Sunday Puzzle

      Habit?  Or Addiction?

      Are they the same?  Is it possible to have a “good” addiction as it is possible to have a good habit?   Is someone who reads the Bible daily “addicted”?  Or do they  just have a good habit?

      I have an addiction, or maybe habit.  I make an effort to listen to the Sunday puzzle on “N-P-Ah” as the Car Guys use to call it.  I loved to listen to Tom and Ray, too, in their day.  They have been off the air for a few years, now, and one of the ”Tappet Brothers, “Click and Clack,” never sure which was which, died.

     The Car Guys had “the puzzler,” too.  The younger brother would pose a question to be answered by the listeners.  The lucky listener who answered the question correctly and had his/her name drawn out of a hat got a gift certificate to the “Shameless Commerce Division” of their show.

     A week after posing the puzzle, the older brother got a chance to solve the puzzle before the correct answer and the winner was announced.  The older brother always had to be reminded of the question, which of course was a ruse to remind the listeners who didn’t bother to enter the contest what the puzzle of the week was.

     When the brothers retired from their weekly show, the younger brother revealed that the older brother was suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease and could no longer carry on with the show.  Always good for a joke, the younger brother commented that the older brother really couldn’t remember last week’s puzzle.  It wasn’t just a ruse after all.

      The Car Guys are sadly missed in this age of COVID and violent politics.  They could be counted on for a little humor mixed in with sometimes-legitimate efforts to help callers with their car problems. 

     One of the favorite segments of the program was “Stump the Chumps” where the brothers contacted a previous caller to see if their advice was good or “B-O-O-O-GUS”.  If their advice had been followed and proved successful,  there was an orchestral “Ta-Da!”  If, on the other hand, their advice had proved to be ineffective or wrong, there was the “r-r-r-r-“ of a car’s starter dragging down and stopping as in the case of a nearly-dead battery.

      While the Car Guys are a thing of the past on NPR, the Sunday puzzle motors on.  You can hear it on a Sunday morning at 6:40 or 8:40 a.m. on most stations.  In these days of computers and smart phones, you can find the puzzle on the internet if you miss it on Sunday morning.

     I have listened to it for years, even sending in a postcard or two back in the day before email and the like.  You now enter via email.  The lucky puzzle solver gets to play a puzzle on the air with puzzle master Will Shortz.  The reward for maybe making a fool of yourself in front of millions of listeners is a lapel pin and some other games like Scrabble and a book of crossword puzzles.

     More often than not, I am unable to solve the puzzle.  I write down the details and then forget about it until Sunday morning rolls around again.  When I have been successful at solving it, it’s usually an easy one, and I join two or three thousand others who have solved it.  Well, things changed two or three weeks ago. 

      The hostess nearly always asks the lucky listener how they solved the puzzle.  The solver two or three weeks ago said he works on the puzzle as he is going to sleep.  The seed sprouted and took shape in my mind.

       I don’t need any help going to sleep the first thing at night.  Reading usually does a good job of putting me to sleep.  The usual sign that it’s time to put away the book and turn off the bed lamp is when the book, or tablet nowadays, falls from my hand onto my face.

      However, sometimes I have trouble going back to sleep if awakened in the night.  It  happens frequently now.  I have to arise to answer the call of nature, so to speak.  Then I have trouble getting back to sleep.

       Worries, usually something beyond my control, beset my mind and get it to working when it should be concentrating on sending me a soothing dream of some kind.  I have to find something soothing, even boring, to think about and help me get back to sleep, something like the boring stories enjoyed by Sesame Street’s Bert.     

      What better thing to do than to try to solve the puzzle to help put me back to sleep?  I have been trying that the last couple of weeks, and it works.  I have to get the details of the puzzle in my head so I can work on it in the middle of the night when I can’t check out my written notes.  It does take my mind off of foolish worries and puts me to sleep.

      Amazingly, there is another result.  I actually solve the puzzle.  At least I have been successful the past two weeks.  I entered, too, but I have not been the lucky solver.

     That’s okay.  I would be like a dog chasing a passing car.  If he caught it, what would he do?  But it is fun and serves a useful purpose.

      As I contemplate this new pastime, I can’t help but come to the conclusion that in this time of isolation, puzzles have become a bigger part of my life.  If the Goodwife doesn’t complete the crossword in the newspaper, I finish it for her. 

