Worldwide Ace

It’s now been nearly a month since Ignite Chanukah 2011. Due to the holidays, a variety of travel plans, and the amazing job the video guy did of putting together the recordings, Ignite Chanukah videos (incorrectly labeled as 2012 instead of 2011) have finally been posted.

There are several highlights that are definitely worth watching. Chaviva Galatz, the Kvetching Editor, opened the ceremonies with an excellent presentation on conversion and being a convert. Daniel Lebowitz talked about gender roles and how Judaism is affected and affects the modern man’s place in society. The amazingly entertaining Dr. Jenni Skyler gave a steamy talk about Jews and their sex lives.

I’ve already written a little bit about my experience before going on stage as the final presentation, and I hope to write a bit about the aftermath in the next week or so, but I’m happy to offer the actual video of Just the TIp (clocking in at 5:21) here and now:

Read more »

Continued from Thunder Down Under: Part V

WARNING: The following is graphic, at times disturbing, and true with plenty of TMI to go around. Part I doesn’t include anything too disturbing, simply the events leading up. If you’re squeamish, easily disturbed or simply aren’t interested in the details of a serious medical fiasco, I recommend not reading beyond Part I. This entry covers the details of the past several days, starting around 2 PM Monday afternoon when I first experienced an inguinal hernia rupture while working as a ski instructor.

I can feel the slow rumble of wheels beneath me.

Each jostle and jolt would barely register on the Richter scale, yet they combine to slowly rock me awake. I can the echo of voices around me, a surround sound conversation bouncing above my head. I carefully peel an eye open just a smidge to see flourescent lighting sliding upwards above me.

They converse genially as we weave through the halls. I want to participate, but every move of my tongue is like a sandstorm in the desert, dunes rolling ever forward in a slow press toward my teeth.

“How’s it going?” one of them asks me, leaning in a bit, her voice melodic and soft.

Still alive, I think. I try to swallow, rough sandpaper ripping across my throat. “Alright,” I rasp.

I close my eyes and take a mental inventory of my body as she introduces herself and the other nurse guiding my journey through the halls. There’s no shooting pain. My legs are stretched out before me, my feet dangling, as usual, just off the bottom of the cot. I’m lying flat on my back, my arms tucked at my side. I wiggle my big toe, reenacting Kill Bill in the only way that makes sense in a gurney. A small smile crosses my face, my cracked lips preventing it from being a big smile. I’m whole, or so it seems.

I feel good.

“Your stuff is in a basket beneath your feet,” she tells me. “You have an interesting backpack.”

“Comes with the territory,” I manage to reply. Parched has taken on a new meaning. Images of men wandering into town after long days in the dry Western sun flash through my head. I imagine being cast in a Sergio Leone film credited as “Thirsty Man from the Desert.”

Read more »

Continued from Thunder Down Under: Part IV

WARNING: The following is graphic, at times disturbing, and true with plenty of TMI to go around. Part I doesn’t include anything too disturbing, simply the events leading up. If you’re squeamish, easily disturbed or simply aren’t interested in the details of a serious medical fiasco, I recommend not reading beyond Part I. This entry covers the details of the past several days, starting around 2 PM Monday afternoon when I first experienced an inguinal hernia rupture while working as a ski instructor.

“Fuck.”

The word croaks from the other side of the curtain, a tired sigh of exasperation and displeasure. It interrupts my slow, steady breaths, each a little too long and a little too deep to signal my well-being. Obviously, I’m not tucked alone in a corner of the emergency room. I didn’t really expect to be.

“How’re you feeling?” the nurse asks as he slides past the curtain.

“Could be worse,” I reply. I’m not sure I actually believe my own words. I’m shivering, wishing they had removed my sweaty ski socks.

“I’m going to give you something for the pain and some anti-nausea meds.”

“Ok.”

He fiddles with my IV. I don’t bother to turn and look. I don’t ask any questions. I can feel the slight warmth of strange liquids flow into my left arm. My shivering ceases for a moment before returning the same as ever. The mental effects of the concoction seem negligible.

