Fun with Polio! I can't really blame The Venerable Betty for having a character be afflicted with this. It must have constituted a great deal of her nursing career. How wonderful
then, to have it wither and dry up as an infectious disease. Great Aunt Polly contracted polio around 1963 which is a year following the patent of one of the two definitive polio vaccines. A (obviously infallible) wiki article states that "By 1961 only 161 cases were recorded in the United States". Think on that for a moment. So Great Aunt Polly must have been cursed with the same curse afflicting the van den Berg Eyffert/Rodman parents. Perhaps their ancestors were Egyptian tomb raiders?[Betty Debbie] I actually knew a lady who was just a few years older than me (I was born in 1959) who had had polio as a child. One of her arms was "withered". At one point one of George's co-workers gives her a piece of advice: "You need a husband, my girl. Who will he be? Tall, dark, rich and handsome, clever of course, and ready to buy all the tea in China." Of course, our Doctor Julius is not dark. So she should find another Doctor Julius who more fully fits the bill. Enter Basketball superhero Doctor Julius Erving--his skills at diagno
sing ruptured appendixes might be doubtful but would that even matter when stacked against a full-tilting slam dunk? I ask you.George at one point is caught with her head in a cupboard counting pillowcases. Betty Debbie brought up this point and asked, "When did you last count pillowcases?" as though such a thing were unthinkable. I agree that to do it at home is nothing less than madness. However, when I toiled my way through college at the University laundry, the best job I ever had was Inventory Mistress. A lot of taupe colored bedding was cataloged and counted under my eagle eye--until I met Mijneer Nathan van Voorhees and spent all of my time...um...making time in the linen rooms. Sounds a little risque...and possible disasterous to the pillow case count.
Beatrix, the youngest Van den Berg Eyffert is allowed to have dinner with the family instead of being shunted off to bed at 6:30 at night. Question: Is this a step forward or a regression in the evolution of Betty? (Disclaimer: Last night we had fluffy rice, copious amounts of which always make its way to the floor, and then the oldest van Voorhees upended his plate accidentally over the head of the second van Voorhees. Both took it calmly. It was only left to their parents, picking rice out of the long thick hair of the girl-child, to feel dismay.) Fortunately it was rice, not grits...the helpful ladies at school shouldn't mistake rice for lice...unlike The Sad tale of the Breakfast Grits in the Grade-Schooler's Hair.
As Doctor Julius is occasionally away in Holland, he must call home. Enter the "astronomical phone bill"...for 15 minutes of long distance from Holland. I am constantly on the phone with Betty Debbie to the point that I'm not sure I could load a dishwasher without dialing her (or another available Betty) up and kvetching about Cub Scouts or the blog or my kids or the blog or the curious twinge in my side or the blog... Betty Sherri and I were on the phone long distance when I was in labor with the youngest van der Stevejinck - she could tell by my voice when it was time to send me to the hospital. A few years later I returned the favor (by long-distance phone call) and advised her to go to the hospital...where she had an emergency appendectomy. I love cheap long distance. Love love love.
I must insist on hearing the sad tale of the breakfast grits in the grade schooler's hair.
ReplyDeletePhone calls from the UK to other countries used to be ruinously expensive, and now aren't. But I think British Telecom had the rates quite high for a long time.
ReplyDeleteI "wooed" my two Brit Hubs through transatlantic phone calls. The ones with Brit Hub 1.0 were often four hours long. Hey, my thinking was this: at that cost (say, $12, or was it $24?) it was still way cheaper than a date would have been. I don't think my phone calls with Brit Hub 2.0 were as long, but they were close to daily.
Cute story: As Brit Hub 1.0 and I got a lot more serious, I would wake up super early (5 a.m.) so that I could call him at his office. All phone calls at his firm went through the receptionist (Trisha), who would call down to Henry's office and tell him I was on the phone. Often he'd be at his secretary's desk, and would run back to his office. It was only after I showed up in person did I learn that this mad dash back to his desk involved a flight of stairs, and that it was well-known within his firm that you did NOT want to be standing in that stairwell when my call came through. (Brit Hub 1.0 is Betty Neels-worthy in the height department: 6'4".)
We even got engaged during a transatlantic phone call. We'd been talking on a Sunday about his coming to the US but there are limited legal ways of doing that, so after his efforts to get an H1(b) visa (the "work" visa) fell through, we discussed marriage. I was cool with the idea, but he wanted to sleep on it. So when I rang him the next morning, he said he'd woken up smiling, and then he proposed. (It was, I should explain, a huge step for him: he left his home, job and everyone he knew to marry me. All I had to do, really, was make room in the inadequate closet space.)
Greater love hath no man than that he leave closet space for more inadequate closet space for his friend...
ReplyDeleteMy mama had a mild case of polio as a young child. She was one of the lucky ones.
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