Hello?

I have told you before about my beloved high school. It looks like a castle and sits at the top of a hill. As a matter of fact it is known as The Castle On The Hill. The students were the Lords and Ladies of the castle.

I will not describe the school more than I need to here because I have done that before. And you can do a web search if you are really curious.

There were a lot of 'jobs' that needed to be done. Some did not require a full time employee and there was no money in the budget for them.

 Some offices accepted student volunteers to spend a free hour each day to assist the person in the office. They might run errands to the supply area to replenish for the office. Or maybe do some filing. Or maybe even help grade papers.

There were other jobs too.  All were voluntary and it was considered to be an honor to help the school.

A job that I had was switchboard operator. 

There were a lot of offices that used telephones. When a caller needed to speak to someone specific the operator connected them.

There was one phone number to call the school. The calls had to be routed to the correct phone.

You may have seen the switchboard in old movies. The is a board with holes in it mounted on the wall. On the table in front of the board was a series of connecting wires. Only the connectors were visible. 

The operator wore those old-fashioned headphones. When the phone rang the operator would pull up one of the connecting wires and plug it in to a receiving hole at the bottom of the board.

"Central High School. How may I direct your call?" That is how I would answer. 

Once in a while the caller would have question I could answer like what school were we playing against in football. Usually there was an adult in an office they wished to speak to. 

Then I would pull out the cable of the matching color, plug it into the hole belonging to that office. I pushed a little button in front of me to ring the phone in that office. 

When their call was ended the lights for their colored wire would go out. I would remove them from their holes and they would rewind into their places on the table. 

There were maybe 15 or 20 sets of wires. I seldom used them all. It was fun to be an operator for an hour each day.

Secrets

 I hate secrets. Not secrets about things like a surprise party or Christmas gifts. I am talking about secrets that can affect important things.

I was raised in a time when parents protected their children from anything bad. It is understandable. I tried to protect my children too. However some things need to be known.

When my children were small I wrote letters to grandparents letting them know. how the kids were doing. Most of the time the news was good... learning to walk, getting good grades in school, playing in little league, learning a new dance in dance class. Grandparents deserve to know all those things.

Not all the news was great. Sometimes the kids got the flu. Bones were broken. Cuts needed stitches. Tonsils needed removing. Grandparents deserve to know that.

My oldest son began to talk very early. I wrote to his grandmother and told her all the things he could say. When she came to visit she heard him and said, "My God Emma that kid can talk!"

My youngest son was still in diapers. We lived on a short street with no traffic so the children often played by the side of the road. My son kept bending over and biting into the road and eating the dirt. I thought it was funny until I noticed that his little legs were bowing. A visit to the doctor told us he had rickets. Vitamins fixed him right up.

Those are things grandparents deserve to know.

I had been married for a few months. I had the day off work so I went to visit my family. I visited with my parents for a while. Mom was sewing as we talked. 

I asked if my sister was upstairs. I would go up to see her. It was suddenly abnormally quiet. I asked again. Nothing. I asked more forcefully. and became worried. Still nothing. 

I aggressively planted my feet and aggressively told them I wanted to know where my sister was. Without looking up from her sewing my mother said, "You don't need to know."

I will admit that my sister was a wild child. A picture of her buried under the back porch flashed through my mind. 

Instead I firmly said," Oh yes I do need to know. She is my sister."

They relented and told me my sister was in a home for unwed mothers. No one was going to tell me! I think they thought I would not notice.

I thought my brothers and other sister knew. None of them knew until the precious little girl my sister gave up for adoption found us 20 years later. That is except for my children. I do not keep secrets from them.

Medical conditions are useful to know. Heart conditions, diabetes, cancer, epilepsy, eating disorders, and any other condition you can think of are important for many reasons. Family members need to be able to tell a doctor what things to watch for. Family members need to be able to understand what you need if there is a problem.

As I said I hate secrets. There are things family members have the right to know and a person has no right to make it a secret.

Where Were You?

Like most of the country at the time I remember where I was when I learned that President Kennedy was shot and killed. I was in high school.