“Do you need anything else?” he asks. I feel a wave of nausea start to wash over me.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I say, stifling the urge.

He passes me a small bucket and begins to ratchet the bed even more upright. I grip the metal bars at the sides of the bed and pull myself up, relieving my weight from the back. It shoots nearly vertical as I hunch toward the empty cup.

Ignoring the pain, I clench my stomach, the searing an afterthought to ejecting whatever volatile material is sitting in my stomach. My entire body is tense with the effort. The knuckles on my left hand glow white as they squeeze the metal handrail. The white plastic cup seems to cut into my chest through the flimsy hospital gown. And then I erupt.

Read more »

Continued from Thunder Down Under: Part III

WARNING: The following is graphic, at times disturbing, and true with plenty of TMI to go around. Part I doesn’t include anything too disturbing, simply the events leading up. If you’re squeamish, easily disturbed or simply aren’t interested in the details of a serious medical fiasco, I recommend not reading beyond Part I. This entry covers the details of the past several days, starting around 2 PM Monday afternoon when I first experienced an inguinal hernia rupture while working as a ski instructor.

Everything I know about hernias, I learned working in a pet store.

Which is to say, I know nothing about hernias. They happen. They’re medical. They’re taken care of by a vet. A small part of me prays I’m not taken care of by a vet. A larger part of me thinks that small part of me is an idiot.

I am one with my pain. Each gurgle and shift in my bowels is another tick of my biological clock. Every twitch of my leg, shiver up my spine, or sudden sigh is a sharp pinch followed by a slow and tense moment of relaxation. People weave in and out of the room, checking up on me, joking about dino nuggets, expressing disbelief that this really is something more. They offer solidarity, words of wisdom, consolation. It’s all background noise to the pain. I wonder if the meds would help clarify, make everything more lucid, but I know it’ll only dull everything.

My supervisors make arrangements for my things. My skis, left on the bus along with Avery’s, are collected and stashed. I have no clue where. I don’t really care. My boots are buckled up and moved back to the locker room as I rattle off the order of notches I keep them set at: 4 on top, then 5, then 3, then 2. Alicia notes her husband Larry the Bootfitter would be pissed if he saw unbuckled boots in the locker room. Tzvi is slightly surprised by this, but he doesn’t understand. He’s a snowboarder.

They take down my locker combination and collect and organize my things. A few minutes later, my jacket and the jovial flower backpack appear. I swear that for the first time there’s a certain sinister twinge to the way it’s winking at me.

“It sucks getting old,” Liz jokes, rounding off her second visit to FAR.

“Woo!” I holler half-heartedly, my left fist raised in the air. “First major injury of my Thirties!” She smiles with her mouth, but her eyes belie her levity.

Read more »

Continued from Thunder Down Under: Part II

WARNING: The following is graphic, at times disturbing, and true with plenty of TMI to go around. Part I doesn’t include anything too disturbing, simply the events leading up. If you’re squeamish, easily disturbed or simply aren’t interested in the details of a serious medical fiasco, I recommend not reading beyond Part I. This entry covers the details of the past several days, starting around 2 PM Monday afternoon when I first experienced an inguinal hernia rupture while working as a ski instructor.

“So he’s sick from the dino nuggets?” Matt’s tone is jovial. As one of the senior ski patrollers, he’s been eating the leftovers from the kids’ center for years.

“That’s his theory.”

“Do you think they’re safe to eat?” He bites into one as he asks the question. Light laughter rolls out of the dispatch room.

For the past ten minutes, nothing’s changed. With each rumble of my stomach, pain courses through my body, small, isolated stinging that spreads viciously outward.

