And now, to lighten things after the previous post where I found myself in the midst of my very own psychological thriller, I'm going to introduce a new category of post: Customer Service. You see, I've worked in call centers for six years before landing myself in a more techish position where I don't talk to the humorous ones as much. But during that tenure, I've acquired a plethora of stories that perhaps you can learn not to do when you call in and talk to someone in customer service.
To open, I'd like to tell two of the Queen's favorite stories. She knows these by heart and anytime I talk about customer service to anyone, she requests these.
Our first tale comes from the realm of cell phone activations. These are the types of phones where you go into a store of some kind, buy the phone in a box, and then take it home to activate it. Stores love 'em because you can stick any idiot behind a counter to hand these phones off to whomever wants them. All they need to be able to do is reach the phones and point to the brochures. Real easy.
So, I worked in the department that activated these phones, and I came to a realization while talking to people in that some people are so mechanically un-inclined that you can make them do something that is incredibly funny if you lead them on just right. I made a game of this after awhile because I found it so humorous, and I got at least three people to fall into this trap.
Phones have a number called an Electronic Serial Number that is unique to each unit. They're actually going to a different type of number now, but back then, it was all about the ESN. This magic number was located on a white sticker under the battery on every phone we had back then, and customers had a knack for taking the phone out of the box, and immediately misplacing said box which also has the ESN on it. So here follows that conversation:
Me: Can you give me the electronic serial number (gotta avoid the jargon) off the phone please?
Victim: Where do I find that?
Me: It's on a sticker underneath the battery on the back of the phone.
Victim: Oh, ok.
(Click!)
Always made me laugh. Ideally, I should have mentioned that they shouldn't actually be talking on the phone when we're trying to activate, but that would spoil all the fun. That's one of the first questions they ask now, but it wasn't required back then.
The next story involved a prepaid phone. These are the phone where you have to put money on the phone's account before they will work, and really there are a myriad of varieties of this phone. Some have a set number of minutes every month built in like regular credit accounts do, while other allow you to pay by the minute without expiration of those minutes.
Our next victim paid by the minute, and on this occasion, his account was quite empty, so he was unable to make a phone call, and when they call with this problem, they always have to make a "very important call." I know I seem a little desensitized to this, but in all my time with these people, I've only allowed one three way call for a prepaid customer because her description made it sound like an actual emergency (and when she relayed the short version to her husband, it actually was very serious; she should have called 911).
So when I wouldn't give him a "payment arrangement" (something that is actually not possible on a prepaid account, since they run off of a balance or minutes, not off of any kind of suspension of service), he got very, very upset with me. He screamed and yelled and carried on for a good while hoping to browbeat me into "changing my mind." To be honest, all I was able to do was repeat myself, since what he was requesting wasn't a possibility with his account type. The system wouldn't allow it.
Anyway, he got to the point where he asked me, "You ever heard a phone fly out of a window?" What could I say to that? "No," I said. He replied, "Well, you have now."
At this point I heard a loud whoosh of rushing air and then a crunch before the line went dead. And so he went from regular angry customer to a legend in one fell whoosh.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Single White Female
So... let's talk about this Allison person who's come up a couple of times. Obviously, I don't wish to devote a lot of time or space to this individual, but since she filled up a good portion of the next year and a half (i.e. the space between the Army and The Queen), she's about as worth mentioning as the Third Reich is in German history. Yeah, the Germans don't like talking about that either.
Once I got out the Army, I was completely clueless as to what to do. I lived at home, but had bills left over from the Army, so I had to work. Trouble is, I hadn't the first clue as to how to get a job, much less one that paid some kind of decent wage or something I wanted to do. I started by looking through the paper for music jobs...yeah, just guess how that turned out.
My first stumble was into a multi-level marketing company called Equinox. My first experience with that sort of thing, and being that the people putting it out there were good and selling whatever, I was hooked into the too-good-to-be-true deal. I pulled money off one of my credit cards and was in...yeah, no. I failed miserably at it, and quit rather quickly that much further in the hole.
Next was the Salvation Army as a bell ringer, but not a bell ringer, exactly. Remember, I was looking for musician jobs, and the Salvation Army had a captain who played trombone and thought it would be cool to have someone play Christmas carols instead of ringing the bell. So through that season, I stood outside stores and played Christmas carols on my trombone (and occasionally saxophone, which made people ooh and aah) to get those wonderful donations.
I actually did really well. The pay for this job was minimum wage plus a bonus percentage based on how many donations you receive, so technically speaking, I made a pretty decent wage for that month...that I blew relentlessly since I didn't know how to spend or save properly. But people at the stores just loved me and I got free soda and such quite often. Nevermind that a mouth full of liquid candy is about the worst thing you can drink before playing any instrument, but ah well.
Following this stint, I was out of work again, though I did agree to teach the young trumpet class at the Salvation Army for $10 an hour (read, $20 a week). I was considering pizza delivery, since it looked easy and I'd seen a help wanted sign at one point while driving around (in my 86 Camaro). I had previously registered at the employment office and was dropping in occasionally to use their job search computer (yeah, I had no clue what to look for, so that didn't work for me either -- did I mention I'm kinda stubborn and don't like to ask for help?).
So on that fateful day in January so long ago, I had gone into the Employment Office in Broken Arrow that is no longer there, and looked on their computer for a job. When I approached the terminal, a girl stopped me and said she knew me. This happens to me more times than I could begin to conceive of where people know me and I don't know them. But she said she knew me from high school, and I probably said, "ok." Being how I was then (that being so incredibly introverted that she was likely lucky to get even an "ok" out of me), I went to the computer and plopped down to search.
I came up empty as I always did (apparently people with open musician jobs don't post them with the employment office), so I got up to leave. About that time, she came back in to the office and stopped me. She said she never did this before, but she wanted to give me her number and asked me to call her sometime. She had written it out on a paper scrap along with her name. I took it, and said, "ok." I was a man of few words. She left. I left.
Note that during this time, I was very much hung up over Juliet back in Colorado. I had called her on Christmas to say hi, and we'd had a nice chat then, but that was the last time I'd talked to her. Also during this period, I was participating in the play "She Stoops To Conquer" more or less observing how everything worked backstage and occasionally helping out. I dressed up as one fellow's missing dancing bear for the curtain call, so I was driving downtown as well.
But one evening not long after meeting the girl in the employment office (what a great hangout for singles, eh?), my curiosity got the better of me and I called. Even now, I wished I'd lost her number, but God help me, I called. Someone answered and I asked for Allison. This person said she'd "check" to see if she was home. My thought was "goodness, how big a house to they live in that they aren't sure if someone is home or not?"
