive anymore I see this as a little more than problematic. I would have an easier time trying to rob a bank than convince my wife to drive me that far for fried foods and a burger. A Big Mac just isn’t quite the same and they don’t have onion rings.
So here I sit longing for days gone by, drinking my green tea, taking my meds and wishing for a heart attack on a bun. Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed.