Monday, June 7, 2010

Riding my mom home from the hospital on the handles of my bicycle

I'm looking at my frog vivariums. There are a lot of other animals in there - a ball python I owned in college, baby birds, large and small insects. I realize I must have forgotten I owned the snake for decades and it must be very hungry. I go out to buy it some mice to eat.

The pet store doesn't have any mice. They have a lot of mushrooms to put into tanks but not much else. They are brightly colored and stacked symmetrically. I think about getting some bird seed for the baby birds, but the store doesn't have that either. I return home to find my mom lying on the kitchen table. She has a notebook over her face with large indecipherable letters on the cover. She says she's sick - I see sweat beading on her throat and feel she has a fever. I say we need to go to the emergency room.

At the hospital, there is a doctor assigned to us, but he stays behind a fast-food like counter. He is preoccupied with paperwork and other tasks as he says my mom's symptoms are too general for him to do anything. I'm angered and unsuccessfully suggest he could at least prescribe something to make her feel better.

We return home, my mom riding on the handles of my bicycle.

I'm going through a box of my old papers and find a folder I don't recognize. It has color photo copies of me in my football uniform and has many official looking certificates in it, with many signatures. It seems to be an honorary or gifted membership in an elite club. Many famous people are listed including President Reagan and retired governors. It seems to be a membership packet to some sort of beer tasting salon. It's dated two years after my high school graduation, but I just don't remember it at all. I show it to my dad, asking him if he knows what it is. He indicates he does, but doesn't tell me in detail, just says he knows who the people who signed the certificates are. I'm frustrated he won't explain the packet to me.

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