Stent or Stint: At the Heart of the Debate

   This first entry in my “Language Butchery” series is very near and dear to my heart, literally.

   In the summer of 2011 I failed a stress test and was sent to the hospital for further testing. As he probed my arteries in the cardiac catheter lab, the doctor found a 95% blockage in one of them, the proximal circumflex to be exact. After he did an angioplasty to remove the obstruction he inserted an expandable mesh tube in the same area to keep the artery open. That device is called a stent.

E? I? E? I? Oh!

   The doctors, nurses, and everyone else in the hospital pronounced it “st-EH-nt”. Yet, as I go among the stent-less public I find more and more people saying “st-IN-t”. A Google search of “stent or stint” brings up several results. That leads me to believe the confusion extends far beyond my circle of friends.

   With the possible exception of one who hails from the southeastern part of the United States, no patient has ever had a stint implanted in any artery.

   Anyone who uses the word stint when he’s talking about a stent, especially one who says it with an air of authority he doesn’t possess, is like nails on a chalkboard to me. I just want to smack him upside his head but I’m under doctor’s orders not to. In addition to all the other mandates he gave me about diet, exercise, and rest, he specifically wrote in bold letters, “DO NOT SMACK ANYONE UPSIDE THE HEAD.” I didn’t think he knew me that well; I’d met him just the day before. And before you think it, I did not smack him upside his head. My life was in his hands.

   Doctor’s orders against dope-slapping someone who truly deserves it provoke an existential conflict in me that tends to raise my stress to unacceptable levels. There are doctor’s orders against stress, too. No wonder I’m stressed.

   I’ve already described a stent. “Stint” is a verb meaning to be frugal or limiting, as in “Don’t stint on pronouncing stent properly.” It’s also a noun that means a period of time as in “He did his stint in the service.” As you can see, a stint has nothing to do with a device that keeps arteries open.

   For our purposes, we’ll go with the noun and offer the following to help everyone remember the difference between stent and stint: A stent in your artery will lengthen your stint on Earth.

   Please take this to heart. It will lower the stress levels of your stented friends and just might lower your chances of getting a smack upside the head.

(For more information on my experience getting the stent, please read my “Dodging a Bullet” series earlier in this blog.)

To see how a stent is implanted, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9498DF8TU4

To avoid needing a stent in the first place, check out the American Heart Association at http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/

   

Real Hope for the Cubs

   Long-suffering Cubs fans, there is a chance. Not Frank Chance, the only manager of 60 in team history, including their time as the White Stockings, to lead the Northsiders to a World Series title. This is a real chance they could win it all again, and soon. I have figured out the secret to grabbing the brass ring in Chicago sports. It’s simple, elegant, and as plain as the nose on your face.

   In the last thirty years our four other major sports teams have brought a combined ten championships to the Windy City and their head coaches have all had one thing in common.

The Winners

   Fiery, take-no-prisoners Mike Ditka led the Bears to their one and only Super Bowl win in 1986 and became a Chicago legend.

   In the nineties Phil Jackson led Michael Jordan and the Bulls to six NBA titles with his Zen-like calm and enigmatic style.

   Next up is Ozzie Guillen. Arrogant and foul-mouthed in two languages, he took the White Sox to a World Series championship in 2005.

   Finally, there’s Joel Quenneville, the intense, scowling, steely-eyed skipper of the Blackhawks. Forty-nine years after the Hawks last won the Stanley Cup, he hoisted it in 2010 and did it again three years later.

The Reason

   So what do these diverse leaders have in common? What binding element has taken them to the pantheon of Chicago sports history?  As I said earlier, it’s as plain as the nose on your face, only a little lower. It’s the mustache.

   Granted, Ozzie Guillen wore a goatee, part of which is a mustache, so we could say any type of hair on the upper lip is the secret. Or could we?

   Dusty Baker led the Cubs tantalizingly close to the series in 2003 with that thing he sported under his nose. It just wasn’t enough. If there’s a standard length or hair count that qualifies a growth on the upper lip as a bona fide, genuine mustache, he didn’t meet it, and the Cubs’ glorious chance tragically evaporated in the League Championship Series.

