dad – Life of kk

In honor of Veterans’ Day, I thought I’d share the story of my dad in the army.

Until the day she moved out of her apartment, my grandmother kept an 8″x10″ black and white photo of my dad in his army uniform on her armoire. In it, he look at 14 years old, crew cut, clean shaven, hat and deer-in-headlights look on his face. She was so proud of him for serving in the army, you would have thought he won the war.

The other day, Little Mister was surprised to find out that my dad – his grandfather – was a veteran.

“What did Grandpa do in the army?” he asked me.

And with a straight face I let him in on the long-running joke I have with my dad: “He was a secretary.”

True story.

And I have been joking with him about it for as long as I can remember. Mr. KK’s dad was stationed on a submarine, working as an electrician on a boat, while my dad sat behind a desk and answered phones.

Apparently, sometime between when he arrived at boot camp and was trying to avoid getting the shots necessary to actually be in the army, someone found out that my dad could type.

I imagine it went something like this:

My dad – in line for some ebola or rabies vaccine at the army base – joking with his buddies. A Captain or a General is walking up and down the lines of newbies, picking out the ones who weren’t going to make it and the ones who would rise in the ranks. Maybe one of them muttered, “Man, I wish we had someone who could take notes really neatly.”

Upon hearing this, my dad’s ears perk up and his arm shoots into the air. “Sir, I can type 80 words a minute, Sir!”

Upon hearing this, the Grand Puba plucks my dad out of line. “Boy, can you type without mistakes? Can I count on you to take notes and memos?”

And just like that, my dad avoided combat and got himself a desk job. Pretty smart if you ask me. It’s like getting the best job at the worst place to work; it’s not great to be there, but you could be getting shot at.

At family gatherings, I will tease my dad, mimicking him typing on typewriter, and tapping the point of a pen to his tongue to start writing a memo. I’ll yell out, “You! Take an emergency memo! The troops are moving in! STOP. We must prepare. STOP.” and then we all laugh and laugh.

But jokes aside, I’m proud that both my dad is a veteran. Even if his greatest weapon was Wite Out.

Staying true to the tagline on this blog of “You can’t make this sh*t up”, get a load of this story.

A few Fridays ago, my dad had routine kidney stone surgery. This is when they give you propofol (aka: the good stuff) and put you to sleep and then go in with a laser and blast the kidney stones to smithereens. (I can’t tell you how excited I am to have used the word ‘smithereens’ on my blog!)

My dad has had this surgery before, it’s in and out of the hospital on the same day, then go home and rest and don’t lift anything heavy for a week. And this is exactly what we did. However, the weekend following the surgery, my dad developed a fever and the chills and was lethargic, and on Monday the morning the nurse told him, “Go to the Emergency Room!” And so Uber KK went and picked up Mom and Dad, and drove back to the hospital, this time to the ER. Blessedly, there was no one there and he was taken back immediately.

My dad was in his street clothes on a gurney, parked in the hallway due to no open curtained rooms. It’s possible my dad was one of the only sober person being treated. The guy behind him was hacking up a lung and throwing up on his gurney. A woman was screaming for hematology and ripping all the gloves out of the boxes that hung on the wall and throwing them all over the floor. Someone else kept a steady tempo of yelling “Nurse!” for a solid hour. During all of this they poked and prodded my dad, taking urine and blood and his temperature until finally they admitted him with an infection. (No medical training over here, but hearing his symptoms when I picked him up that morning, I diagnosed him with the same thing).

When they wheeled my dad into the room, there was already someone else there in the bed by the window. He was about thirty or so, walking with a limp and cane. His music was blaring and he was singing loudly. If he walked by us once, he walked by us a thousand times – grabbing pudding out of the floor fridge, handing out at the nurses’ station, visiting other patients on the floor.

“This guy is like the mayor,” my dad commented as our roommate hobbled by.

The next morning Uber KK picked up mom and then we headed down for another full day of bedside sitting at the hospital. I was reliving my childhood sick day dreams: glued to the TV watching Let’s Make a Deal and The Price is Right (RIP Bob), plus more hours of news in one morning and afternoon than I have consumed in the last 20 years.

A nurse came to check on our roommate, and – with those flimsy curtains doing nothing to block sound – I heard her ask: “Did you break your parole?”

Say what?!?!

Not long after this exchange, three hulking men in street clothes with multiple guns strapped to their legs and waists came into our little hospital room.

“Excuse us, ma’am,” one of them said to me. “We’re just going to move that gentleman to another room.”

It was like we were in a COPS episode. At once both of my parents started talking.

“SHHHHHHHH!” I commanded, waving at them to be quiet, my eyes bulging at them. “I can’t hear!” I whispered.

The cops moved the curtain aside and smiled at the roommate. “I’m going to have to take your phone,” the first one said.

A second officer glided in, ordered the roommate to lay down, and handcuffed him to the bed.

This was really happening!

With little fanfare, besides multiple men with giant guns and the arrival of a uniformed police officer, they starting wheeling our roommate out of the room. I didn’t know where to look! Do I pretend to be into the muted episode of Judge Judy? Do I bury my face in my phone? Do I look him dead in the eye…no definitely not that one!

“I need to finish my antibiotics,” he said to one of the officers. “Oh you will,” the cop replied. “And when you’re done, you can go back to jail.”

When my dad’s nurse came in to check on him, she peeked on the other side of the curtain to see if he was gone.

“See all this entertainment I provided for you?” she joked, taking my dad’s temperature.

I asked the obvious question: “He has been walking around this floor for two days, why did they now handcuff him to the bed?”

The nurse said matter-of-factly: “Oh, that’s because they just found out where he was.”

Oh.

“They came in here to arrest him. That’s what they just did. Now he’s in a private room on the other side of the floor.” She finished up with my dad. “They’ll be in soon to clean, someone else is moving in here.”

I looked at my dad. “We have to get you out of here,” I said. And then the news came on. Again.

Tag: dad

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