The following is the script from a stand-up comedy routine I wrote and performed at QueerSpeak open mic at Project Lodge on 8/24/11. The set is a look at aging and the increased interactions we have with healthcare providers and the surprising observations made by the young people in our lives. Today, in a couple of hours, I’m going to have carpal tunnel release surgery. When I am able to write again, I’m sure there will be more humorous stories to tell.
First, let me just say that I’m a little nervous. It’s been 11 years since I’ve performed stand-up comedy. The last time was on New Year’s Eve of the new millennium. The problem, for those of you old enough to remember, and no that’s not a cheap joke, but a generational frame of reference, is that people were full-throttle-Bozo crazy. It was as if everyone was afflicted with some kind of mutant Y2K bug, attention deficit disorder, freaked out that ATM’s would stop dispensing money and their computers wouldn’t know how to change the date and time and all hell would break loose, a combination of Armageddon and the Rapture.
Well none of that happened. What did happen was that no one sat in their chairs and listened to my comedy routine. It wasn’t that no one laughed; no, I heard laughter all right, that kind of nervous laughter like “Whoa, I’m glad I’m not her. A-w-k-w-a-r-d!” I took it personally, I was devastated. Needless to say, I went back into therapy. Yes, therapy, that’s the second reason I haven’t performed comedy in 11 years. My life became functional. The problem with a functional life is I didn’t have my dysfunctional childhood, family or relationships from which to draw material. Well, things change.
Over the years I’ve learned a few axioms I now hold unto as universal truths and will share with you at no cost:
- Everything new is old again.
- Things change.
- And, just when you have it all figured out and you know everything, you lose your memory.
“What was I saying…?”
When I told my friend Candy that I was going to do a comedy routine about aging, she said, “That’s not funny!” She’s absolutely right; it’s not funny unless you develop an attitude of gratitude, and don’t take yourself too seriously. My niece Gemma taught me this lesson, yes, wisdom out of the mouths of babes. When she was four years old, I was bending over her car seat buckling her in, she saw my face up close, let’s be precise, the wrinkles of my face up close. In that observational, yet nonjudgmental manner that children possess, she commented, “Auntie Linda, you’re old!!!” My old, wrinkled face couldn’t hide my hurt feelings. My niece Gemma loves me wholeheartedly and clearly didn’t want me to feel bad, so she replied in a cheery voice with a smile on her face, “Auntie Linda, that’s okay, it means you’re not dead!” And you know, she’s right, I’m not dead, and I’m grateful for that.
Her older brother, my nephew Quinn, is a very observant person too. He was eight years old at the time and one day when we were playing the game Life, he kept staring at my neck. I couldn’t imagine what he was looking at with such a quizzical look on his face when he asked, “What’s all that meat hanging off your neck?” I didn’t understand what he was referring to until he pointed his finger, almost touching, then recoiling and withdrawing his finger, with an expression of “gross” on his face and said, “That, those pieces of meat hanging from your neck.” I finally figured out what he was talking about, the tags, the moles, all over my neck. I started laughing and dared him to touch the moles and thus began a cross-generational game of “I dare you to touch the old lady’s moles.” We giggled until I almost peed in my Depends…no that is a joke…really…please believe me or I’ll never get a date again!
The tipping point for when you know you’re getting older is when you begin seeing your doctor, dentist, optometrist, pharmacist, financial advisor, seamstress, “Yes, take out a little here,” and massage and physical therapists, or at least one of them, once or twice a week. Then it dawns on you, I used to have sex once or twice a week and now all of my dates are with healthcare providers and financial advisors.
This next story however is not about dating, except it did give me some satisfaction. One of those recent sweltering, 105 degree heat index days, I bought one of those Strawberry Lemonades from McDonald’s. Yes, I’m being compensated for this product placement in my routine. I drank it really fast and got one of those brain freezes. Moments later, I saw arcs of bright light out of my peripheral vision, blinking intermittently, followed by a flood of floaters and spots, creating a film-like veil in my field of vision. I panicked, like a scene from a bad Woody Allen film, I thought I was stroking out, “I’m too young to die!” Then I did what everybody does now in our digital age. I logged onto the internet to research and diagnose my problem. It was one of two things, a Posterior Vitreous Detachment or PVD, or the more critical Retinal Detachment which requires immediate emergency surgery to prevent vision loss. I decided I had symptoms of the former. I thought, “I’ll sleep on it,” my strategy for solving most of my problems. The next day I called my eye clinic, described my symptoms, and the nurse from the triage line suggested I see my regular eye doctor that day. The doctor reserves an emergency appointment during her lunch hour for situations like this.
I arrived for my noon appointment and was greeted by a cranky nurse with a sinus infection who after sneezing in my eyes, yelled at me because she couldn’t hear my blood pressure with her stethoscope because her sinuses were plugged, but somehow thought I should take responsibility for that. Next she asked me to describe my symptoms. Being a compliant patient, I listed in detail, including the Strawberry Lemonade from McDonald’s, all of my symptoms. After she entered my first 20 symptoms, describing the sizes and shapes, frequency and colors of the floaters, she stopped and said, “I don’t need all of that detail. Let me put in some drops in your eyes. Wait 20 minutes and the doctor will be in to see you.”
Thank the goddess she was gone, I had twenty minutes of quiet bliss in a darkened room until the doctor came in, who asked me why I was there and then scolded me for not going to the emergency eye clinic. She said, “You know if this is a retinal detachment, I wouldn’t be able to help you. You would have lost valuable time. An eye surgeon needs to treat it immediately to prevent vision loss. In an effort to reassure my doctor (my first mistake) I said, well, when I went online and researched my symptoms on WedMD, it indicated I probably had a Posterior Vitreous Detachment commonly known as a PVD. Her chair-side demeanor changed immediately as she scolded me. “N-E-V-E-R self-diagnose using the internet!” She was visibly angry, like she caught the crankiness infection from her nurse. She began looking at my eyes and barked, “You’re not sufficiently dilated yet.” She put in more drops and left the room for another 20 minutes. I could breathe again. This was a brutal appointment.
After a thorough eye exam and a visible change in her demeanor, she began entering notes in my online file then turned back to look at me. In a soft, gentle voice, with down-turned eyes, as if she had just eaten a generous serving of humble pie, she said, “You have a Posterior Vitreous Detachment, commonly known as a PVD.” I fought back the urge to express my satisfaction with my accurate diagnosis. Instead, I asked, “What causes a PVD?” There was a long pause, and with a look of “gotcha” on her face, she said, “Old age!”