Allison got on the phone, so we chatted about how she knew me. Apparently, once upon a time when I was in 10th grade, she had noticed me in the lunch room. She told her friends at the time (the people she referenced were the popular crowd) that she was going to try and talk to me. They told her I wouldn't say anything to her, but she was going to try anyway. She walked over to where I was hunched over my cheeseburger (lunch of champions and geeks), and said hi. I looked up and stared at her. She didn't even get an "ok." She walked away to the laughter of her friends who their "I told you so's" in.
I had no idea I was that way in school, but after she told me that, I got to thinking about it, and it was true. I was very closed off, even at that point where I'd begun to open up. This continued to align later when the Queen told me how I was back then (i.e. very quiet), so my introversion was in more than full force all the way through school. Allison said she'd been going through her yearbook only a few days earlier and spotted my picture and wondered whatever happened to me.
Now, to justify that title up there... If your mind went straight to a psychological thriller from 1992 with Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh, then you're on the right track. You see, Allison had a "sister." Not a biological sister, you see, she was a sort of a foster sister, but not an official one. Hedy latched onto Allison in school, and Hedy's mother dumped her on Allison's mother to care for. While Hedy saw her mother every once in awhile, she lived with Allison.
Hedy was very dark (personality, not skin tone) and seemed very angry most of the time. I did not at any time see Allison without Hedy tagging along and when I'd called the first time, it was Hedy that answered the phone. It made for a really strange relationship, and to make matters weirder, it was Allison who showed me Single White Female, and even said people she knew related Hedy to the Hedy in the movie. This begged the question, "why is she still here then?"
Oh, but there be an answer to that one. I wouldn't learn the full extent of that answer for quite some time, but little by little I got enough to learn what the real deal was between these two. In fact, the whole thing turned out to be one huge drama that I would never have willingly put myself through because it not only involved me and Allison and Hedy, but Juliet as well.
As I said, I never would have done it willingly, I never want to go through anything like that again, and I just wished I'd lost her number to begin with.
Once I got out the Army, I was completely clueless as to what to do. I lived at home, but had bills left over from the Army, so I had to work. Trouble is, I hadn't the first clue as to how to get a job, much less one that paid some kind of decent wage or something I wanted to do. I started by looking through the paper for music jobs...yeah, just guess how that turned out.
My first stumble was into a multi-level marketing company called Equinox. My first experience with that sort of thing, and being that the people putting it out there were good and selling whatever, I was hooked into the too-good-to-be-true deal. I pulled money off one of my credit cards and was in...yeah, no. I failed miserably at it, and quit rather quickly that much further in the hole.
Next was the Salvation Army as a bell ringer, but not a bell ringer, exactly. Remember, I was looking for musician jobs, and the Salvation Army had a captain who played trombone and thought it would be cool to have someone play Christmas carols instead of ringing the bell. So through that season, I stood outside stores and played Christmas carols on my trombone (and occasionally saxophone, which made people ooh and aah) to get those wonderful donations.
I actually did really well. The pay for this job was minimum wage plus a bonus percentage based on how many donations you receive, so technically speaking, I made a pretty decent wage for that month...that I blew relentlessly since I didn't know how to spend or save properly. But people at the stores just loved me and I got free soda and such quite often. Nevermind that a mouth full of liquid candy is about the worst thing you can drink before playing any instrument, but ah well.
Following this stint, I was out of work again, though I did agree to teach the young trumpet class at the Salvation Army for $10 an hour (read, $20 a week). I was considering pizza delivery, since it looked easy and I'd seen a help wanted sign at one point while driving around (in my 86 Camaro). I had previously registered at the employment office and was dropping in occasionally to use their job search computer (yeah, I had no clue what to look for, so that didn't work for me either -- did I mention I'm kinda stubborn and don't like to ask for help?).
So on that fateful day in January so long ago, I had gone into the Employment Office in Broken Arrow that is no longer there, and looked on their computer for a job. When I approached the terminal, a girl stopped me and said she knew me. This happens to me more times than I could begin to conceive of where people know me and I don't know them. But she said she knew me from high school, and I probably said, "ok." Being how I was then (that being so incredibly introverted that she was likely lucky to get even an "ok" out of me), I went to the computer and plopped down to search.
I came up empty as I always did (apparently people with open musician jobs don't post them with the employment office), so I got up to leave. About that time, she came back in to the office and stopped me. She said she never did this before, but she wanted to give me her number and asked me to call her sometime. She had written it out on a paper scrap along with her name. I took it, and said, "ok." I was a man of few words. She left. I left.
Note that during this time, I was very much hung up over Juliet back in Colorado. I had called her on Christmas to say hi, and we'd had a nice chat then, but that was the last time I'd talked to her. Also during this period, I was participating in the play "She Stoops To Conquer" more or less observing how everything worked backstage and occasionally helping out. I dressed up as one fellow's missing dancing bear for the curtain call, so I was driving downtown as well.
But one evening not long after meeting the girl in the employment office (what a great hangout for singles, eh?), my curiosity got the better of me and I called. Even now, I wished I'd lost her number, but God help me, I called. Someone answered and I asked for Allison. This person said she'd "check" to see if she was home. My thought was "goodness, how big a house to they live in that they aren't sure if someone is home or not?"
Allison got on the phone, so we chatted about how she knew me. Apparently, once upon a time when I was in 10th grade, she had noticed me in the lunch room. She told her friends at the time (the people she referenced were the popular crowd) that she was going to try and talk to me. They told her I wouldn't say anything to her, but she was going to try anyway. She walked over to where I was hunched over my cheeseburger (lunch of champions and geeks), and said hi. I looked up and stared at her. She didn't even get an "ok." She walked away to the laughter of her friends who their "I told you so's" in.
I had no idea I was that way in school, but after she told me that, I got to thinking about it, and it was true. I was very closed off, even at that point where I'd begun to open up. This continued to align later when the Queen told me how I was back then (i.e. very quiet), so my introversion was in more than full force all the way through school. Allison said she'd been going through her yearbook only a few days earlier and spotted my picture and wondered whatever happened to me.
Now, to justify that title up there... If your mind went straight to a psychological thriller from 1992 with Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh, then you're on the right track. You see, Allison had a "sister." Not a biological sister, you see, she was a sort of a foster sister, but not an official one. Hedy latched onto Allison in school, and Hedy's mother dumped her on Allison's mother to care for. While Hedy saw her mother every once in awhile, she lived with Allison.