I had a 'split' 2nd year algebra class. One part of the class was before lunch. The other was right after lunch.

As we were filing out of class for lunch we saw other students in the hall crying. President Kennedy was dead. School was cancelled.

I had just come home from work. I was in bed watching the morning news before sleeping. A manned flight into space was being launched.

 Seven astronauts were on board. I watched in horror as it exploded. All seven astronauts died.

Once again I had just come home from work. I dropped my sister off at her house and went home. I was watching the morning news before getting some much needed sleep.

A plane had crashed into a tower of the World Trade center in New York. I was watching with shock as the news reported it.

Suddenly another plane could be seen flying toward the other tower. Reportedly a plane had slammed inro the pentagon and another was flying toward Washington DC.

I watched as the second plane disappeared into to second World Trade Center building. I could not believe my eyes.

I called my sister. I asked her if she was watching the news. She was not. I told her someone had just declared war on the United States.

Where were you? Are there any world changing events that you still carry with you?

4 H

Head, Heart, Health, Hands. 4H is a club for young people.

Most folks think that is a group that raises animals to show at state fairs. And some do.

They raise calves, pigs, chickens... all sorts of pampered animals. I say pampered because they are fed the best food and they are kept really clean. 

Most animals do not get this kind of attention. These animals are raised to be judged and usually sold for slaughter.

I was a member of 4 H. Our club did not raise animals. Too expensive and most of us did not have the space to devote to one animal.

We raised vegetables and cooked. It was fun to get together with my friends every week.

And we elected officers. The only office I remember was mine. I was the club reporter.

Every week I wrote an article about what we did. It was a small town but we had a weekly newspaper.

I would write my little article and submit it before the deadline. I saw my little article with my byline published every week. What fun.

THE DIVINE MALADY

 

This is a re-post of something I wrote a few years ago. It needs to be seen every once in a while. Please read it all. It might come in handy someday.

When I was 16 I took a summer job babysitting. It was a family of 5 children. They lived in a trailer park on a lake. Their trailer was a very large nice home.

They had four boys and one daughter. I would sleep in the same room as the daughter because I would stay there all week. On weekends I would go home.

Both parents worked so they needed someone who could take care of the children, do light housework, and cook at least two meals each day. No problem. Remember I have six younger brothers and sisters.

The children also had an aunt and uncle only a few trailers away. The aunt was only a few years older than I. I was asked to never leave the children alone with her because she had epilepsy. She had been in a car accident and there was a bruise on her brain that caused seizures.

She was a very nice person and we got along very well. She would come down a couple of times a week just to visit while her husband was at work.

One day she had a seizure. She was just sitting and quietly watching television when she began to act strangely. She yelped a couple of times and slapped her leg repeatedly. It took me a few beats to realize what was happening but I had no idea what to do for her.

I had promised the children I would make Johnny cake for breakfast one day. What I call Johnny cake is just hot cornbread with sugar and milk poured over it. It is delicious if you want to try it. So one Monday morning I got up early to start baking.

I did not know that the parents had broiled steaks the evening before. They decided to leave the oily aluminum foil on the broiler and clean it after work Monday.

I lit the oven and started making cornbread batter. The oldest son of the family came in rubbing his eyes and trying to wake up. As we were talking we saw the flames flare up from the broiler.

I am good in a crisis so I was going to go out and turn off the fuel tank. When I got to the door I suddenly felt myself turning to the left and spinning uncontrollably.

Then I was waking up on the couch with the mother of the family hovering over me and the children looking so frightened. She wanted to know if I was okay. I felt fine. Maybe just a little sleepy.

The oldest son had the good sense to run outside and turn off the fuel. Then he ran down and had his aunt come up. She called the mother who came right home. It was about a 45 minute drive.

The mother decided to take some time off work so I could go home. My parents had me rest and stay calm even though I felt fine. After one week I went back to take care of the children again.

I was there for about a week and a half. I was up before the children once again. As I moved through the living room toward their rooms to wake them up I turned and saw myself walking slightly behind and to the left of myself!

