Turn your head and cough, and have a happy new year
12.27.2002
I want to speak the language of a homecare nurse.
Oh no -- I don't want to speak homecare lingo when the homecare nurse arrives. I want to speak it at all times, with all humanity: with my landlady in the hallway, my father over coffee, my grocer, my lover-of-the-month from the lover-of-the-month club subscription my grandmother bought me for my birthday as we talk dirty to each other in preparation for even dirtier foreplay.
My lover-of-the-month, not my grandmother.
When you or I chat with anyone, no matter who it is, there is a relatively small wellspring of chat lingo from which we draw. With minor variations, depending on the chat lingo recipient, our daily conversations normally don't move too far beyond "2 sugars please", "lovely weather we're having", "I'd like a pair in teal", "the body won't fit; try putting it in the industrial freezer", or "thank-you for the doily".
The homecare nurse, however, must tap ever more deeply into the depths of chat lingo and hurl forth a varied, frenzied plethora of words that mutates and shifts wildly from one homecare visit to another. The homecare nurse must comment on how tasty that cup of Darjeeling is while irrigating a weeping bedsore. The homecare nurse must coax the butter knife from the hand of a morphine-addled senior and at the same time utter commiserate mumbly noises at the senior's wife when new pictures of the pudgy grandkids are displayed. The linguistic gymnastics are astounding, and I want to be the next Nadia Comaneci of homecare coffee talk. I want to lean over my latt� and answer my father with "you're right, I'm never going to have a job you'll approve of, and I'll have to make sure to drain the pus from that shunt under your left nipple twice daily." I want to kiss my darling and whisper "when did you change your adult diaper last?" How many opportunities do you get if not a homecare nurse to demand a person drop their pants and bend over while you stuff gauze, a plug, a pop bottle, a small lawn dwarf, or live gerbil up their rectum while simultaneously wishing said backside happy holidays? And then have those who are stuffed wish them back at you?
All right, yes -- there are a few other professions where such opportunities arise. So to speak.
No matter how much drainage, dressings, dead skin, vomit, piss, shit, blood, plasma, sweat, bile, or mucus is required to pass through my hands on a daily basis, I would gladly accept it as the price for having homecare lingo pass through my lips.
And don't pick at that scab; you'll only make it fester.
make idle gossip (0 comments so far)
come hither - back off
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