   Ditka, Jackson, and Quenneville have manly, luxuriant mustaches and their records speak for themselves.

   The last Cubs manager to wear a mustache was Don Baylor from 2000-2002. He wasn’t here long enough for the mustache magic to work but it’s possible the residual effect is what brought the Cubs so close in 2003. Prior to that it was the immortal Frank Selee who, with his glorious handlebar, led the team from 1902-1905. It could be that his mustache effect carried over to Frank Chance and led him to his victories.

   So listen up, Joe Maddon. As the 60^th manager in Cubs history it’s all up to you. If you want to lead the Cubs to World Series glory, you know what you have to do. Keep the razor away from your upper lip and let that hair grow. It doesn’t matter if it’s a walrus ‘stache or a cookie duster. Just grow a real mustache during the 2015 season and a World Series championship will at long last make it back to the North Side. Then you, too, will be enshrined in the temple of Windy City sports legends.

My Worst Writing Nightmare Come True

After finishing a talk about my last (OK, only) book at a local park district, I autographed a copy for a woman from the audience. She shook her head as she walked away. During the rest of the signings (both of them) I glanced up occasionally to see her staring intently at my inscription, shaking her head even more. When the last copy was signed, she stormed back to the table and said, “Mr. Riley, your handwriting is atrocious.”

   Instantly, I was drawn back to Sister Marcos’s class in fifth grade. She had told me exactly the same thing except she didn’t call me mister. The good sister, right then and there, made it her personal quest to single-handedly turn my chicken scratches into elegant script.

@#$% You, Austin Palmer

   Her chosen form of torture was the Palmer Method. Developed by one Austin Palmer, his method was used from the 1880's to the 1950's in an effort to force every schoolchild in America to turn out script like Thomas Jefferson’s. If only I’d been born a few years later I’d have been spared this torment. By the next day, Sister Marcos had rummaged through the school’s attic and presented me with a writing workbook that looked like it hadn’t seen the light of day since Hoover was President. It would be my ball and chain until the end of the semester.

   I was subjected to staying after school making countless loops, wearing pencil after pencil down to the nubbins, and wasting reams of specially-lined yellow paper (both sides) in a futile attempt to make the perfect loop. I actually got pretty good at it but it was nothing like the unattainable flawlessness displayed in the workbook.

   Tens of thousands of loops later, I could make excellent loops but my penmanship still looked like the product of a deranged chicken with a pencil for a beak. The beatings the good sister inflicted upon my hand with a ruler (on edge) didn’t seem to help either. In fact, I think they permanently consigned my cursive to that of a ten-year old.

   The word “cursive” as it applies to handwriting probably comes directly from those of us held prisoner with Mr. Palmer as our cellmate while our friends happily went home. Even with the obligatory Catholic school crucifix hanging over my head, I cursed him with every loop.

   Yes, I agree with the woman and Sister Marcos. My handwriting is indeed atrocious.

Analyze This

   Then the woman said, “I’m a handwriting analyst and…” Oh God, I didn’t want to hear the rest. I knew this day would come and what it would bring. After all, more than half of analyst is “anal.” It almost made me long for another round with Sr. Marcos’ ruler.

   “…your loops, look at them,” she said as she thrust the inside cover page inches from my face, bringing me back from my fifth-grade reverie. “The L and the E slant in different directions. That tells me you’re a slovenly person.”

   Slovenly? There’s a word I hadn’t heard since grade school. I thought only nuns used it. Of course I’m slovenly. I’m a writer. I work in my pajamas or a ratty bathrobe. I go days without shaving. My office is a spare bedroom strewn with books and paper. I submit all my work via email. I never see an editor and rarely leave the house. If I’m straightening my office, shaving, showering, or washing what’s left of my hair, I’m not churning out scintillating pages of brilliant prose, like this one.

   “The tittles over your i’s,” she continued, seemingly without taking a breath, “they’re not directly above the letter. You care nothing about symmetry.”