Hedy was very dark (personality, not skin tone) and seemed very angry most of the time. I did not at any time see Allison without Hedy tagging along and when I'd called the first time, it was Hedy that answered the phone. It made for a really strange relationship, and to make matters weirder, it was Allison who showed me Single White Female, and even said people she knew related Hedy to the Hedy in the movie. This begged the question, "why is she still here then?"
Oh, but there be an answer to that one. I wouldn't learn the full extent of that answer for quite some time, but little by little I got enough to learn what the real deal was between these two. In fact, the whole thing turned out to be one huge drama that I would never have willingly put myself through because it not only involved me and Allison and Hedy, but Juliet as well.
As I said, I never would have done it willingly, I never want to go through anything like that again, and I just wished I'd lost her number to begin with.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
It's all fun and games... Part 2
Darkness.
Something was over my eye. A bandage?
Movement.
My mother is sitting in a chair to my left. She noticed I'm awake.
I'm not.
I wake up again. It's lighter now. That day is very, very fuzzy in my memory.
I don't deal well with anesthesia. In fact, it makes me sick afterwards. But I learned that I was under for about 5 hours and I spent the next day drifting in and out of consciousness. Everyone came in at one time or another to see how I was doing. The Queen had gone into work, and they told her to go home.
It was probably 10 that evening before I was cognizant enough to talk to anyone. I ate something light that the hospital gave me. I hadn't eaten, you may recall, in almost two days by this point, as the last time I'd eaten was Sunday night, and it was now Tuesday evening, but they urged me not to eat very fast since I'd gotten sick off the anesthetic. I know I talked to the Queen for awhile that evening, and while I don't remember everything we talked about, I imagine it centered around what happened.
I was in the hospital through that Friday, and in my typical fashion, I bounced back fairly quickly. By Wednesday, I was very coherent, and while I was getting drops in my eye every 4 hours, I didn't feel bad. I didn't know the true state of my eye because it was swollen shut, so trying to see if I could see was out of the question. They had to pry it open to get the drops in.
There were a couple of highly amusing incidents while I was in the hospital involving the Queen and I. While I was interred there, they loved to take my blood pressure. Seemed like they did the blood pressure more than they did the eye drops. Anyway, I probably became known for faulty readings now and then because of The Queen.
On one occasion, I was hooked up to the blood pressure deal and they had the pulse and everything going. Well, the Queen walked in, and all the readings changed. The nurse freaked for a moment, and then figured out what happened. She walked in and my heart rate jumped, so there's medical proof of her effect on me.
On another occasion, she was already in there, and they barged on in to do the blood pressure thing. Well, we'd been kissing and when they did the blood pressure, the nurse freaked again since my readings were way off. Again, though, she assessed the situation and figured it out. The Queen was no longer allowed to be around when they did blood pressure. I guess they wanted my resting rate.
After the hospital stay things move a bit quicker. There are times in a relationship where its strength is put to the test, and these next few months tested us to the limit. I had gone home, and since my bed was the top bunk of a bunk bed (yes, I was engaged and slept in a bunk bed), my parents made up the day bed in the living room so I didn't have to climb to sleep, and they could do my eye drops more easily.
I was ordered to sleep on my stomach because of something having do to with my eye, which is not normal for me. I sleep very much like a corpse -- flat on my back. Not that I stay that way on most nights, but I have been comfortable like that for quite some time.
During that first month, I went to see another doctor who was a retina specialist of some kind. He had examined me and wanted to put a gel bubble in my eye to try and re-attach the retina or at least keep it in place. I was set for another surgery at the end of the month to not only do that procedure but to do a cornea transplant, since mine was still damaged with stitches across the middle of it (yeah, how many people do you know that have had stitches in their eye?).
So under the anesthesia I went again, but in a more prepared manner this time. Got there in the morning and 10...9...8...
I woke up in I guess some kind of post-operating room in that little cramped bed. I remained semi-conscious until I was in a room with a more comfortable bed, since the only way I was able to lie on that bed was to cross my arms on my chest, which I didn't want to do. However, that wasn't the most unpleasant part of that experience...you see, I don't react well to anesthesia, and this is where I found that out with a vengeance.
I woke up, and immediately threw up. A nurse in the room got something for me to puke into, but since I hadn't eaten the previous evening, I didn't have much to throw up. This retching continued to occur until I was able to rest comfortably.
This stay was shorter than the last one. I was still getting drops every four hours or so twenty-four hours a day, and both doctors checked me out thoroughly over my brief return to the hospital, but I was quickly discharged with another bandage over my eye and a fair supply to keep it bandaged.
My eye actually stayed bandaged for most of that first three months starting with a shell over the bandages taped to my head, moving to having a patch over the bandages. When the bandages came off, I wore a patch to keep the light out of my eye so it could continue to heal.
Right after that surgery, when I was able to open my eye (it was still very swollen) I could make out some blurry objects, so I felt there was hope, but only time would tell since I really couldn't open it that well. I could perceive light differences without a problem, but without a lens and iris, would I be able to see anything?
The Queen visited as much as she could, but I was quite homebound for a little while. It's amazing how much the eyes work together so that when one of them is damaged, the other will respond sympathetically. I was actually very, very light-sensitive for 3 months after the accident and couldn't drive or anything during that time. The Queen and I never ventured far, and she always drove during that time, so our wild dates were on hold for a bit.
But she stuck with me. Some people said they wouldn't have been able to deal with such a traumatic event, especially since we were only engaged, and she could have gone at any time. We continued to talk about the coming wedding and tossed around possible dates from November of that year to the date we'd discussed earlier which was April of the next year.
An amusing aside to these three months was that Allison (bless her warped little heart) called my parents house while I was sleeping in the living room...at 1:00 in the morning. This was fortunately the last time I actually spoke with her because she was going on about how she was working in Dallas or something and knew people and told them about my work and was helping me get my stuff going (can't help but notice nothing ever came of that...oh wait, I expected that). The best part of that whole conversation was when she spouted, "if I help you with this, I'll be damned if I can't come up to you, shake your hand, and say 'good job'." So I told her, "Ok, you can come up to me, shake my hand, and say 'good job'." The conversation ended quickly after that since I wasn't very communicative with her to begin with (after all, my father was a bit miffed about being awakened at 1:00 in the morning by a phone call). And my life has been Allison free ever since...well, there were a handful of emails later, but those are another completely pointless story.
