The Exception To The Rule

My wife, Donna, had taken our son, Jack, to a surgical center to have a minor procedure done and she had run into a problem, a nurse who was not willing to bend the rules.

Jack had to be put to sleep but before he was rolled into the operating room, the nurse-in-charge said, he had to put on a hospital gown, the drafty kind, open all the way down the back. Putting something like that on Jack was a lot easier said than done.

Jack with Brother Pop at Snowbird
Jack with Brother Pop at Snowbird

Jack is mentally handicapped and autistic.  He doesn’t do all that well with change. When he gets used to something one way, he wants it to stay that way. He insists. He looked scrawny in those days, but the fact was he could lift a baby elephant off his feet.

Donna knew there was no way Jack was going to put on that gown. The helper from the group home where he lived knew it too.

“He ain’t gonna wear that thing,” he said.

Donna suggested putting the gown on after Jack went to sleep but the nurse-in-charge said rules are rules.

So Donna said, sweetly, “Why don’t you put it on him.”

The nurse-in-charge said she would do just that and she took Jack to another room. A few minutes later she returned with Jack. He was not wearing the gown.

The nurse-in-charge said she had changed her mind. She said they could put it on later, after Jack went to sleep.

Coming Monday: What’s In A Name?

Where Does It End?

My wife, Donna, told me that my son, Bo, who was six years old, had been hit by another boy and had come home crying.

It was time for “The Talk.”

Bo, 6, waiting for the school bus.
Bo, 6, waiting for the school bus.

“Bo,” I said, “when some boy hits you, you have to hit him back.”

And he said, “And then they’ll hit me again.”

“Probably,” I said.

“And then I’ll hit them again.”

“Absolutely!”

“And then they’ll hit me.”

And I said, “Well, yea, they might. Probably.”

“That could go on forever,” Bo said.

Postscript: I found out later that the boy I had urged my six-year-old son to slug it out with was several years older.

BONUSThis is not a real story, but it’s a fun story.  An old friend, Pat Stumpf, sent it to me:

Tom was a single guy living at home with his father and working in the family business. He knew he would inherit a fortune when his sickly father died and he decided he needed to do two things to prepare for that day:

Learn how to invest his inheritance

And find a wife to share his fortune.

One evening, at an investment seminar, he spotted the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her beauty took his breath away.

“I may look like just an ordinary man,” he said to her, “but in just a few years my father will die and I’ll inherit $20 million dollars.”

Impressed, the woman asked for his business card.  Two weeks later, she became his stepmother.

Women are so much better at estate planning than men.

Coming Monday: The Senator’s Proof