   Lord, have mercy. My tittles aren’t symmetrical. My dots probably aren’t either. Look, I’m not designing an airplane or erecting a building. I take ideas and turn them into ones and zeroes in my computer which, I hope, will turn into ones and zeroes in my checking account. Symmetry, schmimmetry. I put words on paper, straight left side, ragged right. You want symmetry? Go find an architect.

   Then she went on about the J in my first name, “You’re too loopy…”

    I’m too loopy?

   “…and the Y in your last name. The bottom loop isn’t complete. You have problems finishing what you start.”

   Listen, lady, I’m finished with this conversation and I’m starting to hate you. Try this crap on Steven King. I’m sure he’ll love it, and so will his security people.

  When she started on the sexual ramifications of poor penmanship, I wanted to tell her about the sexual ramifications of being a nit-picking old harridan. Then I got to thinking sexual ramifications might be the least of her worries. The giveaway was her attending an evening event like this all by herself. I wondered if maybe she had a cat or seventeen waiting at home.

   I packed up my gear and never did another book signing. But in the back of my mind I couldn’t help thinking about just what the sexual ramifications of poor penmanship might be.

   Now where did I put that Palmer Method workbook?

    

New Dealer Coming In

   As I was leaving work last Friday, I got a text message that my cousin Jim had passed away. We all knew it was coming–he had stage IV lung cancer from a lifetime of smoking unfiltered cigarettes–but that the end came as fast as it did was still a shock.

   Facebook messaging got a real workout that night as cousins far and wide remembered him fondly, especially for his jokes. He had a joke for every situation and if he didn’t, he told one from his vast repertoire anyway. Every one of his jokes began the same way, “That’s just like...” even if it was nothing remotely like what you were just talking about.

   But there was something else in those messages that led me to an epiphany about my relatives.

   Any occasion for this family can involve a poker game. Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, Christenings, Communions, Confirmations, even weddings and wakes, it doesn’t matter, somehow a poker game will break out as long as they find a flat surface and a few empty chairs. It’s just a friendly game, nickel and dime mostly, with plenty of good-natured conversation mixed in.

   That’s the way it is now. When my Dad was alive, poker, even penny-ante, was serious stuff. Before dessert was served, he’d start getting antsy. If people weren’t eating fast enough he’d start clearing the table himself. Those who weren’t playing cards were summarily banished to other rooms to finish their pumpkin pie and coffee. 

   Before each hand he’d survey the table and yell, “Who’s light?” That had nothing to do with the weight of the players after the sumptuous meal they’d just enjoyed. It meant that the pot was a nickel short and the dealing wouldn’t start until everyone had fed the kitty. When his mind went bad and he had no clue who was at the table, he still knew instantly if the pot was short.

   Despite the old man’s autocratic rule, there was always a demand for the seven seats available. They usually went to the older generation first, then down to my older cousins, and eventually to me and beyond. Many of us kids and now our grandchildren have been taught the finer points of five-card stud and seven-card merry widow at the hands of their elders while having their piggy banks and pockets quickly drained at the same time.

   So how does all this talk of playing with the Devil’s pasteboards lead to an epiphany? In addition to Jim’s jokes, mention was made of his legendary prowess at the poker table. That’s when it hit me.

   It’s often said that a person near death hears the flapping of angels’ wings. Not so in my family. What they hear is the shuffling of cards as room for one more is made at the celestial table. Jesus compared heaven to an eternal banquet. To my ancestors it’s an on-going game of no-peek baseball in a quiet corner of heaven’s basement.

   Farewell, Jim, and don’t forget to feed that kitty.

   

Lessons Learned

   It’s been a year since Jim married Bridget. In a very short time, my son who I thought would never make the transition from bachelor to husband, found a nice girl and became a step-father to her two children, Tyler and Samantha. Tyler, age twelve, has a mind like a computer. He plans everything he says and does with NASA-like precision. This quality may make him seem like a nerd at his tender age but it will take him far when he decides to marry.

