|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
August 30, 2020
Published as a Gramma Letter
dated August 22, 1995.
© 1995, 2020 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
|
| | |
Smoker (1971)
© 1971 by Bud Grossmann
|
DANGERS OF SMOKING
Tuesday, August 22, 1995
Dear Gramma,
Following a family outing one Sunday afternoon when I was about eight years old, I lagged behind my parents and siblings as we returned to our car. The ’56 Ford Fairlane was parked on a graded gravel lot on the military post in Japan where we lived at that time. When the rest of my family arrived at the car, I broke into a trot to catch up. My feet and legs had not come to me in a matched set at my birth; by the age of eight, though, I was ambulating without the help of casts or braces.
The gravel made a lovely crunching sound beneath my leather-soled, high-top, corrective shoes. But I slipped or tripped, and down I went. My dad lifted the torn pant-leg of my Sunday trousers and found a ragged gash just below my knee. It wasn’t bleeding much, but it was full of grit, so Dad and Mom decided a doctor should look at it.
We drove to the post dispensary. While everyone else stayed outside, Dad and I went in to see the gruff, gray-haired, pipe-smoking physician on duty. Except for this doctor and two orderlies, we seemed to be alone in the clinic. Our voices echoed off the tiled walls and stainless steel surfaces of the examining room.
The doctor cleansed my wound and declared that a few sutures were needed. He injected Novocain into the area of the injury; then he put a match to his pipe tobacco as he waited for the anesthetic to take effect. The room was warm. My dad removed his suit jacket, loosened his necktie, and sat down on a bench along a nearby wall. He rested his head against the wall tiles and spoke quiet words of encouragement to me as I lay on my back on the examining table.
Tapping at my injured skin with the blunt tip of a suture clamp, the doctor called me by my given name: “Gordon, do you feel that?”
“No, sir,” I replied, nervously.
“Speak up if I hurt you,” he said. And then, sitting on a stool and squinting through the smoke rising from his pipe bowl, he slid his curved needle through my skin.
After a couple passes of the needle and catgut, the doctor turned in the direction of my dad and suddenly rose to his feet. He let the needle fall from his fingers and barked an order at the nearest orderly: “Catch that man!”
I sat up to look at Dad. His skin seemed green-toned, and he was toppling from the bench. One orderly grabbed Dad before he could hit the floor, and the other corpsman pressed an oxygen mask to my father’s face. After a moment, Dad had regained his customary color. He murmured something about coming down with a flu.
The doctor returned to me. “Your dad is going to be just fine, Gordon. Lie down, now. I’m almost finished.” He pushed against my chest, and I lay back, but I bounced right up again.
“Ouch!” I shouted. The doctor pushed me back, but once more I snapped rigidly upright. “Ouch! It’s hot! It’s hot! It hurts!”
“I’ll give you more Novocain. Lie down,” the doctor insisted. But I wriggled away from him, the needle and ligature dangling from my knee. He grabbed me by the shoulders, but then he let go when he saw the source of my pain—the hot tobacco pipe had dropped from the doctor’s mouth to the examining table. Each time I lay on it, I scorched my spine.
Chuckling at the little excitement that had come into his lazy Sunday afternoon, the physician set aside his pipe. Then he completed his sewing work, gave a packet of pills to my dad, and sent us on our way.
Well, Gram, that was my first big lesson in the hazards of tobacco. The experience put me on my guard, and, to this day, I have mostly managed to resist the lure of nicotine.
I miss you, Gramma; I think of you often.
Love,
Buddy
|
I would welcome your thoughts on this page (or any of my
others). Write to me at the following address. Please
be sure to spell Grossmann with two n’s and
mention what page you are writing about.
Thanks! BUD GROSSMANN
|
Top of this page
|
|
This page was updated Sat, Aug 29, 2020, 3:35PM CDT.
|
© 2020 by Bud Grossmann
|
|
|
|
 |
