Text 12393, 87 rader
Skriven 2007-02-27 12:16:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: b&e idiocy 125
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Breaking and entering, or more idiocy in the family.

So we had the two doctor appointments, separated by an hour,
followed by a visit to the optician (the old man lost his
glasses at the hospital - there's something dubious about
this, as he'd thought his wallet had been stolen there, as
he and my brother had checked everywhere ... so after John my
b-i-l had heroically finished cancelling the credit cards, I
arrived and looked in his overnight bag, and guess what I found
in less than 30 seconds). Anyhow, he wouldn't call a taxi until
40 minutes before his appointment, so of course the taxi didn't
come for a while, so we were 20 minutes late at the doctor's.
Which meant no time for lunch. Luckily the ENT guy, who is kind
of good-natured, managed to get us in half an hour early, so
there was time for a bite afterward. First appointment, EPO
shot, which meant that my father went from a hobbling ghost-
white creature to pinky-brown and reasonably vigorous in moments.
Second appointment, lancing the eardrum, so now he can hear out
of both ears! There are of course advantages and disadvantages
to that, both. He'd put this operation (hardly that - it takes
less than 5 minutes under local anesthesia) off for the better
part of a year, being afraid of sharp pointy things. There was
time for lunch, so Uncle S.Y. took us to the Old Georgetown
Grill. Let's just say that the Old Ebbitt Grill it's not.
I had the "shishkebab with rice," which was big old chunks of
chicken (ammonia-tasting despite having been marinated) and
vegetables (okay), all done on a diner-style griddle, over
premade pilaf. A huge serving, and that was the best of the
three. S.Y. had "chicken souvlaki," the same chicken (he left
most of it) with tomato and shredded lettuce plopped atop a
pita bread, the whole smothered with yogurt. I noticed that
he'd eaten all the yogurt, the chicken pieces abandoned naked
on the soggy pita. His fries, sort of soggy, too, were better
and he ate some of those. My father's crab cake sandwich was
mostly filler. Live and learn. The good thing is that it is
next door to the optician. My father's nose is not unlike mine,
with hardly any bridge, so these funny little nosepieces have
to be drilled in, a custom job on all frames. This took an
hour, and the glasses cost $380.

We had the optician's call a cab, which didn't come; eventually
after half an hour I saw one of the appropriate color speeding
down the other side of the street - tried unsuccessfully to flag
him down. They called again and were left on hold while the
dispatcher tried to find the driver (who after 10 minutes claimed
that he'd been unable to find the place despite having a street
address, a telephone number, and the assurance that it was the
biggest business on the block). Dispatcher assured us another
cab would be by in 15 minutes. After another twenty or so we saw
another cab stopped on the other side of the street, so I ran out
and flagged him, and he U-ied it and we got in. As soon as we got
in, the apparently redispatched original cab showed up finally
on the right side of the road; our driver waved him away and
proceeded not to turn on the meter. Got us home in reasonable
order, thank goodness, and when I asked him how much we owed, he
said, I dunno, how much does it usually cost? I said 8, but I'll
give you 10, which satisfied everyone, especially the driver,
who had no intention of reporting the fare to the company.

We discovered that the storm door had miraculously managed to
lock itself. My father said, "You must have locked it when
we were leaving." That's ridiculous, quoth I, there's no way I
could lock it, as there's a clever disengage that prevents the
door from closing when it's locked. Question. Was my loony
brother in the house (he was taught always to triple lock the
front, so he does)? Answer. No. Close as I could figure out the
weather had shrunk the mechanism so that the lever locking the
door fell into the locked position, and we were out in the cold.

So I fiddled and diddled with the thing, with no result, which
is perhaps good, as it is a lock, to be sure. So. Stand back,
I said, whereupon he crowded close to the door to see what I
was about to do. Stand back, I said, again, pushing him away.
And I kicked through the door, no difficult task, making a
godawful racket and leaving broken glass everywhere. Got the
door open and the old man inside and cleaned up the mess.

I interrogated him later, as this sort of thing doesn't generally
happen out of the blue, and in fact it turns out that this has
happened before! But when it had, someone had been in the house at
the time. So. Did they fix the lock? Did they disable the lock? Did
my father admit this to me instead of trying to make me feel guilty
at (supposedly) having locked the door by mistake? Three guesses.

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