NEUROSIS DU JOUR

January 6, 2010

How can one person eat a bag of Bowel Buddies in two days? And what’s with that name? What next? Colon Chums? Shit Disturtbers?

 

On the sixth day of January this year, I had an epiphany. I decided to be a better person. I decided to be a person who helps. I had just turned 50 and I thought, now that I am getting older, I had better start cramming for my finals. Besides, I was sick of just writing a cheque for charity and buying cheese from the school kids. I wanted hands-on helping. So I went to a local café to ponder how I could save the world. I ordered fair trade coffee but the barista told me they didn’t have any. So, I sat there drinking my $4 unfair trade caramel macchiato and thinking about all the things I would do to help the downtrodden when a guy sat down beside me. He started playing a very noisy game on his cell phone. I tried to ignore him and focus on what Bono or Bob Geldof would do in this situation. And then I got thinking, “Which one is cuter? Bob or Bono? Bob? Bono?”

I thought of hot coffee. Hot men. Hot coffee. Hot men. And the guy kept beeping his phone and I was getting ticked off, so I started doing a chant I learned at Hot Yoga. I said Namaste. Bless him.

            Beep.

            Bless him.

            Beep.

            BEEEEEEEEEEEP him.

            Beep.

            Finally, I turned to him and said, “Will you please SHUT UP! I am trying to be a do-gooder.

            No, I didn’t really say that. After all, what if he didn’t like me? But I did start to question how I would ever deal with warlords if I couldn’t handle a few beeps from a cell phone.

            I

This existential pondering caused me to have a serious anxiety attack. No, I have that backwards. I thought I was having a heart attack, called 911, and when I got to the emergency room I saw the wait time, and then I had the anxiety attack. I got labelled urgent, which isn’t as fast as it sounds. I sat there so long that someone asked me if I was an organ donor. But that’s not my point. My point is that the heart of any hospital is the volunteers (and maybe the cardiac surgeons).

 

This is when I met Amiel, a blue-haired woman wheeling a silver coffee cart. Amiel on Wheels. She was the quintessential volunteer. Over a couple of Peek Freans and water passing for coffee, she informed me that she had joined the hospital volunteer team in 1975. It was $2 a year and she only did it for the free volunteer luncheon. Over her career as a volunteer, she said she’s come to love helping others, but sadly, she confessed that she has seen many changes in charity work over the years. It’s getting harder and harder to help people, with more germs, more fears and more rules.

For instance, with the new privacy act, she’s not allowed to tell anyone outside the hospital who’s staying there. That’s crazy. Think about it. Why would an 85-year-old woman risk breaking a hip if she couldn’t bring back a little gossip to the seniors’ centre?

I don’t know if it was Amiel or the 40-per-cent oxygen I was huffing, but my breathing settled and that’s when I had my second epiphany. I wasn’t supposed to go to Africa. Sure, I was to think globally, but I had to act locally. I was being called to be a hospital volunteer. Of course, I could never work in the emergency ward, not where people are bleeding, or complaining, or throwing up because puking makes me gag. And I’d never help with patients; I can’t sing Christmas carols or sponge-bath dirty old men. No, I couldn’t do that, but I could use my humour. I could be Patch Adams. I could make jokes in the coffee room with the First Response Team. (Which are cuter: cops or First Response guys?)

In a flush of excitement, I announced my intentions to Amiel and in a second her face turned to stone. She looked like I had just announced McCoy’s bus trip to Branson, Missouri, had been cancelled. She hissed at me, “There is at least a six-month waiting list.”

Six months.

“Volunteering is not just helping out, you know,” she declared. “We weed out the fickle ones. The high-school kids who want a form signed. The cons doing community hours.”

“Amiel, I haven’t done time,” I defended. “I live on Amherst Island.”

“How do you think they populated, Australia?” she retorted. “There’s due process. We would have to get everybody a police check.”

“Amiel, they can do a cavity search for all I care. I haven’t been able to get in to see a doctor in months.”

She didn’t crack a smile.

I could see she had never heard of Patch Adams.

“Look, missy, this red apron is not given out to just anybody,” she said. Then she sold me a 50-50 ticket and wandered off to spread her bad coffee and whitener to other unsuspecting sick people.

I checked myself out. As I was exiting, a very disturbed woman stormed past me and the security guard picked her up and put her out on the sidewalk. All she wanted was her meds. That woman might have been having a bad day, but one thing is certain; she is more resourceful than I. She stood out in the ambulance bay and took off all her clothes and, believe me, when you stand buck naked, that gets you service at the hospital. In fact, they bring the drugs right out to the street for you.

That’s when I had my third epiphany.

It’s as hard to get service as it is to give it.

I went home, wrote a cheque to Bono and binged on the cheese order I had just gotten delivered from the school kids.

  LET ME ENTERTAIN YOU!  February 4th 2010, Come to Napanee Lion’s Hall. $25 HILARIOUS NEW SHOW. THE RELEVANT DEBORAH KIMMETT  Tickets avail under BUY STUFF.

 

 

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Tags: one funny writer

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