Radioactive Dominatrix

            On Thursday morning my knee only bothered me when I was getting up because I tend to go on my right knee before I stand. The knee wasn't a problem during yoga because none of the positions put weight exactly on the wound.

The elbow was a little more problematic. I found it hurt a bit when I stretched my arm above my head. Most of the poses didn’t bother it, but the resting positions did. Just lying on my back with my arm at the side was painful or lying on my stomach with my arms folded and resting on the floor presses the wound down into the floor. I had no problem using my arms to prop myself into the shoulder stand, but getting myself into the position was a bit difficult. The worst was getting into the fish pose because I have to lean back on my elbows in order to bend my upper body back from a sitting position in order to put the top of my head on the floor, so I found myself shifting a bit to the left just to get into position. Once I was in the fish the weight was on my head so it didn’t bother my elbow again until I came out of the pose by lifting myself back up on my elbows and had to shift my weight to the left again.

I was worried that during guitar practice my elbow injury would affect my playing but it didn’t. I actually had a pretty good practice and my guitar stayed in tune better than usual.

My elbow did sting a lot, looked worse than the day before and though I had most of my flexibility it was limited in that I could not touch my right hand to my right shoulder like I could on the left. Though I was determined that later that day I would go right back into my long bike ride, I decided that the smartest thing to do would be to talk to my doctor to see if I’d cracked my elbow in the accident. I made an appointment for 14:30 that afternoon.

I was at the Bloor Medical Clinic about fifteen minutes early, but had to wait about 45 minutes anyway.

I sat and read a page of Balzac’s "The Atheist's Mass" in French and than in English. A kind of attractive black haired woman that looked to me to be in her 30s or 40s although for all I know she might have been older, came in with a little old bent over woman in her 80s with a black eye and they sat across from me. The younger woman called the older woman "Mommy" and there was an interesting dynamic between them. The old woman seemed pretty helpless but her daughter seemed dependent on taking care of her. The daughter reminded me of a Jewish version of my daughter’s mother, Nancy in that she seemed like she was rehearsing to be an old lady herself.

Dr Shechtman didn’t think it looked like any bones were cracked but he thought that I should get some x-rays just in case. He sent me down the street to 800 Bathurst where after a twenty-minute wait an attractive young technician of East Indian descent escorted me into the imaging room. The last time I had x-rays there they just put a lead shield across my lap but this time she put a lead apron on me attached with Velcro and a matching lead collar that made me think I was having a session with a very un-stern radioactive dominatrix. The Velcro on the collar didn’t stick very well and so she had to reattach it a couple of times. She sat me down and had me put my arm in some difficult positions on the table with the palm up and twisted to the right. The projected light that shines down on the targeted area also has the projected shadow of a cross in the middle.

The technician immediately uploaded the x-rays and I went back to Dr Shechtman’s office but he’d gone out for coffee so I had to wait another twenty minutes. The old lady was still there and after a few minutes her daughter came up to tell her that they’d come on the wrong day for the test she was supposed to have. The old lady started shouting, “Then what the hell did I come her and wait all this time for?” The daughter escorted her out but once they were out of sight I could hear the daughter shouting several times for her mother to not go outside until she’d brought the car around.

Dr Shechtman called me into his office and he went online to look at my x-rays. I remember back when it would take a few days to find my x-ray results and now it’s pretty much instantaneous. Technology is amazing. The pictures were crystal clear. He said there’s a little calcification on my elbow but that has nothing to do with my recent fall. There were no cracks and so it’s just a matter of waiting for it to heal. He suggested that I get a tetanus shot if I have a dirty wound but I told I didn’t want one. “You’re not a vaccine guy?” he asked with a smile. I wouldn’t say that I am dead set against vaccines but I told him, “I’ve had lots of dirty wounds.” He assured me, “If you just keep it clean and put some peroxide on it you should be all right”.