I started trying to drive after about 3 months, and it was hard to both adjust to my light sensitivity, which was getting better, and driving with one eye. My eye hadn't healed enough to know for sure whether there was any hope for it, so I was still working to do everything with monocular vision. You never really appreciate depth perception until it's gone, and with my eyesight, I had some killer depth perception. But I learned that depth perception is only good up to about ten feet. After that, everything looks about the same to everyone.
One of the changes to my behavior due to my loss of depth perception was how I pick things up. Most people just reach for something and lift it. Mine is a subtle change that most people won't notice unless I tell them outright what I'm doing. It's easier to perceive height than distance, so I lower my hand to the height of the object I want to pick up, and then move my hand towards it until I touch it. I've gotten to the point now (ten years later) that that action is imperceptable to anyone watching, but I still have to pick up things that way.
After two more months, I was getting weary of my 70% Worker's Comp pay and felt it was time to be getting back to a real job again. Now this is where I really screwed up more than just whacking my eye to begin with. You see, without depth perception, I could not reasonably work on a rooftop, so I could have and should have taken the option to be trained in something else. Should have, should have, should have.
I would have taken whatever computer classes they deemed necessary to bring myself up to speed and gotten into the industry I'm in now ten years ago. And it's not like I didn't know or wasn't told either. The Queen and her family were all suggesting it, but I felt some level of warped obligation to the fireplace boss that definitely didn't pay off at all. Oh well.
Something was over my eye. A bandage?
Movement.
My mother is sitting in a chair to my left. She noticed I'm awake.
I'm not.
I wake up again. It's lighter now. That day is very, very fuzzy in my memory.
I don't deal well with anesthesia. In fact, it makes me sick afterwards. But I learned that I was under for about 5 hours and I spent the next day drifting in and out of consciousness. Everyone came in at one time or another to see how I was doing. The Queen had gone into work, and they told her to go home.
It was probably 10 that evening before I was cognizant enough to talk to anyone. I ate something light that the hospital gave me. I hadn't eaten, you may recall, in almost two days by this point, as the last time I'd eaten was Sunday night, and it was now Tuesday evening, but they urged me not to eat very fast since I'd gotten sick off the anesthetic. I know I talked to the Queen for awhile that evening, and while I don't remember everything we talked about, I imagine it centered around what happened.
I was in the hospital through that Friday, and in my typical fashion, I bounced back fairly quickly. By Wednesday, I was very coherent, and while I was getting drops in my eye every 4 hours, I didn't feel bad. I didn't know the true state of my eye because it was swollen shut, so trying to see if I could see was out of the question. They had to pry it open to get the drops in.
There were a couple of highly amusing incidents while I was in the hospital involving the Queen and I. While I was interred there, they loved to take my blood pressure. Seemed like they did the blood pressure more than they did the eye drops. Anyway, I probably became known for faulty readings now and then because of The Queen.
On one occasion, I was hooked up to the blood pressure deal and they had the pulse and everything going. Well, the Queen walked in, and all the readings changed. The nurse freaked for a moment, and then figured out what happened. She walked in and my heart rate jumped, so there's medical proof of her effect on me.
On another occasion, she was already in there, and they barged on in to do the blood pressure thing. Well, we'd been kissing and when they did the blood pressure, the nurse freaked again since my readings were way off. Again, though, she assessed the situation and figured it out. The Queen was no longer allowed to be around when they did blood pressure. I guess they wanted my resting rate.
After the hospital stay things move a bit quicker. There are times in a relationship where its strength is put to the test, and these next few months tested us to the limit. I had gone home, and since my bed was the top bunk of a bunk bed (yes, I was engaged and slept in a bunk bed), my parents made up the day bed in the living room so I didn't have to climb to sleep, and they could do my eye drops more easily.
I was ordered to sleep on my stomach because of something having do to with my eye, which is not normal for me. I sleep very much like a corpse -- flat on my back. Not that I stay that way on most nights, but I have been comfortable like that for quite some time.
During that first month, I went to see another doctor who was a retina specialist of some kind. He had examined me and wanted to put a gel bubble in my eye to try and re-attach the retina or at least keep it in place. I was set for another surgery at the end of the month to not only do that procedure but to do a cornea transplant, since mine was still damaged with stitches across the middle of it (yeah, how many people do you know that have had stitches in their eye?).
So under the anesthesia I went again, but in a more prepared manner this time. Got there in the morning and 10...9...8...
I woke up in I guess some kind of post-operating room in that little cramped bed. I remained semi-conscious until I was in a room with a more comfortable bed, since the only way I was able to lie on that bed was to cross my arms on my chest, which I didn't want to do. However, that wasn't the most unpleasant part of that experience...you see, I don't react well to anesthesia, and this is where I found that out with a vengeance.
I woke up, and immediately threw up. A nurse in the room got something for me to puke into, but since I hadn't eaten the previous evening, I didn't have much to throw up. This retching continued to occur until I was able to rest comfortably.
This stay was shorter than the last one. I was still getting drops every four hours or so twenty-four hours a day, and both doctors checked me out thoroughly over my brief return to the hospital, but I was quickly discharged with another bandage over my eye and a fair supply to keep it bandaged.
My eye actually stayed bandaged for most of that first three months starting with a shell over the bandages taped to my head, moving to having a patch over the bandages. When the bandages came off, I wore a patch to keep the light out of my eye so it could continue to heal.
Right after that surgery, when I was able to open my eye (it was still very swollen) I could make out some blurry objects, so I felt there was hope, but only time would tell since I really couldn't open it that well. I could perceive light differences without a problem, but without a lens and iris, would I be able to see anything?
The Queen visited as much as she could, but I was quite homebound for a little while. It's amazing how much the eyes work together so that when one of them is damaged, the other will respond sympathetically. I was actually very, very light-sensitive for 3 months after the accident and couldn't drive or anything during that time. The Queen and I never ventured far, and she always drove during that time, so our wild dates were on hold for a bit.
But she stuck with me. Some people said they wouldn't have been able to deal with such a traumatic event, especially since we were only engaged, and she could have gone at any time. We continued to talk about the coming wedding and tossed around possible dates from November of that year to the date we'd discussed earlier which was April of the next year.
An amusing aside to these three months was that Allison (bless her warped little heart) called my parents house while I was sleeping in the living room...at 1:00 in the morning. This was fortunately the last time I actually spoke with her because she was going on about how she was working in Dallas or something and knew people and told them about my work and was helping me get my stuff going (can't help but notice nothing ever came of that...oh wait, I expected that). The best part of that whole conversation was when she spouted, "if I help you with this, I'll be damned if I can't come up to you, shake your hand, and say 'good job'." So I told her, "Ok, you can come up to me, shake my hand, and say 'good job'." The conversation ended quickly after that since I wasn't very communicative with her to begin with (after all, my father was a bit miffed about being awakened at 1:00 in the morning by a phone call). And my life has been Allison free ever since...well, there were a handful of emails later, but those are another completely pointless story.