Once more I woke up to see the mother there as I was lying on the couch. This time my mother was with her. I was still so scared from what I had seen. The mother of the children of course needed someone who was not passing out all the time. She had made arrangements for a friend of mine to finish out the summer. That was fine with me. I wanted my mommy.

Mom took me home and we were relaxing again. That same day I passed the television as I was walking to a chair. Mom was in her bedroom folding clothes.

There was some sort of art program on television. The program was flashing from one painting to another and the lights changed with each painting.

I felt dizzy and was able to sit down. Then I felt myself reach up and tear the whole left side of my face, jawbone, teeth, and all, completely off. Then I felt that same hand reach down and rip the muscle from the top of my left leg. Of course that did not happen. I passed out.

Mom said she heard a funny noise and came into the living room to see me sitting in a chair with everything on my body trying to fold into itself. I am not a limber person. She said my hands were sort of palm up with my fingers almost touching my wrists.

I went immediately to the doctor. I do not remember much about the doctor visit. He admitted me to the hospital.

I had never been in the hospital before. I thought it was kind of cool to be served my food in bed. I did not like the testing they did as most of it involved drawing blood.

The second or third day I was there (I do not remember how long my stay was) I was lying there and I began to think about epilepsy. I remembered hearing my grandmother talk about two sisters in town who had "fits". That and the aunt of the children I had taken care of was the limit of what I knew on the subject.

My parents came in that morning and stood at the foot of my bed. They told me that the doctor thought I might have epilepsy. I said, "I thought that might be what it was."

When I got the chance I asked the doctor what this would mean for me having children. He said not to worry about it. But I did worry about it. So he assured me that the chances of my children having seizures was not even 1 in a million.

I was put on the medications that they used to treat seizures at that time. Now I am not a medicine taker. Two aspirin will knock me out. The medicine that I was taking made me so sleepy all the time. I do not know how I got through my senior year of high school that year. And with my A average to boot.

I have grand mal seizures (now called something else). Those are convulsive seizures. They are extremely painful. Each one a person has is a bit worse than the one before until they can be so bad that a person can die from a seizure. In fact I have almost died three times. I feel very fortunate to be here.

I am also very fortunate that I am very well controlled with medication. It has been so many years since I had a seizure that I cannot remember when the last one was.

I am still taking the original medications that the original doctor prescribed. One of them is a controlled substance. After sixty years I am physically addicted to it. That means without it I will go into withdrawal and the classic symptoms that accompany withdrawal. It does not mean I am constantly craving more. I just need it to live.

A dear friend of mine was on the city council of the big city we lived in. She was on President Carter's epilepsy commission. She asked me to go through the information she had and give her a synopsis. No problem. Until I saw the research. It was five books. Each one was about four inches thick except the last one. It was about three inches.

What I read was a real eye-opener for me. While epilepsy, like many other maladies, is not inherited the predisposition is inherited. That means that my children might have a weakness that they inherited from me that would make them more disposed to having seizures.

Also they used an example of a parent with four children (I have four children). If one child has seizures the likelihood of another having seizures multiplies (not adds up, multiplies). If three children have seizures the fourth will have seizures.

I learned that an uncle of mine had epilepsy. He died before my father was born. He was in a home for juvenile delinquents. My father always thought his brother was "bad" because that was better than being "defective".

My mother suffered terribly from migraine headaches. They are a first cousin to epilepsy. Many of the workings of the brain are the same in both.

Two of my sons had migraines when they were about 8 years old. Testing showed some brain activity but I would not allow them to be put on medication until there could be a definite diagnosis. Neither has had any further problems. My daughter is fine. I recently discovered that my other son has been having petit mal (small) seizures for about 7 years. He did not want to worry me so he kept it to himself.

Two of my grandchildren have migraine headaches. So does their mother, my daughter-in-law. Two of my grandchildren have had seizures. One was placed on medication for a year. The seizures stopped and the medication was also stopped. He has been fine for about 20 years now.

If any one needs to know anything about seizures feel free to ask. I am almost an expert. And if I am not certain I have the right answer I can probably guide you to the place to find it. In the meantime I am going to tell you what steps to take if you are with someone having a seizure.