   Shortly after their wedding, Jim and Bridget were invited to a party close to where they live. It was adults only and my daughter who lives a few miles away offered to take the kids for the night. As they were getting into the car, Jim observed, “You know, if we didn’t have to drop off the kids, we could just walk to the party.” To any man, this is a harmless logistical statement of fact. If he’d said it to another man, the response would be, “Duh.” What Jim didn’t realize was that he’d just verbally left solid ground and stepped onto a metaphorical straw mat covering a hole filled with sharpened punji sticks.  

   Bridget exploded. “Maybe we should just get rid of the kids,” she screamed.

   They never went to the party.

   My son, who’d lived alone or with male roommates for most of the prior ten years, and could fearlessly say anything he wanted without thought of contradiction or retribution, was unschooled in the nuances of talking to women—especially one he was married to. The lessons began that night.

   It’s been my personal observation and that of my married friends, when our wives aren’t around, that something changes when a woman marries. That sweet fun-loving girl becomes a ruthless, calculating, cold-hearted linguistic sentinel on the lookout for something sinister in anything her husband might have the temerity to utter. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism, but a woman parses everything her man says seeking any subtlety in tone or phrase that might be a knock against her.

   For example, he says, “You look nice today.”

   Instantly she thinks, “Is he saying I looked bad yesterday?” Then she lets him have it.

   He learns to drop any qualifying words that might be taken the wrong way. “Safety First” becomes the rule for saying anything to her.

   I learned a different lesson early on. The wife asked one day if I would like steak or chicken for supper. When I responded in favor of steak, she asked why I didn’t like her chicken. I tried to explain that there was nothing wrong with her chicken, I just preferred steak on that particular night. She countered by telling me she’d already made chicken anyway. Things escalated when I asked her why she’d given me a choice when she’d made my decision for me. After a brief discussion that brought the neighbors to their windows, we ate our chicken in icy stillness. That was the night I learned to embrace the silent treatment.

   Since my son and I work together, we discuss these issues a lot. I’ve explained to him that he must think before he speaks. He must look for anything in his upcoming utterance that could be used against him in the court of marital bliss where he stands accused and she is judge, jury, and executioner. When in doubt, I say, grunts and monosyllables are as safe as can be. However, there are times when questions must be answered and he must be cautious to a fault to avoid saying something that might be turned around to bite him in the ass.

    That being said, there is a question that every married man should never, ever, answer. No, it’s not the “do I look fat in this?” query. My thinking is that if she thinks she looks fat in something, she probably does. “Uh-uh” is always a safe bet here. The unanswerable question is, “If I died, would you remarry?” These six simple words are a trap. There is no correct answer.

    If you answer in the negative, she’ll get all upset and claim you hated being married to her. If you say you would get married again, she’ll ask, “Who is she?”

   I took a solemn oath from my father that he took from his father and so on back into the antiquity of husbanddom. I swore that I would avoid that question at all costs. I have passed the oath on to my son but it will probably end with him. Tyler, I’m sure, is already working on the answer. 

