A Flu Shot For The Midterms

November 17, 2006 2006

I got the flu shot for the first time a few days ago. That was interesting experience, as I have a fear of needles. I had an old doctor who always wanted two things from me as a young child: a finger up my ass and a blood test. I told no one about the finger thing since he was a doctor (my mother wasn’t allowed in the examination room). We later found out he got a kickback from the testing lab that drew my blood when he suddenly retired to Florida. The test lab was later shut down during a criminal investigation by the police.

With free flu shots available at work, I went to the exercise room at the appointed time. I made an ass out of myself in front of a dozen coworkers with my fearfulness. Amused by the sight of a big guy jumping in and out line over getting a flu shot, they insisted that I cut to the head of the line.

The nurse told me to relax since I have such a big arm muscles that I wouldn’t feel a thing. I stared hard at the wall that had these diagrams on how to exercise the right way and the wrong way, trying to focus on anything. I smelled the pungent scent of alcohol and felt the burning sensation of the alcohol being applied to the skin of my upper left arm. Then the nurse said it was all over.

I didn’t feel a thing.

When I asked her if she was mistaken, she told me to leave. My coworkers were clapping as I left the room in a daze. The pain around the shot area didn’t kick in until later that night. The problem with taking the shot in the left arm is that I sleep on my left side. It was no fun taking my Finite Math midterm exam the following night with a sore arm and being sleep deprived. I got my flu shot and a “C” on the midterm.

Watching Nature On The Train

November 1, 2006 2006

My trip home from work got delayed at the Caltrain train station in Mountain View. The conductor was trying to get a pair of drunken college students off the train, as they came back from an afternoon baseball game in San Francisco. The train car reeked with the smell of alcohol that the air would catch on fire with a match. Unlike the conductors of yesteryear who would not hesitate to throw someone off a moving train, the conductor can only beg the couple into leaving the train.

The boyfriend was so plastered that returning to the living wasn’t a viable option for him. The girlfriend kept pulling his arms, slapping him in the face, doing a lap dance to arouse him back into mobility, cussing at the conductor for not helping her, and announcing to everyone that this wasn’t a normal day for them.

Unsuccessful in getting the couple off at the Mountain View station, the conductor signaled for the train to depart. When the woman tried to take her clothes off to revive her boyfriend with sex, she got into a huge shouting match with the conductor. Alas, the boyfriend was too far gone. The rest of us were enjoying the show as the girlfriend strip down to her black underwear.

As the train pulled into San Jose four minutes late, the station supervisor and a pair of cops were waiting. All the passengers except for the couple had to leave the train as this was the last stop. Unlike today’s train conductors, cops can arrest and manhandle passengers off a non-moving train.

Watching Someone Almost Get Splattered

October 27, 2006 2006

I got off the southbound light rail train on my way home from work, and walked over to the crosswalk to wait for the northbound train to leave the station, when I noticed this young woman with a cellphone to her ear walking towards the departing train. She was completely oblivious to her surroundings.

I remembered what the shuttle bus driver at the Caltrain train station in Mountain View told me earlier this year about a suicide he witnessed. He saw the guy jump in front of a speeding baby bullet train, got splattered into big meaty chunks and the woman standing nearby got splashed with blood from head to toe. The shuttle driver, being in the merchant marines for 40 years and seen far worse, wasn’t bothered from watching the police dump chunks of the guy into garbage bags.

The train horn blared in passing. The woman jumped backwards in little bunny hops, as the train rush past her by mere inches. She screamed into her cellphone that she almost got run over by a train. After the train left the station, she walked into the crosswalk against the light. While still talking on the cellphone, she almost got hit by a delivery truck but didn’t notice as she went on her way.