Consenting Adults

Lots of nurses get consent forms signed for open heart surgery and other procedures.  

I have heard it argued, "Just ask the patient if the doctor has explained everything to them and then get their signature.  You are only witnessing that it's their signature."

That is a legal nightmare.  Patients are frequently under the influence of many mind-altering drugs.   They often report later that they can't remember anything anyone told them.   If I wasn't present when the doctor talked to the patient, how can I say that the patient understands?  I was at home in bed! 

I'm supposed to ask a drugged, very sick person to sign that they are okay to have a complicated surgery (which I probably don't understand) and then put my name by that?   A lawyer would destroy me in court.  

If I had been to school as long as the average surgeon, I think I might be able to remember to take a consent form in the room with me when I talked to the patient. 

Blackmailers VS Child Molesters

We had a young lady from Thailand live with us for a year through the AFS program.  She was bright and eager, and I learned a lot from her.  Living with people from other countries lets you glimpse your culture through their eyes.  Sometimes the results are--unexpected.

When I took her to our high school to register, she paused in the entryway.  She stared open-mouthed at the imposing pirate statue  that guards the entrance.  The statue is every stereotype of a pirate--black hat with the Jolly Roger, peg leg, eye patch. 

The young lady turned to me, swallowed hard and asked, "What is that?"

I explained that it was our mascot.  Did she understand what a mascot is?  It's a symbol to fight or rally under.  Our school's mascot is the pirate.   Did she know what a pirate was?

This young woman--born and raised in Thailand--answered quietly, "Yes.  A murderer on the sea."

So, she really DID know what a pirate was.

Sex Education

Let's talk about sex.

First, can we just admit that sex is a weird thing to do?

No?  

Imagine someone came up and poked their finger in your ear.  Would you say, "Ohhhh, yes! YES!!  MORE!! MORE!!" ?

Or would you yell, "Get your finger out of my ear!" ?

Another person shoving a portion of their body into one of your orifices is bizarre.  What kind of evolutionary sleight of hand caused us to do this?

And what kind of sick pervert WANTS to stick their finger into someone's ear?  There's dirt and skin flakes and orange wax in there!  Why would anyone do it? 

Why would anyone PAY to do it?

But, wait!  It gets worse!  Sex has many bad outcomes associated with it. 

Here are some of them:

 Nasty smelling pus dripping from unmentionable parts

Painful warts, blisters and growths cropping up on other parts

Your body insane with hormones, swelling, distorted and mapped with stretch marks

After nine months of waddling around, an additional eighteen years of discomfort

And, the ultimate bad outcome...

You wouldn't think that sex would be a difficult thing to give up.  

 

Love and Pain

What is love?

Ahh--the eternal question.  Is it fate?  Or just chemistry?  Is it our destiny to bond with one special person, or are there many possible mates out there for each of us?

Who do we fall in love with?  We fall in love with the people around us.  It's not romantic; no one's going to write a sonnet or make an epic movie about that, but it's true.  The twin to your soul may be milking goats right now in Kazakhstan, chopping soybeans in Uruguay or weaving mats in Angola, but if your paths never cross, that potential will never be actualized. 

We fall in love with the people we see.  The cashier in the supermarket.  The guy down the street.  The girl across the hall.  Why?  Because THOSE ARE OUR OPTIONS.

If a 13 year old girl protested to her annoyed mom, "But I love him!", her mom would probably say something like, "You don't know what love is!"

But, fourteen year olds have very strong emotions.  Watch the news; people steal and kill in the name of love.  And not just teenagers.  Adults leave their homes, families, countries and children.  Kingships have been abdicated.

I think that love is like pain.  Nurses are taught, "Pain is what the patient says it is".  Since it is impossible to know, we have to take their word for it.


We have been fed a steady diet by the media of how love should look and feel.  Those are fairytales.  They are misleading and unrealistic and provide a very distorted idea about what a relationship is.

Love doesn't look like this:

Arranged marriages have a high success rate for a reason.  Emotion doesn't cloud the issue.  Two sets of parents--who presumably know their children well--negotiate for the best bargain.  

That's what relationships are:  negotiations for the best bargain.  You must be willing to accept someone who is less than perfect, because--guess what?  YOU are less than perfect.

Rather than staking your future on a labile emotion, use some logic. Your mate needs to be three things:  a partner, a lover and a friend. 

The partner is someone who you might go into business with.  They are willing to work and don't squander money.

The lover is someone you are physically attracted to and enjoy having sex with.

The friend is someone you want to be with and talk to.   

Our feelings are not constant enough to base big decisions on them.  Fireworks always burn out.   Find someone who can be your partner, lover and friend.  And consider yourself the second luckiest person in the world!

The first luckiest being me.

2 L

Riddle Revelations

1.  The woman has given birth











2.  The girls are two of a set of triplets










3.  The surgeon is the boy's mother








4.  It is day in the Little Town of Night







5.  Jim is a cat, Susan is a goldfish







6.  Six





7.  He was playing baseball.






8.  To see if the man will come back.  (He obviously has some connection to the family.)





9.  She is his sister







10.  There is one dead rabbit left in the field--a dead rabbit.  The others hopped off after the gunshot.






11.  Since you only have one question to ask and you aren't sure about either the door or the parrot, you have to ask a question that will solve both unknowns.  You have to ask one parrot about the other parrot.  "Will the other parrot tell me that this door (point to a door) leads to safety?"  If you are pointing to the door to safety, the lying parrot will say, "No" (the lying parrot only tells lies, and since he knows that the truth-telling parrot will tell you that this IS the right door, he will say the opposite).  If you are pointing to the door that leads to safety and you ask that same question of the truth-telling parrot, you will get the same answer, "No."

If you point to the door to danger and ask, both parrots will say, "Yes."  So, this is the way to get the same answer from both birds.  Ask one parrot one question.  If you get a "No," take that door.  If you get a "Yes," take the opposite door.







12.  White.  They started at the North Pole.








13.  "Switch horses."









14.  The Jester pulled out a slip of paper and started laughing and leaping about, kissing the paper and cartwheeling and finally--swallowed it.  When the king, furious, said, "You didn't show us the paper!" the Jester answered, "Oh, sorry.  I got too excited.  Well, let's just pull out the OTHER slip of paper and it will prove that my paper was not the one with the X on it."  In front of the whole court, what can the king do?





15.  This seems impossible, but it is actually very common to see something that no one has ever seen before.  Every time you crack open an egg, a nut or slice open an apple or a peach, you are seeing something no one has ever seen before.  They've never seen the inside of THAT apple.







16.  They died in an plane crash.  It is the cabin of an airplane.







17.  She saw the world outside the cellar.  She had been locked up in the cellar all her life.







18.  The barber is a woman.







19.  They're talking about the night she was born.







20.  It's his son.






21.   You turn on the first switch and leave it on for five minutes.  Then you turn it off and turn on the second switch.  You hurry up the stairs and look at the light.  If the light is on, it's the second switch.  If the light is off, you touch it and if it's warm, it was the first switch.  If it's off and cold, it's the third switch.

22. The President is living there in the White House

23.  Coffin

24.  Ring

25.  They are a group of musicians

26.  It's a deck of cards

27.  All the children are boys

28.  She's a justice of the peace

29.  The letter E

30.  nothing

31. "I want to die of old age."

32.  Dr. Taft removed the appendix from Jed's first wife.   Jed has remarried.

33.  It makes him more money to cut two people's hair.