     I have also challenged myself with the sudoku in the daily paper.  After a month or so of trying, I have actually managed to solve two or three sudokus without cheating.

     I think puzzles offer a challenge where you can feel good about yourself if you succeed.  And if you don’t succeed, no use to tell anyone.  Keep it to yourself.

      Now I have to get over the Puritanical notion that solving puzzles is a waste of time and that I should be doing something more productive.  Or, that working puzzles is a bad habit, an addiction, even.

     Working puzzles must be better than watching television.  Now that really is a waste of time.  Most of the time.   

    

       

 

The Trash Can

      “A disposable cuff?

     I was somewhat incredulous.  I checked in to the hospital before 9 a.m.  My first instructions said 9:30 for a 11:30 “procedure”.  A subsequent phone call informed me I should be there two-and-a-half hours before my appointed hour.

     After the usual height-weight routine, Rebecca led me to my prep cubicle.  There on the bed lay the ubiquitous backless gown.  It had company, a pair of yellowish-greenish tube socks covered with non-slip strips.

      Four plastic packages about the size of a Hershey candy bar, only longer, topped the gown.  Rebecca explained that the contents of the packages should be used to bathe as much of my body as possible.  Even though my “procedure” was a slit about an inch-and-a-half along the wrist and slightly into the palm of my left hand.   

     “Trying to keep the OR sterile,” Rebecca explained.  “Four packages, one for each leg, one for the arms, one for the front of your body, and one for as much of your back as you can get,” she continued.                                                              

     As I finished using the oversized Wet Ones, which had been warmed, I dumped each one, into the trash can. 

     No wonder the trash can was huge.

     Having donned my backless gown, I stepped, in my non slip socks, the only time they would hit the floor, over to the curtain, drew it to signal to Rebecca that I was ready, and lay down on the bed.  Rebecca proceeded to insert two IV needles, one near my right elbow joint, one in the back of my left wrist near the joint between arm and hand.

     A pile of plastic wrappers covered my lap when she was done.  Into the trash can.

     Rebecca hooked up a series of monitors and started the juice flowing through my elbow IV.  The wrist one was to inject numbing agents to stave off pain, she explained.  Then she unwrapped the blood pressure cuff.  I noticed it wasn’t the usual black lined material.  It looked more like the cardboard, soft, flexible that we used to use to pad and separate eggs in a wooden crate. 

      The cuff was soft and flexible.  And disposable.

     “It will stay with you the whole time you are here,”  Rebecca assured me.  And then?

     Into the trash can.

     I can only guess how much trash was generated in the operating room.  I took a nap. 

     I am sure that all the instruments used were no doubt sealed carefully in sterile plastic packaging.  Which went into the trash.

     In the recovery room, I got a carton of cranberry juice.  The carton could be recycled, but I doubt it did get recycled. 

     Various dressings and two or three pairs of gloves used by the recovery room lady as she got me ready to depart went into the trash.  The socks came off as she dressed me.  Did I want the socks?  Heavens no.  They weren’t very comfortable and they were ugly.  Into the trash can.

      Finally, off came the blood pressure cuff.  The nurse didn’t offer to send it home with me. 

      Into the trash can.

     Fully dressed, I rode the wheel chair to the exit door.  The Goodwife pulled the car up to the door.  The young lady helped me get into the car.  Away we went.

      I left a pile of trash in my wake.

     I should not complain.  My surgery went smoothly.  The big clock in the OR, big enough for me to see without my glasses, said 11:30 as they wheeled me in. 

      I was awakened briefly to look at the slit in my wrist.  Back to sleep I went.  It wasn’t quite 12:30 as they wheeled me out of the OR.  It was 1:30 when I left the recovery room.

      So far so good.  I have less pain in my wrist now than I sometimes experienced before surgery.  So far, no sign of infection.  I am grateful for the strides made in medicine.  (Think of the amputations in field hospitals during the Civil War.  How did anyone survive that?)

      But I can’t help reflecting on the mountain of trash hospitals and medical facilities generate daily, hourly.  When we run out of places to dump trash, we may need to take a look at how the medical industry does business.

     Really?  A disposable blood pressure cuff?

Addenda:  What did I do after a day at home?  Bought gloves that would go over the bandage on my hand and wrist, so I could wash my other hand.   Disposable plastic gloves.  Shame on me.