The Ugly Fork

    I was making room in the basement for some work to be done and came across several boxes long forgotten in a remote abscess under the stairs by the furnace. There was no time to check their contents. The mission was to get them out of the way as quickly as possible since the workers were coming early the next morning. As I took one box from the shadowy corner, the top flipped open to reveal a mismatched collection of flatware that I hadn’t thought about in years. Right on top was The Ugly Fork. As I stopped my labors momentarily to behold this family relic, a flood of mealtime memories came back.
   We didn’t have much when we started out, my wife and I. Except for a brand new bedroom set purchased from our wedding cash and checks, most of our furniture was scrounged from garage sales and my college dorm room. I got the stuff even my roommate didn’t want, including a pole lamp and a beer-stained swivel chair. Our TV was a 21-inch black and white Admiral with a tilted picture tube that we bought for twenty-five bucks from a friend of a friend. Meals were served on a hodge-podge of plates, glasses, and the aforesaid flatware.
   Shortly after we bought our first house, the local Mobil station at 159th and Pulaski began offering free flatware with a fill-up. To fill my ‘69 Camaro back then cost a whole four bucks and those twelve gallons of gas came with my choice of a knife, fork, or spoon. With enough gas purchases, we’d eventually have a set of matching flatware. Even though I’d built a rapport with the attendant and he’d throw me an extra piece every now and then, getting the complete set was going to take a while.
   It really wasn’t all that ugly. It just was not your high-quality flatware. The business ends were some kind of shiny metal shoved into handles made from wood or a wood substitute. Still, they worked and somewhere in the hopefully not-to-distant future we’d be able to lay our table with a matching set. Until that day we’d have to contend with daily dinnertime discord between our children.
   Even at a young age our daughters, born twenty-seven months apart, were very competitive. The older one was upset that her reign as the firstborn of a new generation had been infringed upon by this interloper with whom she had to share a bedroom. The younger one was born with an innate ability to push people’s buttons that she’s kept to adulthood.
   At every meal the first thing they would do was check their utensils. The younger one, if she happened to be dealt one of the good forks in shiny solid metal with a fancy filagree and her sister didn’t, would exclaim, “I got a pretty fork.”
   Of course, this caused an outburst from the older one. She cried that she wouldn’t eat a bite from an ugly fork and pouted until she got a pretty one. This went on despite my insistence that the food on the utensil was more important than the utensil itself. This argument had no effect on a four-year-old. We had to get her a “pretty” fork or else she wouldn’t eat.
   Our sons who came later, on the other hand, would use any means to get food to their faces no matter how pretty or ugly it was.
   Since parenting is a learn as you go activity I eventually figured out that the way to put an end to the fork conflict, as it came to be known, was to replace my younger girl’s pretty fork with an ugly one. They both used their ugly forks in sullen silence but at least no one was crying–not about a stupid fork anyway.
   Eventually we got a good set of matching flatware but the freebies from Mobil still had a spot in one of our kitchen drawers. As time went by they fell apart as whatever force that was holding them together gave out, or the faux wood handles cracked and broke. Still, that one ugly fork remains.
   Next time we’re all together for a meal I’ll see that one or the other daughter gets it and see what happens. The ability to push people’s buttons is one trait my younger daughter inherited from me.
 
 

A Leap Year Geo Quest

   Note to my non-geocaching friends:  for an explanation of geocaching, click here .  

   Glancing at my geocaching.com statistics page late last year I saw above my twelve-month grid that I had logged caches on 244 days of the year. I thought that was pretty good until I realized that I’d not logged anything on 122 days. That’s exactly one third of the year. Since this is a leap year, only the second in the eight years I’ve been caching, I figured this was a perfect time to get rid of all those zeroes and show at least one cache logged for each day of the year.

   It’s September now and I’m three-quarters through the quest. I needed only one for this month and that was on the 9^th so I thought I’d sit down and write about how it’s going before next month’s quest days roll around.

   It didn’t start out well. New Year’s Day was a Sunday and I’d slated my first quest find for the trip home from church. Maybe it was the fact that I was in my church duds and didn’t want to get dirty or that the wife was waiting in the car, my first quest cache was logged as a DNF (did not find). Fortunately, I’d programmed a backup hide and got it on the way to my daughter’s New Year’s Day gathering. The quest had officially begun--1 down, 121 to go.

   My dictionary defines a quest as an adventurous journey in search of some thing or goal. My goal is to remove a bunch of zeroes from a grid on the Internet. In that regard, it’s definitely a quest. The jury’s still out on the “adventurous” part. While I tried to seek caches hidden in the woods such as my eight-find hike through the Milestone Cache Corner in the Cook County Forest Preserves on Leap Year Day, many finds were PNG’s (Park n' Grab, easy hides in parking lots). It was brutally hot this summer and the thought of traipsing through the woods soaked in sweat and DEET didn’t appeal to me. Now that autumn is here in northeastern Illinois and the weather’s cooled, I’ll head back into the woods for more adventure.

   How’s it going? So far, so good. I’ve logged finds on the first 84 of the quest days with 38 left to go. Now it gets interesting. The months of October and December are very busy for me. Most days I leave for work just after sunrise and head back way after dark. There are no days off, either. I’ve set aside a good number of PNG’s for those days. Will they be enough? I’ll let you know in January.