I started trying to drive after about 3 months, and it was hard to both adjust to my light sensitivity, which was getting better, and driving with one eye. My eye hadn't healed enough to know for sure whether there was any hope for it, so I was still working to do everything with monocular vision. You never really appreciate depth perception until it's gone, and with my eyesight, I had some killer depth perception. But I learned that depth perception is only good up to about ten feet. After that, everything looks about the same to everyone.
One of the changes to my behavior due to my loss of depth perception was how I pick things up. Most people just reach for something and lift it. Mine is a subtle change that most people won't notice unless I tell them outright what I'm doing. It's easier to perceive height than distance, so I lower my hand to the height of the object I want to pick up, and then move my hand towards it until I touch it. I've gotten to the point now (ten years later) that that action is imperceptable to anyone watching, but I still have to pick up things that way.
After two more months, I was getting weary of my 70% Worker's Comp pay and felt it was time to be getting back to a real job again. Now this is where I really screwed up more than just whacking my eye to begin with. You see, without depth perception, I could not reasonably work on a rooftop, so I could have and should have taken the option to be trained in something else. Should have, should have, should have.
I would have taken whatever computer classes they deemed necessary to bring myself up to speed and gotten into the industry I'm in now ten years ago. And it's not like I didn't know or wasn't told either. The Queen and her family were all suggesting it, but I felt some level of warped obligation to the fireplace boss that definitely didn't pay off at all. Oh well.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Random Wrecks
I use the word random because it describes the nature of this post which covers a series of events that are in no way related. But that's how life is sometimes, and that's also David Lynch's excuse for some of the things that happen in his movies. I don't find the excuse any more than an excuse, but he does have a point in that randomness plays an important role in life and adjusting to that randomness without trying to find meaning in everything is actually somewhat worthwhile.
You know, I've found that the most difficult part about blogging is not finding something to write about. There's enough going on out there to fill an unlimited number of blogs, and although I only have one piece of that pie, I could personally fill hundreds. What I run into is lacking the time to write these things out. While filling a hundreds blogs would be easy, writing them would take hours upon hours that I flat don't have, so I have to be satisfied with my meager entries when I have time to write them. And let's face it, who has time to read all that drivvel if you put it out there all at once? So I will endeavor to put out my personal drivvel more frequently to the tune of going for once a day...we'll see if I achieve that.
Our top story involves Rock Girl, who was progressing very well on Guitar Hero III, but now will be no longer jamming on the game because she jammed her finger on a log creating a nice, deep, nasty bruise. Painful to the touch, this bruise caused concern for The Queen, who had the school nurse have a look. The nurse suggested we take her into the doctor to have it looked at, since it hurt bad and looked bad, too.
Well, Rock Girl loves school, so unlike every other kid in the world, she was put out for having to leave it to go to the doctor. X-rays were done and no fractures were found, so she was good to go, but with the provision she not use it. Well, it's the third finger of her left hand, so that means no Guitar Hero or regular guitar until it heals up a bit.
The amusing part of the whole bit, as the Queen relayed it to me, was the girl way of answering a simple question. If you ask a guy, "What happened to your finger?", he'll say, "I jammed it on a log."
If you ask a girl the same question, you'll get, "Well, we were staying at home while mommy ran out to pick up a friend of hers and get daddy from work, and Engineer came over to watch us for a while and I was hoping we could play the Wii for awhile, but since it was kind of nice outside and I like to play outside, we all went outside to play for awhile, and my sisters were putting stuff in the tree, as usual, and it really makes me crazy sometimes because they get stuff stuck up there, and than I have to be the one to get it down and they really shouldn't put it up that high anyway, so I thought I would ask for a snack in a minute because I was really hungry but I knew I had to wait for dinner because we were so close and I really wanted to see if I could build a teepee with the logs in the backyard and that's when I hurt my finger on a log." Granted, I made half that up, but that's the gist of what they were doing.
A couple weeks ago, I'd gotten the movie Jeepers Creepers from Blockbuster as a freebie for returning my online movie. I did what any geek would do...rip it onto my iPod and return the disc so I could watch it without worrying about being late. It's long since deleted, and it sucked too, but strangely, the other day, we got a call from Blockbuster saying the movie had not yet been returned. Well, we knew it had been, so we asked about it the next time we were in, and they said we had nothing out. No problem, right?
Well, not exactly. I checked our account yesterday and found a $10 plus tax charge on it from Blockbuster. So, last night we went back into the store (swapped Exorcist: The Beginning for Die Hard 2), and asked about it again. Again, nothing. I pressed, so the manager there (who just happened to be the person helping me) checked the history of my account and sure enough, there was the charge for Jeepers Creepers. She went out into the store and found the movie, so she checked it in and refunded the charges.
But the story as to why it happened was the best. Apparently, I'm not the only person to have this problem recently. They had a guy working there who wasn't checking in any ovies at all, but just putting the lock in them and placing them out on the shelf. I guess one thing lead to another, and he was actually fired the previous day. Not willing to go down quietly, he raised a huge ruckus in the store, and they had to call the police to escort him out. The moral is that we'll forgive them this little infraction.
On another side of life, Optimus Prime's wife was in a car accident a couple days ago, which worried us since they're trying to buy a house at the moment, and with house buyting, you're supposed to freeze your credit spending until it's all over (which in most cases, is no big issue). Well, they finally got everything worked out and will be fine with the house deal since they're looking at using the potential payoff of the old vehicle (which is currently believed to be totaled since the airbags deployed) to buy another one to minimize the needed cost to get it.
In the meantime, they have this rental that exemplifies the car industry at the moment. First, it has a ridiculous name that is supposed to inspire the ooh's and aah's: Caliber. You know, the unit of measurement commonly used to measure gun barrels. Naturally, it has a series of letters after the name: SXT. I'm sure they mean something. It has an array of killer features such as the illuminated cup holders, cell phone holder (for old style bar phones like the Nokia 5100 series from 2001), and 1/8" Auxiliary in jack on the radio (ok, I wish I had one of those, but anyway). Now, a couple of cool features had to be the Sirius Satellite Radio and built-in power inverter on the center console.
