Warning Signs of Trouble Ahead

 

When a conversation starts this way, look out! It means trouble.

 

--“Have a seat.”

--"We have been friends for a long time….”

--"With all due respect….”

--"We are happy to announce…”

--"Just sayin’.”

--“You know, I promised to be faithful…”

 

--“I just want what is best for you.”

--"I have a new and exciting opportunity for you.”

--"Don’t take this personally.”

--"I love you, but…”

--"If I offend you, I apologize in advance.”
--“This will be better for both of us…”

--"We need to have a talk.”

 

--“Don’t get all worked up! He is just a friend.”

--"Excuse me, but…”

--"I never told you this…”

--“Sir, may I see your driver’s license and car registration?”

--"I know I can be blunt.”

--"It’s a win-win.”

 

--"Don’t worry, but…”

--"In my humble and honest opinion…”

--“Our financial forecasts may have been a trifle optimistic.”

--"I hate to bother you…”.

--"I know that you are already hard-pressed for money…”

--"I hate to sound negative but….”

 

--“You know that intersection without any stop signs?

--"I can only blame myself.”

--"This has no strings attached.”

--“I told you I would never do this….”

--“You have always been a prized and valued customer.”

--“Do you have an attorney?”

 

Mdoan96@yahoo.com

 

Dusting Off Our Legacy

At an Ash Wednesday service years ago. the sweet, caring pastor, always so full of compliments, said as she put ashes on my forehead, "For you are dust and to dust you shall return.” What? How rude! I thought I was important!

 

Sometimes we become so full of ourselves that we miss the big picture: We are just a few of billions of people who will all be gone someday and be replaced by billions more.

 

The many articles I have written over time will have been long forgotten—unless I got sued, which never happened. Don’t we have any impact? I never thought of my father’s legacy as a part-tie opera singer, but he seems to have passed on a love of singing, which I didn’t acquire until long after he was gone.

 

What about my own legacy? I like to think two of my grandchildren, age 6 and 7, will remember me for a long time, and that is my form of immortality. After living next door for two years, the family moved to Blacksburg just a month ago. They called recently and said they missed me.

 

Once or twice a year, I see 14-year-old grandson of Pickett and her first husband, who does call me "Grandpa Mike." Living in California, he was often a difficult child, brilliant but antisocial We weren't close, but I appreciated it when he and two of his brothers went to see me singing as the Baker's father in "Into the Woods" here in South Boston. I didn't think the show registered, and he may have fallen asleep.

 

Then five years later, last May, we were sent a video of him and his classmates. He was performing in "Into the Woods." He had a solo as Jack in the Beanstalk, singing "Giants in the Sky." He sounded great.

 

Maybe we will all be dust, but that made me feel pretty good.

 

Mdoan96@yahoo.com

 

Rock Fest--Our Guests' Reaction

I feel like I went to the Blue Ridge Rock Festival. Oh, I didn’t have to wait in long lines, sit in the rain or endure 14 straight hours of loud hard rock music. If you manage a bed & breakfast, you don’t have to go anywhere: it all comes to you.

 

For over six months we had been fully booked for the big weekend Sept. 7-11, with 40,000 fans expected. In fact, we opened a new handicapped-accessible suite in a separate building just as the festival opened.

 

Guests told me stories about their experiences, both good and bad. The stage and venue were well-managed. There were no traffic problems—police must have done a great job. People were friendly. If a child was lost or somebody was hurt, they would just stop the show until it was resolved.

 

But the lines to get a bus from the parking lots ranged from 1 1/2 to 3  hours. People who camped avoided this but still had to wait to get in the venue. Garbage cans and toilet paper were scarce.

 

Music, though, was described as fabulous. There were so many bands. Melissa Griegel posted multiple videos of Alice Cooper, the famed rocker from eons ago, who is still running around on stage at age 74. I am not a heavy metal fan, but I did enjoy his act. I do remember his “School’s Out for Summer.”

 

Everyone seemed to love “Apocalyptica, a Finnish band of cellos playing heavy metal music. Now that must be a first! Also popular:  Day Seekers, which played its music acoustically when the power went out briefly. Among other favorites: Black Veil Brides, Motionless in White and Memphis May Fire.

 

One of my favorite guests was 26-year-old Izabela Hart of Salem, VA., who is blind and in a wheelchair. She has been going to rock festivals since she was 10, often accompanied by her mother and grandmother. The family credits Jonathan Slye and others with the festival for getting people with disabilities to the site as smoothly as possible.