I’ve been lucky in my life so far, the worst pain I’ve felt purposefully inflicted on me in childhood surgeries. The worst ski injury I’ve ever had was a strained ab from sneezing too hard. It hurt for a month to go from a prone position to a standing one, making teaching how to get up difficult. Most of my major injuries have been more cosmetic than painful, cuts and scrapes that tore through skin, leaving bone and muscle alone. The month-long recovery from jaw surgery was unpleasant, but hardly painful. I was so swollen that I couldn’t move enough to exacerbate anything. My separated shoulder from my bike accident made it uncomfortable to sleep on my side, but didn’t even get treatment. The gash in my leg from falling through a roof required three painful stitches, but once it was done, I only had minor soreness while it healed. In all, I’ve been blessed with a relatively pain-free life: no migraines, no broken bones, no major muscle tears.

Each spasm of digestion I feel, however, sends a small shot of pain racking through my body. For all I can remember, it rivals some of the worst pain I’ve ever felt. And yet it’s not unbearable. I guess that’s a testament to my good fortune so far.

Read more »

Continued from Thunder Down Under: Part I

WARNING: The following is graphic, at times disturbing, and true with plenty of TMI to go around. Part I doesn’t include anything too disturbing, simply the events leading up. If you’re squeamish, easily disturbed or simply aren’t interested in the details of a serious medical fiasco, I recommend not reading beyond Part I. This entry covers the details of the past several days, starting around 2 PM Monday afternoon when I first experienced an inguinal hernia rupture while working as a ski instructor.

“I’ll get that,” I tell Avery’s dad, sliding by to open the door. He gently swings her inside and I hobble my way in behind them.

The paramedics at FAR are immediately attentive. “What’ve we got here?” one of them asks. Avery’s dad sets her down on the nearest cot while I flop down on the wooden waiting room bench beside the water cooler, my stomach still in knots.

“One of my students fell and twisted her knee at the bottom of the magic carpet,” I tell him. The dispatcher Clint calls in our arrival. I can hear the raspy echoes over the radio.

Just two days earlier I was here with another student for the same reason. An eleven year-old girl, she had bent her knee as she came down Tenderfoot and I had walked into FAR with her. They had slapped a bubble-wrap and cardboard splint around her leg while her younger sister begged if she could have one too. She left smiling and laughing, a little freaked out, with a solid prognosis and a request to have it checked out further by a real doctor. Despite my discomfort, I hoping that Avery’s leaves her with a better outlook. At the least, she’s not crying or in severe pain.

The paramedic checks her over, testing each leg in time. I’m not really paying attention, focusing instead on my own pain. Jonathan, the ski patroller from my previous visit, enters and strolls past me to check in with dispatch. “How’s it going?” he asks, turning back toward me.

“It’s going alright,” I reply, looking up. “You were here the last time I came in. I don’t know what it is about me and walk-ins with tweaked knees.” He snickers a little. “The difference is that his time, I think I might have food poisoning.”

Read more »

WARNING: The following is graphic, at times disturbing, and true with plenty of TMI to go around. Part I doesn’t include anything too disturbing, simply the events leading up. If you’re squeamish, easily disturbed or simply aren’t interested in the details of a serious medical fiasco, I recommend not reading beyond Part I. This entry covers the details of the past several days, starting around 2 PM Monday afternoon when I first experienced an inguinal hernia rupture while working as a ski instructor.

“Big toe! Left Foot!” I yell, sliding quickly about five feet behind him. My hands stretch in front of me, hoping to catch the eight year old quickly speeding out of control.

Suddenly, his left ski catches and shoots him to the right. His right ski spins outward, hooking it’s inside edge. It pops awkwardly off his foot, sending him pirouetting to the ground in a small puff of snow.

“Dude…” I say, carving to a halt just below him and quickly snapping his remaining ski off. I see him blink a few times off at the horizon as I remove my skis. With a sniffle, the tears start.

I flop into the snow next to him, my hip and elbow propping my upper body at a comfortable angle. “Are you alright, Nick?”

The question is rhetorical. He twisted his knee slightly, but not enough to do any damage. It’s going to be slightly sore, but certainly doesn’t hurt as much as his pride. The odds are good that after a minute of rest he’ll be back up and standing. Whether he gets back on skis and keeps going is a purely mental block, and given that his two older brothers have driven him to keep going all day despite setback after setback, I doubt that will be an issue either.