1. If they are upright, lower them safely to a lying position. That will help keep them from injuring themselves in a fall.

2. NEVER, EVER, EVER, try to force anything into their mouth. Fingers have been bitten off. Tableware and wooden sticks are either broken or cause damage to teeth.

3. The human tongue is a muscle. It sits in a particular spot in the body. It is physically impossible to swallow your tongue. However the tongue like any muscle can fall to the back of the mouth and block the air passages. Gently position the person on their side. That way the tongue falls to the side instead of the back of the mouth.

4. If the seizure lasts for more than three minutes or if there are repeat seizures call for medical help immediately.

5. When the seizure is over often the person will lose consciousness or maybe just be confused. When they awaken the body and brain are busy trying to re-establish connections. They have no time to answer questions like "Do you know me?" Leave that for professionals. Simply say, "hi, (insert name, it is important). I am (insert name, it is important). You just had a seizure. You are safe and I am right here. Everyone is taken care of. You need to rest so go to sleep. I will be here when you wake up." If an ambulance is on the way or the doctor is on the way let them know that too. That way they can let their body heal itself without wondering what is going on.

In the beginning  I was up and full of energy after a seizure within a couple of hours. As time went on it took me at least two full days to be able to even get out of bed and stand on firm feet. Each person is different.

Epilepsy is nothing to be ashamed of. No more than diabetes, heart disease, or asthma. If you were ever to see the list of famous people and world leaders throughout history who had seizures you would be amazed.

It is called the divine malady because Julius Caesar had seizures. He explained that his soul was leaving his body to commune with the gods.

But it must be treated. By a doctor who knows what he is doing. Not many do. Most of the "maladies" are only mentioned in medical school in passing. I hope I have enlightened you a bit. I hope you never need the information. But if you are confronted with a situation you now know what you can do.

Top O' The Morning

 Actually it was the middle of the evening. My son and I had been to a town hall meeting earlier. Now we were relaxing and watching television.

There was a knock at the door. My son answered it.

The neighbor from across the street was there. He had something in his hand.

He said he was not sure if we were Irish or not. According to DNA testing I have a small amount of Irish ancestry. My children are much more Irish than I am. Because their father was largely Irish we have an Irish last name. So the answer is we are.

The neighbor held out a container. He hoped we would enjoy it.

The container held a meal of corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, and carrots. My son does not like corned beef and he cannot eat potatoes. On the other hand I love them all and seldom make things like that because I would be the only one eating it.

I had two lovely meals from that wonderful container. It was a delightful and neighborly gesture. I will end with my favorite Irish blessing.

May those who love us, love us. 

And those that don't love us, 

May God turn their hearts.

And if He doesn't turn their hearts, 

May he turn their ankles, 

So we'll know them by their limping. 

The Hidden Key

I had what I consider to be a wonderful childhood. We either lived on a farm or in small towns. That meant we had a lot of freedom to run, play, and explore.

We were normal children. We were loud and occasionally did things we were not supposed to do. And like any children we could be annoying.

We were living in a small town. The school was one block away and across the train tracks. The stores were about three blocks away. Church was on the next corner. 

Our neighbor next door was a grouchy man. I do not know if he had family. I was too young to care and no one ever visited him.

All I knew was that he was always yelling at us to be quiet. Stay off his grass!

One afternoon we saw him get in his car and drive away. We became evil.

I am the oldest so it was probably my idea. He kept his house key under the mat at his front door. We ran over and got the key.

We ran to the edge of his well-manicured lawn and placed the key on the ground. We pulled a few handfuls of grass to put over it. That way we could find it later to tease him with.

Later in the afternoon we woke up from a nap to the sound of the neighbor mowing his lawn! 

When he finished he made a beeline to our house. He was furious that his house key was gone. He just knew we did it and he wanted it back.

We dutifully went to the side of his lawn to get it for him. We could not find it. The clump of grass had been removed by the lawn mower.

My parents told us to keep looking for the key. I remember that it was starting to get dark. We still had not found it. As a matter of fact we never did.