 

Hart is quite well known on the music circuit, and bands often send her music to evaluate before they perform it. At one concert, a musician singled her out and the audience sang Happy Birthday to her. “So many people wanted to greet her, it took us 45 minutes to get to our van,” said her grandmother, Sherry Smith.

 

Over all, everyone thought the concert was a lot better handled than the tumultuous one last year in Pittsylvania County. Still, the long waits for shuttle buses and at the venue entrance need to be resolved.

 

Photo Izabela Hart with Randy Gluck.

 

Too Much Info--But a Happy Ending

 

As a journalist, I am a big booster of free information. But….

 

Within hours of having a tumor removed from under my right ear in July, I was startled to see the lab results show up quickly on the patient portal. “Follicular lymphoma,” were the key words.

 

What the hell does that mean? I turned to my medical expert: Google. “A slow-growing cancer.” OMG. I’m a dead man!

 

I had an appointment days later with the ear, nose & throat surgeon, who did a great job but doesn’t deal much with cancer. “I just know it is the slowest growing kind,” he said.

 

A PET Scan was done at Duke University Cancer Center several weeks later to see if the cancer had spread further in my body.  Results came back online within minutes:  Most of the body was clear, but a lymph node in the intestines “may represent additional sites of lymphoma. Recommend comparison to prior PET/CT imaging,” the report said.

 

Oh, no! Better work on my obituary! Chemotherapy here I come!

 

A friend who is a doctor calmed me down. “They’ll probably just tell you to come back in a few months and see if it has gotten any worse,” she said.

 

Which is exactly what happened. The oncologist said my past medical records show that the lymphoma has probably been there for many years and hasn’t gotten any worse. Come back in four months to look under your ear and in another year for a full scan. Go home, don’t worry about it

.

I asked him why I got medical records before he ever saw them. A 2021 law makes health care providers give patients access to health information without delay, even if the doctor has not looked at it yet. It is not clear to me, though, if they have to post everything to everybody right away. There is an option to opt out of receiving health records, and you can choose not to look at them. But how can you not?

 

 Many doctors don’t like getting anxious calls from patients who have just seen their records.

 

“You should write about it,” my doctor said.

 

So I did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Making Things Right at School Reunions

Class reunions can be nail-biting experiences. Apparently the 50th high school reunion is a time for making amends. At mine, as soon as dinner was over, a woman walked up to me.

“Hi. Do you remember the time you sat down after the Pledge of Allegiance in the first grade and you crashed to the floor instead of finding your chair?”

“Yes,” I said. “It still hurts,” I lied.

“Well, I pulled the chair out from under you.”

“Really? Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said and left.

I guess that was an apology, though she didn’t say so.
We didn’t stay long afterward because my wife didn’t know anybody. A few days later, I got a phone message from probably the most popular guy in high school. I was puzzled because I barely knew him at all and didn’t mix in his circle.

I called him back. “I want to apologize for beating up on you in the 12th grade,” he said. Huh? I barely remembered. Well, yes, he and another guy in physics class bet each other on whether they could make this shy, reserved student mad.

While the teacher wasn’t looking, they slapped me on the back of the head. The guy who bet on making me mad won. Of course, the teacher raised hell. But I soon forgot about it, writing it off as a prank by stupid kids, which it was.

For apologizing, I guess Mr. Popular felt better about himself, but I didn’t really like it. I didn’t recall being a victim of bullying in school but now felt like one.

Then came my 50th college reunion at the University of California at Berkeley, an enormous university, which was a great place to learn about journalism in the 1960s but not that good for making friends. I knew no one at the quite small reunion. Not a soul!

Then I compared high schools with one stranger. When I told him I went to El Cerrito High, he said, “Oh, so did my wife. I’ll have you talk to her.” She walked up and I didn’t recognize her, but she told me her name. Amazed, I said, “Wow. I took you to the senior prom!”

“No, you didn’t,” she said. “I went with the man who is now my husband.”

“Yes, you did,” I insisted. “How could I forget that!”
Then she said, “Oh, that must have been in my junior year. I went with my husband in my senior year.”

Her husband had been listening. Suddenly, the two left and had a heated conversation away from the crowd. Were they already a couple when I dated her?

He was furious because she never told him about me. I was steaming because she didn’t even remember me.

I skipped the next reunion.