Strong Language and Stronger Language

It was in a diner at the roadside of a busy highway. A man was sitting quietly eating his lunch.

In the diner there also were three bikers of the tough type, Hell's Angels-patches and all. They were obviously looking for some "fun" and went up to the man having lunch in the diner.

One knocked over the man's cup of coffee. "Oops, bloody sorry about that he said", grinning. The man said nothing. One of the others stepped on his hat, that he had put down on the floor beside his chair. "Hell, hadn't seen that Bro" he said. "Awfully sorry". The third one stuffed out his cigarette in the dish the man was eating of. "Bleeding bloody hell, thought it was the fucking ashtray".

The man got up without saying a word and left the diner.

The three tough bikers went up to the counter. "What a moron! what a scaredy-cat!. The bloody fool didn't even try to stand up for himself. Didn't have the courage to speak up for himself. What an incompetent fool."

 

The man at the counter was looking out the window. "Yea!, and he can't even drive a truck", he said, "he just flattened three Harleys with his truck getting out from here."

The Bus Stop

He was visiting his grandmother on the maternal side. Didn't see her often. She was in a home now, in the big town, and his parents went to see her four or five times a year. It was a modern building with all the latest in equipment and apparatuses to help the care workers fulfil their tasks.

 

His grandmother had Alzheimer, and he wasn't sure, whether she recognised him or not. When he was a small child, her grandmother had looked after him a lot. Taught him songs and told him stories. He felt sad now. It was as if she was no longer the same Grandmother at all, but an altogether different person. There was no contact.

 

He started exploring the building. At the end of a corridor, much to his surprise, he found a bus stop. Not a real bus stop, of course, but the sign for at bus stop and a bench to sit on. He looked at it wondering what it was doing there.

 

A young nurse passed by and noticed his perplexed look.

 

Let  me explain you, young man, why we put it there. The old people here all have Alzheimer. They don't remember much anymore. But they are often restless and long for their old place and want to go home. They then tend to wander off looking for at bus stop or a train station, without actually knowing which place to go to or how to do it, and without knowing how to get back to this home.

 

Now they can go to this bus stop. They sit a while and wait for the bus, and then they forget why they are sitting there and go back to their room. It's much safer than if they go out into town.

 

He knew that his Grandmother was going to die soon. His mother had told him that someday soon she would not be there anymore. But if anybody would go to Heaven, it would be Granny, she had assured him.

 

So this was her last bus stop. He almost started crying. He hoped the bus would be late.

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NB! I actually heard about a home that has installed a fake bus stop.

NB! I just read a novel by Dimitri Verhulst. About an old man in a home. There is also a description of a fake bus stop. Very entertaining novel: De laatkomer. It is in Dutch, but I am sure it will be translated into English some day.

Does anyone know how the Playstation3 works?

Both Mrs. Chritensi and myself shed a tear yesterday.

Four kids all going away to universities - and in four different countries. The youngest one was the last to leave. It was sad to drop him and wave goodbye. Will he really be able to manage without us? Well, of course he will. We all had to go away from home at one time.

And think of all the fun, when they come home for holidays. Old friends and new friends visiting. And all the stories and knew knowledge they bring home from the different places. Life will be rich.

But the house is empty just now. I braved myself up to make a tour of their rooms. Their private domains where parents were not always welcome in later years. There are all the memories from their childhood and teenage years. Favourite Teddy Bears, school pictures and toy cars.

And in my boy's room there is the Playstation3. I never played with him at the Playstation3, as I thought he spent enough time at it without me. But now I'm tempted to have a go.

All I know is that you need some bottles of coke and some bags of chips. Is there some Parental Control that needs to be deactivated? Does anyone know how it works?

The Air is better in the City

Pete is no good with mechanics of any sort. Far from it. Not long ago he moved to a house outside the city. In real nice surroundings with fields and woods. And he bought himself a new fancy bicycle.

He noticed, however, that the back tyre was loosing air. He pumped it, although it took him some time to figure out how to do it as the valve was of a new type where you had to loosen part of the valve to get air into the inner tube. It kept loosing air, however, and he had to use the pump every day.

He decided that the tube must have been punctured and decided to have it repaired. There was a bicycle shop in the village, but he checked the price of a repair, and found that it was much more expensive than in the small repair shop in the city where he used to live.

 

He loaded the bicycle in the car and drove into the city. The guy in the repair shop checked the tyre and smiled. "You have to tighten the valve after pumping", he said, and showed him how to do it. "If not the tyre will loose air." He then pumped the tyre, and Pete drove the long way back to his new home in the countryside.

 

Me and my Uncle Jack visited him some days later, and he told us the story. Later the same day some other friends arrived to see the new house. Pete was showing us around, and the city friends were impressed with all the green stuff and the cows in the fields and the silence and all the rest. So much better than in the City.

 

Uncle Jack was listening. A smile came on his face. "But the air is better in the City", he said and told the story of Pete's bicycle and the trip to the repair shop.

Everyone was amused - except one.

Tentative Dosing of Sleeping Medicine

My grandfather, who was a well-respected man, had held several positions of confidence in the rural community where he had a small farm.

Once he served on the Tax Board. It was in a time when rules were more lax and records not strictly kept. He told me of a letter he once received from one of the big farmers in the community:

Dear Sir,

Lately I have not been sleeping well. I realise that it is due to bad consciense. I might occasionally not have informed you of all my income. I would like to make up for my faults and I therefore enclose a cheque of 5000 kroner.

Yours Faithfully.

NB! If I still have problems sleeping, I will send another cheque.

Fear of Failing

I keep having this recurrent nightmare in slightly different versions, and have for years and years:

 

I am going to sit an exam. I get up early in the morning, plenty of time to get to the examination hall in time. I need some milk for my breakfast and go to the shop in the next street to get some. I start walking back to my house. I take a shortcut through an alleyway. I recognise the tall building near my home, but the street I get out into do not look familiar. I walk and walk. Some features of the cityscape seem familiar, others not at all.

 

I run into one of my fellow students. She holds a book. "Did you study this well?", she asks, "I've been told that all this questions will be from the Chapter 5 in it". I look at the book in panic. I remember buying it and putting it in the shelf, but then forgetting all about it and never reading it. She laughs deridingly, and I realise that it is my former boss from years ago.

 

I keep on walking the streets, now realising that I just have to turn the corner to be home, only to discover that in fact I have to walk round a whole block to get there. The railway barrier is down and I wait and wait.

 

I suddenly realise that there is a series of lectures I should have followed but never managed to attend, however much I tried. I always arrived late for some obscure reason, or went to the wrong lecture hall.

 

I go in a front door of a house and get out the back door, thinking that I am in my own street, only to discover that I am in a completely unknown street. I discover the Amsterdam Central Station in the far and the Eiffel Tower in the background.

 

Finally I make it to the examination hall. A little late. Everybody look up, then starts laughing. I have forgot to put on my trousers.

 

Then, fortunately, I am saved by my brutal awaking.