Comics, Current Events, and Memories
Mar. 21st, 2009 12:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theoldwolfMemories come in the strangest ways.
Cross-posted to WordPress, 2-14-2017
Brooke McEldowney, in his webcomic Pibgorn, just finished up a story arc that lasted a few days short of two years. That's not as tortuous as Freefall time, but still a good piece of slow-paced fiction.
The new arc which began last Tuesday is entitled (Note to Jef Mallett: Yes, that is an appropriate use of the word) "Pibgorn and the Volcano on 77th Street and Park Avenue." Members of the Order of the Couch immediately brought up satellite images of the intersection, and it turns out that Lenox Hill Hospital sits on that corner.
I grew up in New York, and that rang a bell. Ever since then, I've been trying to figure out why it was familiar, aside from the tragic recent death of Natasha Richardson). Was it where I was born? Nah, that was Lying-In Hospital, converted in 1981 to luxury condos (note the baby tondos about halfway up...)
It just came to me. It's where I had my tonsils out when I was around three. Unlike Bill Cosby and his ice cream, my memories are different. I remember being alone, shots, and starvation.
When you're three, you hate shots anyway. Somehow, my beloved pediatrician, Dr. Arthur F. Anderson, seen above on the occasion of his retirement in 1967, managed to avoid being associated with needles, choosing instead to send his evil henchman, the sadistic Dr. Charles Weymuller (in actuality, probably a very nice man) to my home for the requisite torture sessions. But in the hospital, I have this memory of an endless line of nurses armed with jackhammers, marching into my room like clockwork every five minutes to give me shot, after shot, after shot. It was probably only one, but hey, I was three, and alone in a strange crib in a strange place. I still don't especially care for needles.
Compounding the torment was the fact that they refused to feed me. I was so happy when they finally said I would get some chicken noodle soup. Well, if there was any chicken or any noodles in the soup they brought me, it must have been strained out by the underpaid kitchen staff to supplement their meagre diets, because "broth" would have been too generous an appellation. That hospital stay was not fun.
I was so hungry when I finally got home... they fixed me mashed potatoes with butter, and I was so famished that in my haste I accidentally bit the finger of whoever was feeding me.
And I hadn't thought of these things for at least 30 years...
Cross-posted to WordPress, 2-14-2017
Brooke McEldowney, in his webcomic Pibgorn, just finished up a story arc that lasted a few days short of two years. That's not as tortuous as Freefall time, but still a good piece of slow-paced fiction.
The new arc which began last Tuesday is entitled (Note to Jef Mallett: Yes, that is an appropriate use of the word) "Pibgorn and the Volcano on 77th Street and Park Avenue." Members of the Order of the Couch immediately brought up satellite images of the intersection, and it turns out that Lenox Hill Hospital sits on that corner.
I grew up in New York, and that rang a bell. Ever since then, I've been trying to figure out why it was familiar, aside from the tragic recent death of Natasha Richardson). Was it where I was born? Nah, that was Lying-In Hospital, converted in 1981 to luxury condos (note the baby tondos about halfway up...)
It just came to me. It's where I had my tonsils out when I was around three. Unlike Bill Cosby and his ice cream, my memories are different. I remember being alone, shots, and starvation.
When you're three, you hate shots anyway. Somehow, my beloved pediatrician, Dr. Arthur F. Anderson, seen above on the occasion of his retirement in 1967, managed to avoid being associated with needles, choosing instead to send his evil henchman, the sadistic Dr. Charles Weymuller (in actuality, probably a very nice man) to my home for the requisite torture sessions. But in the hospital, I have this memory of an endless line of nurses armed with jackhammers, marching into my room like clockwork every five minutes to give me shot, after shot, after shot. It was probably only one, but hey, I was three, and alone in a strange crib in a strange place. I still don't especially care for needles.
Compounding the torment was the fact that they refused to feed me. I was so happy when they finally said I would get some chicken noodle soup. Well, if there was any chicken or any noodles in the soup they brought me, it must have been strained out by the underpaid kitchen staff to supplement their meagre diets, because "broth" would have been too generous an appellation. That hospital stay was not fun.
I was so hungry when I finally got home... they fixed me mashed potatoes with butter, and I was so famished that in my haste I accidentally bit the finger of whoever was feeding me.
And I hadn't thought of these things for at least 30 years...