On my way home I stopped at Freshco where I got a package of Ontario strawberries. They were not in very good condition but the store had dropped the price by $2 so I figured it was worth it just to get some local berries. I also got a pack of the ones from California. It didn’t occur to me at the time but maybe I should start boycotting US fruit until Trump stops being an asshole with the tariffs. I also bought bananas, cherries, grapes, milk, yogourt and a package of old cheddar.

Taking a long bike ride was going to be a write-off this time because it was past my normal lunch and siesta time and so by the time I got up it would be too late. It was worth it though to make sure my elbow was okay.

When I got home I made a lettuce and cauliflower salad with mayonnaise for a late lunch and got ready to take a late siesta. I put some hydrogen peroxide on my elbow and knee wounds. Holy crap did that ever sting!

It was evening when I got up.

For dinner I picked through the baby bok choy that I’d gotten from the food bank and sautéed the good parts. I had them with gravy and a piece of chicken while watching two episodes of Dobie Gillis.

The first story begins with Dobie dancing with a girl named Hazel at the Serviceman’s Recreation Centre. Dobie thinks that they are an item because of one dance but the girl is just there to dance with soldiers out of a sense of patriotism and she makes it clear she doesn’t like Dobie and would never date him. She tells him, “Why don’t you just flake off, okay Con?” As she’s walking away he corrects her that his name is Dobie Gillis. She suddenly turns around, walks up to him and asks, “Are you really Dobie Gillis?” “Sure, why?” “Here’s why!” and she gives him a big, long kiss.  Afterwards Dobie said, “I’m a fool for asking, but why?” “I promised mother!” She explained that her and her mother just moved to town but that when her mother was a teenager she lived there and used to go out with Herbert Gillis, Dobie’s father. Her mother told her to give Herbie a big kiss from Bubbles if she ever ran into him.

Later we meet Bubbles and she is an exuberant and over the top personality. Dobie’s mother gets very jealous because she was never as much fun but she finds that Bubbles is actually very lonely and so they hook her up with the military policeman who keeps dragging Dobie home after curfew.

The second story was more interesting because it introduced an intriguing new female character and it also presented a revealing speech by Maynard about how he feels about girls. Dobie has decided to play cupid and to try to force Maynard out of his fear of girls. He bribes a girl named Angela to pretend to be enamoured with Maynard. Another girl, Jenny, who is an annoying, aggressive and somewhat butch blonde firecracker of a girl who is always hanging around the store and trying to get bubblegum and movie magazines on credit, is bribed with bubblegum and magazines to do the same. Because of this attention Maynard gains confidence and begins to be extremely aggressive with all of the girls that he is normally frightened of. His aggression would be considered harassment nowadays but he gets a negative reaction in his era as well. Then Maynard reveals that he had been hip to Dobie’s scheme all along and was just trying to teach him a lesson. He then says, “No offence Dobe, but I aint you. I’m a different person. I got a beard, see? I also go certain ideas about girls.” “Like what?” “Like I don’t want any!” “But why not? They’re sweet and soft and friendly …” “They’re also tidy, respectable and determined, and I don’t think they’re very happy when all a guy wants to do is hack around, sit on the floor and listen to jazz and grow a beard!” “Is a beard really more important to you than a girl?” “It’s not a question of a beard! I’m an individual human person and if all them other individual human persons want to shave off their beards, get trapped by some chick, get married and live in a split-level house with a washer and automatic dryer and a PTA and a bridge club two nights a week and trouble with the sprinkling systems, well, that’s their business! Me? It aint for!

Jenny was played by Trudi Ames (born Trudi Ziskin). I don’t know if she appeared again on the show but it looked like they were trying set her character up as a tougher, blonde version of Zelda Gilroy as a match for Maynard. She was Ann Margret’s best friend Ursula in Bye Bye Birdie. She seemed to lose interest in acting in films and TV after she reached her twenties and then she went to UCLA. Later she became a teacher and was at one point a railroad brakeman for four or five years. There’s actually a long list of jobs she tried her hand at, including sheet metal worker. She changed her name later to Prashant Ziskin and became a life coach for people in the arts. She belongs to some kind of New Age group called the Evolutionary Collective and wrote a book under her new name entitled “Inspiring Creativity”.