The most amusing part, though, was the listing of the color of the car. I've gone over colors before, and car color schemes have always ranked as downright silly. I'm sure all the little words are very, very important, but this car is inferno red crystal pearl. Optimus and I stood and looked at it, and said "It's red."
My final bit of amusement for the moment (and my apologies that these are more musings than the story of the Geek and the Queen) is on the game Guitar Hero III. The piece de resistance of the game is the song Through the Fire and Flames by the group DragonForce (listen to it and watch the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3H4liC2sWg). DragonForce's music consists of relentless guitar riffs at breakneck speed to the point that you wonder if you can get soem of the stuff these guys are on to survive your day (you'll understand after you see even a small piece of the video -- check the solo section though in the middle -- it's a trip). Anyway, Guitar Hero has always had these little smart alek remarks related to the rock genre between levels such as "It's probably not a good idea to tackle your lead singer," "No one wants to pay money to hear you jam," "I think there's something wrong with your bass amp -- I can hear it," and my personal favorite, "Can I get a little less suck out of the monitors?"
Well, the level differentiation on Guitar Hero takes you from easy, which only uses three buttons and a minimal number of notes, to expert, which uses all five buttons and contains every single note in the guitar part of the song (and yes, I can play songs on expert, though I am working to master medium). The very thought of playing the DragonForce song on expert is enough to spin your head, but I thought I'd see how crazy it was. Yeah, I didn't get past two bars before the song failed at 1% (I suspect it was rounded up), but the best part was the comment it made before the song began. Clearly, this one wasn't randomized as this post is since it came up both times I tried to the song. It said so much in only a few words and you wait for the craziest song in the game to load.
The game just tells you: "Good luck."
P.S. I found this also in YouTube. It's someone achieving 5 stars on the song in GH3. It's a trip just to watch. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4M7f4-bhbE
You know, I've found that the most difficult part about blogging is not finding something to write about. There's enough going on out there to fill an unlimited number of blogs, and although I only have one piece of that pie, I could personally fill hundreds. What I run into is lacking the time to write these things out. While filling a hundreds blogs would be easy, writing them would take hours upon hours that I flat don't have, so I have to be satisfied with my meager entries when I have time to write them. And let's face it, who has time to read all that drivvel if you put it out there all at once? So I will endeavor to put out my personal drivvel more frequently to the tune of going for once a day...we'll see if I achieve that.
Our top story involves Rock Girl, who was progressing very well on Guitar Hero III, but now will be no longer jamming on the game because she jammed her finger on a log creating a nice, deep, nasty bruise. Painful to the touch, this bruise caused concern for The Queen, who had the school nurse have a look. The nurse suggested we take her into the doctor to have it looked at, since it hurt bad and looked bad, too.
Well, Rock Girl loves school, so unlike every other kid in the world, she was put out for having to leave it to go to the doctor. X-rays were done and no fractures were found, so she was good to go, but with the provision she not use it. Well, it's the third finger of her left hand, so that means no Guitar Hero or regular guitar until it heals up a bit.
The amusing part of the whole bit, as the Queen relayed it to me, was the girl way of answering a simple question. If you ask a guy, "What happened to your finger?", he'll say, "I jammed it on a log."
If you ask a girl the same question, you'll get, "Well, we were staying at home while mommy ran out to pick up a friend of hers and get daddy from work, and Engineer came over to watch us for a while and I was hoping we could play the Wii for awhile, but since it was kind of nice outside and I like to play outside, we all went outside to play for awhile, and my sisters were putting stuff in the tree, as usual, and it really makes me crazy sometimes because they get stuff stuck up there, and than I have to be the one to get it down and they really shouldn't put it up that high anyway, so I thought I would ask for a snack in a minute because I was really hungry but I knew I had to wait for dinner because we were so close and I really wanted to see if I could build a teepee with the logs in the backyard and that's when I hurt my finger on a log." Granted, I made half that up, but that's the gist of what they were doing.
A couple weeks ago, I'd gotten the movie Jeepers Creepers from Blockbuster as a freebie for returning my online movie. I did what any geek would do...rip it onto my iPod and return the disc so I could watch it without worrying about being late. It's long since deleted, and it sucked too, but strangely, the other day, we got a call from Blockbuster saying the movie had not yet been returned. Well, we knew it had been, so we asked about it the next time we were in, and they said we had nothing out. No problem, right?
Well, not exactly. I checked our account yesterday and found a $10 plus tax charge on it from Blockbuster. So, last night we went back into the store (swapped Exorcist: The Beginning for Die Hard 2), and asked about it again. Again, nothing. I pressed, so the manager there (who just happened to be the person helping me) checked the history of my account and sure enough, there was the charge for Jeepers Creepers. She went out into the store and found the movie, so she checked it in and refunded the charges.
But the story as to why it happened was the best. Apparently, I'm not the only person to have this problem recently. They had a guy working there who wasn't checking in any ovies at all, but just putting the lock in them and placing them out on the shelf. I guess one thing lead to another, and he was actually fired the previous day. Not willing to go down quietly, he raised a huge ruckus in the store, and they had to call the police to escort him out. The moral is that we'll forgive them this little infraction.
On another side of life, Optimus Prime's wife was in a car accident a couple days ago, which worried us since they're trying to buy a house at the moment, and with house buyting, you're supposed to freeze your credit spending until it's all over (which in most cases, is no big issue). Well, they finally got everything worked out and will be fine with the house deal since they're looking at using the potential payoff of the old vehicle (which is currently believed to be totaled since the airbags deployed) to buy another one to minimize the needed cost to get it.
In the meantime, they have this rental that exemplifies the car industry at the moment. First, it has a ridiculous name that is supposed to inspire the ooh's and aah's: Caliber. You know, the unit of measurement commonly used to measure gun barrels. Naturally, it has a series of letters after the name: SXT. I'm sure they mean something. It has an array of killer features such as the illuminated cup holders, cell phone holder (for old style bar phones like the Nokia 5100 series from 2001), and 1/8" Auxiliary in jack on the radio (ok, I wish I had one of those, but anyway). Now, a couple of cool features had to be the Sirius Satellite Radio and built-in power inverter on the center console.
The most amusing part, though, was the listing of the color of the car. I've gone over colors before, and car color schemes have always ranked as downright silly. I'm sure all the little words are very, very important, but this car is inferno red crystal pearl. Optimus and I stood and looked at it, and said "It's red."
