Ep. 110 Retirement, College and A Retiring School Teacher’s Husband Brags. Also: How Many Morons Does it Take To Change a Light Bulb?

My guest has been on the show once before along with the senator and we refer to him as Templeton, as in form Charlotte’s Web. We’ve been besties since high school where we were both relatively scrawny, neither of us was on any sports teams but we hung out with a couple of the jocks.  We took a bunch of the same college classes together and always talked about our own business partnership firm being called “Wrong and Wronger” and then fill in the blank after that… wrong and wronger accounting firm, wrong and wronger legal consultants, wrong and wronger construction company, you get the idea… whatever we did we would kinda screw it up. His idol back in high school was Woody Allen.  Not the pervert Woody Allen, but the Woody Allen that brought us Annie Hall, Play It Again Sam, Manhattan, Sleeper, Bananas, Take The Money and Run.  Unfortunately today we can’t separate Woody Allen from his sickness, but his work in the 60’s 70’s and 80’s alone was incredible and that… for very understandable reasons is why Woody was my friend’s idol.  Here Woody in an interview from 1971…

 But what Templeton was always good at, and still is, he’s good at recruiting people into some kind of scheme, like in our 20’s we played a LOT of softball.  He would recruit a couple of ringers and then get us into a D-league where he would say, “guaranteed sweatshirt”, like that was something to covet… a D-league softball champions sweatshirt.  So he’s always been known to have some sort of scheme going, an angle or something (bite)

We’ve been roommates, At parties and night clubs we were always, always the wallflowers, and I got to be best man at his wedding.  His wife has been a teacher for over thirty years in the public school system… no easy feat.  She retired on Friday of last week and we talk about what it takes to be teacher, how highly our society values teachers… at least we say we do, it just isn’t reflected in their paychecks.

We also talk about our equally… well almost equal ineptitude at being handy around the house.  Usually he has the good sense to not even try whereas my ego sends me to Lowe’s three times in one day and half a day just to complete a task that a normal human would complete in an hour.  This time, however, Templeton has me beat and he shares his misfortune.

One of the main things Templeton is absolutely beloved for is in the way he butchers the english language.  I have several friends that do that including the senator…. But Templeton does it in a magical way that kept him with his business partner for over 30 years.  I don’t think he quite demonstrates it fully in this conversation, and if he does I don’t call him out on it, but his usual response is, “You know what I meant”.

As we start our conversation he is somehow under the impression that we are not recording yet and that at some point we are going to “go live”.  I don’t think any podcast is live, otherwise it would be a webcast wouldn’t it?

A husband brags about a retiring school teacher and how NOT to change lightbulb on The Modern Moron, and thanks for listening.

CLOSE - Congratulations on 34 years of teaching our little one’s.  Enjoy a great retirement. 

Before we part ways I want to keep trying to have a little segment called Moron Chaplaincy or maybe I have to set aside whole episodes for that, but I wanted to tell you about one very small, incident that I thought was going to be fairly routine but it wasn’t.  Maybe that’s one of the things I like about Chaplaincy in a hospital, sooner or later you get something unique, as long as your paying attention.  

So I’m making my rounds a few weeks ago and usually the door to the patients rooms are open so I can knock gently on the door and see if they’re up for a visit.  If the door is closed I figure one or both of the patients don’t want to be disturbed.  For some reason, I knocked on a closed door, opened it and walked into a room with one patient in it.  The patient was quite literally chained to his bed.  With a chain.  Not a strap or restraint, but a chain.  And sitting with the patient are two Highway patrol, or if you’re not in California a State Trooper.  One of them might have been a county Sheriff.  I’ve opened the door and stuck my head in and actually am halfway in the room.  So I said something to the effect of, “hey, what’s up?”  One of the officers stands up and turns to address me so I introduce myself, ‘hello, I’m Charlie the Chaplain or whatever, I didn’t say that.  But I did identify myself and the officer said it would be fine if I visited the “patient”.  So I cross the room, I pull up a chair, and I sit with this guy, a pretty good sized guy…

• Are you feeling any pain?
• Where are you from?
• Does your family know you’re here?

Not much of a conversation.  I asked him if it would  be alright if I prayed for him.  He said yes.  By the way I’m not big on prayer myself but if it’s for someone else and they value it, which some really do, I’m happy to do that.

 

As I was leaving that room and walking down the hall, I thought of that incredibly sad hospital room.  And it wasn’t just the patient chained to his own bed.  Were either of those two officers realizing their full potential sitting in that room all… day… long.  Staring and scrolling on their phone.  Is that what they imagined when they decided to get into law enforcement?  I doubt it.  I felt bad for everyone in that room.

What made me think of this is that today, I’m in one of the units, I’m walking down the all and I’m behind two law officers again.  You do see officers around a hospital, particularly the ER Department and the front desk perhaps but not usually IN the hospital.  So now I look past the two officers and I see a guy with gray hair, who I think is shuffling along because, that’s what patients do in hospitals who have just had surgery and many times they’ve got their IV stand they’re pushing along beside them.  This guy has all that and he’s shackled AND he’s got some contraption around his waist that looks like they’ve got big brick sized batteries on his sides.  AND, there’s another officer in front of him.  This could have been Hannibal Lecter Junior for all I know.  What gray haired man need three armed guards around him when he’s already shackled?  Jesus, I’m lucky I still have a face.

 

Music: "Lightless Dawn" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com); Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/