“How’s the knee feel?” I ask.

“Fine,” he replies. He doesn’t meet my eyes. He hasn’t all day. “Where’s George?”

“He’s going up again with Warren,” I explain, referencing the junior instructor in training who’s been helping with my class this afternoon. Having Warren there has been a godsend. Eight out of nine of my kids are safely doing solid turns, and given how busy the slopes are, his presence has given me the leeway to send those eight off with him while I work with Nick.

Read more »

My heart beats like a thousand pounding war drums. In the darkness, I can barely hear the murmur of our host and matron of honor above the atrial clamor echoing through my veins.

I can feel my hands shaking, the firm pull of my index finger tearing gently at the ring binding the flimsy notecards for my presentation together. The tension releases with a snap, my twitching digits quickly shuffling the cards to make sure there will be no snags when I splay them across the pulpit. I focus on the idea of flipping the cards one-handed, wondering if I could throw them aside and still remember every bullet point and fact without them. The menial fears help me ignore the larger ones, the questions of whether the reputation that somehow preceded me into this collection of strangers will be dashed in failure.

Cheryl waves her hand at me, my introduction complete. The polite smattering of applause, coupled with a few cat calls and cries of excitement are drowned out by the deafening roar within me. I step into the burning oasis of the spotlights, my name splayed and glaring on the projection screen beside my perch. The audience immediately fades into a morphing shadow, lens flares playing across my glasses obscuring any detail but the bubble of light around me.

“Are you ready?” I hear the mistress of ceremonies whisper from below. I don’t respond audibly, wanting my voice to say nothing extraneous. Instead, I blink once for yes, wondering if my comatose state even allowed my nod to show visibly. “Kill it,” she instructs with a wry smile. I hear a small click, a brief flash of light the only other indication that it’s begun.

“First you’re born,” I recite, my booming strength surprising me, as if someone else has reached inside me, muppet-like, and granted me mobility and a voice. “Then you cry. Then, eight days later, they get you drunk and cut off the tip of your cock.”

The laughter cuts through it all. I can feel the eyes that had been trained on cell phones only moments ago look up rapt, the mouths carefully waiting their moment to heckle deform into smiles, and the half-dozen friends I have in the audience recognize my telltale bluntness.

I take a moment to snicker, knowing that I’ve nailed my opening, that there won’t be a moment to for me or the audience to catch our breath from here on out.

And then I step on the gas and I’m off.

I probably shouldn’t be supporting my friend’s self-important ways, but when he said he wanted to make himself into a sticker and turn himself into a living meme, I got the idea for “Newman Owns.” This was the end result.

“Hi, Ben!”

The voice chirped behind me, the giant flower draped across my back turning away as I slowly rotated toward my addresser. His keen smile and bright blue eyes shone at me with excitement and the familiarity of his tiny face warmed in my fuzzy work-addled brain.

“Hi! How are you doing?” I queried, buying precious moments as I searched my memory for his name.

“Good.” It eluded me, my rampant disregard for the past apparent in the cobwebbed depths in which it hid. My heart began to pump faster, my smile starting to slip.

“Were you up skiing?” I searched for a time, a place, an organization from which this tot might have appeared prior. Was he from one of the elementary schools I had so recently subbed at? Had he been at camp with me? Could he be a neighbor? Was he a former student from a previous year, perhaps an Eldorable grown just enough to appear a distant relative of his former self? I glanced about, my eyes flicking back and forth in search of some clue.

“Yeah,” chimed his sister, her sharp grin blithely cutting through my memory with an identical murky origin.

It wore on me, overwhelming me. My brain exploded, synapses firing randomly, facts dredging themselves to the surface with no apparent distinction: giraffes have a black tongue; Pete and Pete weren’t really related; the capital of Burkina Faso is Ouagadougou; scotch tape was so-called due to epithets slung by manufacturing employees in detroit automobile factories.

Read more »