My final bit of amusement for the moment (and my apologies that these are more musings than the story of the Geek and the Queen) is on the game Guitar Hero III. The piece de resistance of the game is the song Through the Fire and Flames by the group DragonForce (listen to it and watch the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3H4liC2sWg). DragonForce's music consists of relentless guitar riffs at breakneck speed to the point that you wonder if you can get soem of the stuff these guys are on to survive your day (you'll understand after you see even a small piece of the video -- check the solo section though in the middle -- it's a trip). Anyway, Guitar Hero has always had these little smart alek remarks related to the rock genre between levels such as "It's probably not a good idea to tackle your lead singer," "No one wants to pay money to hear you jam," "I think there's something wrong with your bass amp -- I can hear it," and my personal favorite, "Can I get a little less suck out of the monitors?"
Well, the level differentiation on Guitar Hero takes you from easy, which only uses three buttons and a minimal number of notes, to expert, which uses all five buttons and contains every single note in the guitar part of the song (and yes, I can play songs on expert, though I am working to master medium). The very thought of playing the DragonForce song on expert is enough to spin your head, but I thought I'd see how crazy it was. Yeah, I didn't get past two bars before the song failed at 1% (I suspect it was rounded up), but the best part was the comment it made before the song began. Clearly, this one wasn't randomized as this post is since it came up both times I tried to the song. It said so much in only a few words and you wait for the craziest song in the game to load.
The game just tells you: "Good luck."
P.S. I found this also in YouTube. It's someone achieving 5 stars on the song in GH3. It's a trip just to watch. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4M7f4-bhbE
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
It's all fun and games...
Surely, you've heard the phrase before. It's all fun and games until somebody puts an eye out...then hey, free eyeball! Seriously, though, all the threats and warnings roll around in the heads of most people every time they start running with scissors or juggling pencils (which everyone does sometimes, right?). But in all honesty, how many people have actually done it? Can you think of any? Even one?
Let's face it, most people probably can't. They've heard the warnings and yet, there is no living proof for most people that someone would actually put their eye out doing some mundane activity such as chipping rocks or drilling holes in random objects. Well, if you are reading these words (and if you are comprehending them, then there is really no other way you could be receiving this message unless someone is reading them to you, but that totally counts), then you have on the other end of this keyboard the living proof you've been looking for your entire life.
We'd been engaged one week. About a month prior, I'd left my job at RadioShack to work for a fireplace company in town installing fireplaces in new construction homes. It paid more than RadioShack, and was actually a lot less work than sales, so I went for it. The guy I worked with was a little harsh sometimes, and in the few days prior to this incident, he was being really, really hard on me and threatening to have me fired if I didn't step up the speed a bit.
The Friday before, I'd managed to mess up two sheet metal covers by misfiguring the dimensions...twice. My doing so, I used up both sheets we'd brought to make the covers with. This had upset the guy I was with considerably, but since he lived out that way anyway, he said he'd get it on the way home.
That morning, we'd gone out to a house with a really high chase on it (a chase, if you don't know, is the industry term for the chimney, but while the word chimney only refers to the part that sticks out of the house, chase refers to the entire internal run from the fireplace to the outside), and some extra accessories which were my responsibility to make sure I'd grabbed them all. Well, once we got the cover on the chase (which I'd made correctly that time), we needed to put the vent on the unit. Well, guess what? I hadn't grabbed the tube stuff we use to run the vent to the outside of the house, so I had to run back into the shop to get it. Again, he was not happy.
After that fiasco, we did another house which went well, and finally came to a job so big that it works perfectly as a final scene in this mini-movie. Not only were my partner and I out there but the boss and another guy were there too. It took four of us to get this one taken care of.
To place some perspective on this, I'll give you the precise location where we were. In Tulsa, there is a museum called Philbrook Art Museum. It is located in a very high end neighborhood where the houses near it are comparable to the museum house. The house were working on was across the street from Philbrook's exit, so if you are driving out of Philbrook and look directly across the street, you will find a three story house that was stucco at the time. That's the place.
The run of the pipe through the chase wound through the walls of this house in probably the craziest manner possible until it finally came out the top. I was wearing some jean shorts that day and actually tore a hole in the butt, so I was showing off my underpants most of the day as well, not to mention this job came up right before lunch so I hadn't eaten anything all day. But the time came to make the cover, and since the boss was there, I was motivated to show that I could get this thing done correctly and quickly the first time.
I took the measurements of the top of the chase, measured where the pipe was coming out so I could offset it properly and ran down the ladder balanced on the balcony and down the stairs in the house out to the truck. I measured and snipped that cover quicker than such a cover has been snipped and toted it upstairs and up the ladder to the roof.
The other three were up there waiting for me. It was my time to shine. I slid the cover over the pipe and it fit perfectly. All four sides lined up without a hitch -- it was just a matter of getting it around the screen wire the stucco had been plastered on. We had a standard way of doing this, and while improper, we used a screwdriver as a pry bar to pop the cover off of the screen wire, so it could slide right down and we could screw it into the sides of the chase.
I took the screwdriver out of my tool belt and popped one side of it, but there was another side also caught on the screen wire. Quick as a whip, I jumped over to that side, lowering myself inline with the side of the cover so I had a good view of what I was doing. I slipped the screwdriver between the lip of the cover and the screen wire and gave it a tug.
Next thing I knew, the screwdriver had hit me in the eye. I dropped it with a yell and covered my eye. Fortunately, the tiles on the roof were fake ceramic. If they were real, I'd have had some bigger problems related to a three story drop, but since they were fake, my shoes still gripped the roof, so when I went to my knees, I didn't slip. I knew I couldn't see out the eye, and I was panicked.
You see, my eye sight has always been a source of pride for me. I had 20/15 vision in both eyes. I could read stuff from a distance to make people sick. But now, I looked like a victim in a horror movie. Blood ran down the side of my face, and my shirt was covered in it. The other three helped me down the ladder, and got me to the boss's truck where he took over and drove me to the emergency clinic where worker's comp issues begin.
I was told I was going to see a Dr. Goldfinger (yeah, that's my Bond obsession showing through), so I called The Queen and in the calmest voice mentioned to her that I rammed a screwdriver into my eye and going to see Dr. Goldfinger. She initially thought I was joking since I was so calm, but once she realized I was serious about what had happened, she told her co-workers that she had to leave immediately...and they let her.
From here, things get a little fuzzy for me because I'd lost a lot of blood and was in a lot of pain. Don't let anyone fool you, poking your eye out is very, very painful. Goldfinger had a look at me and determined they needed to operate that evening to sew up the damage to buy time to do what really needed to be done. At this point, we knew I'd sent the screwdriver through my cornea, iris, lens, and probably hit the retina, detaching it. Ouch.
