Man, I’m starting to get nervous about the upcoming surgery. It’s always at times like this when you’re made aware of the frailty of the human form. Loss of blood pressure, bad heart, too much anestishia, staff infections, and thoughts of your own mortality start to drift through your mind. This week has been going amazingly fast, and on Tuesday morning I’ll have my knee sliced open to be repaired. I always think about the other guys I talked with, one of whom got a staph infection, and the other who still wears a knee brace when doing physical exercise. I always think, have I started to live the life I want, and what will happen if I die. It happens, my aunt is a VP of a Hospital, and my cousin’s wife is a nurse. I hear the stories, and I hear about how people just puff and die. I’m not overly concerned about these things, but I like to take a moment to hold them fresh in my mind, like swirling the last sip of pop around your mouth to lap up the taste. It’s a bitter taste to face your own mortality.
I always think back to the morning I shipped out for boot camp. It was 4am, were on the bus bright and early after having stayed up all night watching movies with my temporary roommate. Both of us were anxious to start our training, and neither of us could sleep. We watched old 40’s war movies for hours, up until we went to breakfast, and then to when we shipped out. It was a long plane ride, two connections, and I met the three guys I’d spend the next few months living with. They were nice guys, one young, the other were slightly older. I remember the plane ride, I remember being lined up at the airport and made to stand at attention, and I remember being marched out to the gray hounds waiting outside. By this time it’s getting pretty late into the evening, I’d say about 9pm. We get to the base in Georgia about 10pm, and start the beginning of the rest of our training. After sitting through a few hours of introduction to our new home, last minute offers of leniency for lying about medical conditions, and made to turn in our smuggled in electronics we finally were able to get to sleep. They gave us our blankets, and pointed us to the almost overflowing barracks. At this point it was 2am, and we finally were able to lay down to rest. I guess if you consider by the time we made our bunks, laid in them, we had about ten minutes before the wake up buzzer sounded. So much for sleep those three days. Turns out you wake up at 3:30am to start your day in boot camp. Man, I for one can sleep 10 hours standing on my head, but each night we got maybe four if you didn’t have laundry to do. Sucked balls.
Anyway, I think about these things, and I think about where I’ve been in my life. I’ve had an eventful, but unfulfilling life thus far. I have a lot more I’d like to do, and it’s always in the back of your mind. Will I wake up? What if I don’t? Have I lived a spiritual enough life? Will God accept or reject me? Is there a god? What if God is Jewish? What if I’m in front of God and I’m so nervous I fart? Can you fart when you’re dead? I tell you the list of things I think about goes on and on.