Sorry for waking all of you Monday morning.
Yes, that 6 a.m. shrieking you heard was me. Even though the MRI machine is deep inside the basement of one of the buildings on the Avera McKennan campus and even though I was deep inside the machine at the time, it didn't matter.
A former roadie for Black Sabbath reported hearing my wailings.
So did an aircraft mechanic tuning a jet engine.
The roadie has been dead for 30 years.
The mechanic works at LaGuardia.
I thought getting an MRI would be a breeze. When the pleasant young woman in charge of the MRI machine at Avera asked whether I was claustrophobic, I scoffed. When she handed me a rubber ball attached to a rubber cord and told me to squeeze the ball if I felt a sudden urge to speak to her, I smiled. When I had been flat on my back inside the tube-like machine for a second – maybe two – and the sound of her voice inquiring if I was OK sprung cordially from the earphones she had given me to wear, I said sure.
I made it another second – maybe two – before I started squeezing that rubber ball like it was a lemon and Hillary Swank had just asked me for a glass of lemonade. I had waited just long enough to look right, left and above me and for my eyes to tell my brain and for my brain to tell me: "Hey, numbskull! In case you didn't notice, you are in a hard-plastic coffin. You can either choke that rubber ball or die."
When the cheerful voice entered the earphones this time and asked whether I was OK, that's when I woke you.
I have a bad back. Who knew lying around watching Hogan's Heroes and the Weather Channel could be so debilitating? So no one else ever shares in this horrible plight, I have petitioned the Surgeon General to have warning labels placed on all sofas. While they're at it, I asked that cup holders be added, too.
Two birds. One stone. There's a reason America
Sadly, I suffer from an even worse condition than an ailing back. Pardon me if my Latin is a shade rusty, but I believe the term is: bravadis falsidocious.
In English: false bravado.
It flared Monday morning. It has landed me in other jams as well. If the following symptoms sound familiar, you, too, might be afflicted:
§ Driving 200 miles in a South Dakota
§ Ordering a bowl of THIS-CHILI-IS-SO-HOT-IT-WILL-MELT-YOUR-ESOPHAGUS!!!!!!!!!! for lunch: bravadis falsidocious.
§ Playing from the back tees even though your golfing buddies nicknamed you Slice: bravadis falsidocious.
§ Telling the boss you have a killer idea for reorganizing the joint after only a month on the job: bravadis falsidocious.
Oddly enough, false bravado had a hand in me becoming a high school teacher 13 years ago. I was 32 years old and figured: "How hard could it be?" No dumber question has been posed in the 4½ billion years this planet has been spinning.
Coincidentally, it is my students who often serve as an antidote today. Whenever I start behaving like I know it all, 100 pins come rushing to let the air out. What Samaritans they are. They will stop at nothing to set me straight. God bless 'em.
I wish they could do the same for some others. False bravado has reached pandemic proportions in Washington
There are grave issues facing this country. Yet even though our fate demands they be fixed, the people who are supposed to be piloting this ship act as if the problems don't even exist.
So tired am I of this shuck and jive that I watched none of the Democratic National Convention and only 15 minutes of the Republican National Convention, but the 15 minutes I did watch was long enough to see chests being thumped and hollow threats being tossed – and then those who did the thumping and the threatening being applauded for it.
No doubt the Republicans who were roaring their approval thought they simply were returning the favor. It doesn't matter. We can stand this nonsense no more. It does not help.
There is a difference between false bravado and real courage. It is an important difference. To glimpse that difference, observe just about anyone who works in Washington
Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman are in the movie. So is Swank, and it is her character who possesses the right kind of bravery, the kind that inspires others and makes us glad to be alive, the kind worthy of applause.
Anymore, movies are junk, so I watch but one – maybe two – a year. "Million Dollar Baby" is the only Hillary Swank movie I've ever seen. But something tells me if you put her character in an MRI machine, not a word would be spoken.