From there, I was allowed to lay down in a dark room with a trash can since I'd felt like vomiting more than once, but unfortunately, since my stomach was still empty, I had nothing to throw up. I was still in my bloody t-shirt and ripped shorts, so I was also quite cold, and probably going into shock from the pain, but still I waited. The Queen was allowed into the room, and she cleaned up my face. I don't know if I said anything worthwhile or not; I was passing into deliriousness.
The last thing I remember from that day was my being placed on a wheeled bed and stripped. They were shoving paper after paper in my face to get me to sign away all their responsibility. In a fit of frustration I told them that my father (who, I think, was nearby) could sign all the papers for me. He would have been in a much saner state of mind at that point.
So the paper pushers left me alone as I was wheeled into a room I would never be able to describe at that point. They put a mask over my face and told me to count down from ten to one.
10...9...
Let's face it, most people probably can't. They've heard the warnings and yet, there is no living proof for most people that someone would actually put their eye out doing some mundane activity such as chipping rocks or drilling holes in random objects. Well, if you are reading these words (and if you are comprehending them, then there is really no other way you could be receiving this message unless someone is reading them to you, but that totally counts), then you have on the other end of this keyboard the living proof you've been looking for your entire life.
We'd been engaged one week. About a month prior, I'd left my job at RadioShack to work for a fireplace company in town installing fireplaces in new construction homes. It paid more than RadioShack, and was actually a lot less work than sales, so I went for it. The guy I worked with was a little harsh sometimes, and in the few days prior to this incident, he was being really, really hard on me and threatening to have me fired if I didn't step up the speed a bit.
The Friday before, I'd managed to mess up two sheet metal covers by misfiguring the dimensions...twice. My doing so, I used up both sheets we'd brought to make the covers with. This had upset the guy I was with considerably, but since he lived out that way anyway, he said he'd get it on the way home.
That morning, we'd gone out to a house with a really high chase on it (a chase, if you don't know, is the industry term for the chimney, but while the word chimney only refers to the part that sticks out of the house, chase refers to the entire internal run from the fireplace to the outside), and some extra accessories which were my responsibility to make sure I'd grabbed them all. Well, once we got the cover on the chase (which I'd made correctly that time), we needed to put the vent on the unit. Well, guess what? I hadn't grabbed the tube stuff we use to run the vent to the outside of the house, so I had to run back into the shop to get it. Again, he was not happy.
After that fiasco, we did another house which went well, and finally came to a job so big that it works perfectly as a final scene in this mini-movie. Not only were my partner and I out there but the boss and another guy were there too. It took four of us to get this one taken care of.
To place some perspective on this, I'll give you the precise location where we were. In Tulsa, there is a museum called Philbrook Art Museum. It is located in a very high end neighborhood where the houses near it are comparable to the museum house. The house were working on was across the street from Philbrook's exit, so if you are driving out of Philbrook and look directly across the street, you will find a three story house that was stucco at the time. That's the place.
The run of the pipe through the chase wound through the walls of this house in probably the craziest manner possible until it finally came out the top. I was wearing some jean shorts that day and actually tore a hole in the butt, so I was showing off my underpants most of the day as well, not to mention this job came up right before lunch so I hadn't eaten anything all day. But the time came to make the cover, and since the boss was there, I was motivated to show that I could get this thing done correctly and quickly the first time.
I took the measurements of the top of the chase, measured where the pipe was coming out so I could offset it properly and ran down the ladder balanced on the balcony and down the stairs in the house out to the truck. I measured and snipped that cover quicker than such a cover has been snipped and toted it upstairs and up the ladder to the roof.
The other three were up there waiting for me. It was my time to shine. I slid the cover over the pipe and it fit perfectly. All four sides lined up without a hitch -- it was just a matter of getting it around the screen wire the stucco had been plastered on. We had a standard way of doing this, and while improper, we used a screwdriver as a pry bar to pop the cover off of the screen wire, so it could slide right down and we could screw it into the sides of the chase.
I took the screwdriver out of my tool belt and popped one side of it, but there was another side also caught on the screen wire. Quick as a whip, I jumped over to that side, lowering myself inline with the side of the cover so I had a good view of what I was doing. I slipped the screwdriver between the lip of the cover and the screen wire and gave it a tug.
Next thing I knew, the screwdriver had hit me in the eye. I dropped it with a yell and covered my eye. Fortunately, the tiles on the roof were fake ceramic. If they were real, I'd have had some bigger problems related to a three story drop, but since they were fake, my shoes still gripped the roof, so when I went to my knees, I didn't slip. I knew I couldn't see out the eye, and I was panicked.
You see, my eye sight has always been a source of pride for me. I had 20/15 vision in both eyes. I could read stuff from a distance to make people sick. But now, I looked like a victim in a horror movie. Blood ran down the side of my face, and my shirt was covered in it. The other three helped me down the ladder, and got me to the boss's truck where he took over and drove me to the emergency clinic where worker's comp issues begin.
I was told I was going to see a Dr. Goldfinger (yeah, that's my Bond obsession showing through), so I called The Queen and in the calmest voice mentioned to her that I rammed a screwdriver into my eye and going to see Dr. Goldfinger. She initially thought I was joking since I was so calm, but once she realized I was serious about what had happened, she told her co-workers that she had to leave immediately...and they let her.
From here, things get a little fuzzy for me because I'd lost a lot of blood and was in a lot of pain. Don't let anyone fool you, poking your eye out is very, very painful. Goldfinger had a look at me and determined they needed to operate that evening to sew up the damage to buy time to do what really needed to be done. At this point, we knew I'd sent the screwdriver through my cornea, iris, lens, and probably hit the retina, detaching it. Ouch.
From there, I was allowed to lay down in a dark room with a trash can since I'd felt like vomiting more than once, but unfortunately, since my stomach was still empty, I had nothing to throw up. I was still in my bloody t-shirt and ripped shorts, so I was also quite cold, and probably going into shock from the pain, but still I waited. The Queen was allowed into the room, and she cleaned up my face. I don't know if I said anything worthwhile or not; I was passing into deliriousness.
The last thing I remember from that day was my being placed on a wheeled bed and stripped. They were shoving paper after paper in my face to get me to sign away all their responsibility. In a fit of frustration I told them that my father (who, I think, was nearby) could sign all the papers for me. He would have been in a much saner state of mind at that point.
So the paper pushers left me alone as I was wheeled into a room I would never be able to describe at that point. They put a mask over my face and told me to count down from ten to one.
10...9...
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