Dueling Diarrhea

I set down my menu. "Mom, I have to tell you about Pat. I was having a tutoring session with him out in the park on Sunday, and I was just getting to Heraclitus being the philosopher who coined the phrase 'Fire walk with me,' when he interrupted me to say he wished his father hadn't told me his name, the name he had when he was a woman. I asked him why that was important, and he said it felt like he was showing me his genitalia..."

Mom set down her menu. "So Medora was just bleeding everywhere yesterday. She had several skin tears on her legs. I tried to get gauze on it, but her skin was just peeling and hanging off in sheets. Her skin is just paper-thin these days. She's more origami than organism at this point..."

"Then Pat told me about going to a motel to get away from his parents. He was having a fight with his dad about not having a fence for the new dog he wanted. His dad makes 600 dollars an hour as a lawyer, but he won't spring for a fence so Pat can have this new helper dog he very much needs..."

Mom shook her head. "But then it happened. She slid off her transport chair. Just slithered right off into a puddle of old. I had vowed not to call anyone to help me get her up, but she was on the hardwood floor. I couldn't just leave her there for seven hours. So I called 911 and about five firefighters came stomping into the house and they made such a huge deal of everything! I just wanted them to give her a lift. That was all. I know they had a job to do, but I told them it wasn't necessary to check her heart and all that--just lift her back into her chair for me! But then they saw all the skin tears on her legs. And the blood. Well, that's when the paramedics were called. And they had to do all these tests and they wanted to take her to the hospital. I said, You must be kidding! And this paramedic got in my face and said, Lady, we're not kidding. I mean, are you kidding me?! These people just wanted to run her through the wringer, and run up a big bill at the hospital and..."

"Sure," I said, "that's when Pat told me he had an IQ of 172 and it was so demeaning for him to be 'misgendered' all the time by everyone he encountered. So he went to this motel and got in the pool and this random lady saw all his scars from his transgender surgeries and she just started screaming--"

"I started screaming at them. I told them NO WAY were they going to take her to the hospital and run all these tests on the poor soul. She was perfectly fine, except for the blood everywhere. I just needed them to give her a lift! Was that really hard to understand??"

"I had to admit I didn't understand most of his story, but it involved this screaming lady and then his dad had to come to the motel with a baseball bat and threatened everyone so Pat could get away from this ridiculous lady, and it was just chaos, I guess."

"They all trooped out again finally, and everything was quiet for a bit until I got her back to her bedroom so I could wash her vagina real good, and what happened? She fell off her chair again! But this time she was on the carpet, so I just let her lie there. I put a pillow under her head and covered her with a blanket and stuck as much gauze as I could on her bloody skin tears until she looked like King Tut. But no way was I calling 911 again, which is a joke in my town anyway..."

"No joke, his gums are receding because of an endocrinology problem, so he's afraid his teeth are about to fall out and now he has an ovary that's turned into a painful cyst in his abdomen and he had hoped it was cancer but it looks like he'll live to order something from the menu another day."

The server came up. I ordered the Tremendo-Vat o' Cheese. Mom ordered the same.

We chewed identically.

We argued over the bill identically.

We went home.

Now we're typing this blog post, Mom on the left hand, me on the right and--

Mom! Let me finish this, stop, stdlfm! COme oin! FJwl

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