The Potato and the Broken Nose

It wasn’t always fun on the Psychiatric Ward. Lunch time. Patients are sitting around at the tables munching on hospital food in the cafeteria. Staff are bunched around the perimeter watching on. Happened every day. This was on a ward for chronic patients, if memory serves, at Harlem Valley. Anyway, one fella was disturbing the other guys by stealing their baked potatoes. A little brouhaha ensued among a few of them. A doctor standing next to me said that “Lowell” was on a low-carb diet and that I needed to make him stop eating all those potatoes. Oh joy. “Lowell, man, ya gotta knock this off. These other guys have got to eat.” No response. “Lowell, the doctor says you can’t have any more potatoes.” “Go f yourself.” And so it went.. “Lowell, You ARE going to stop.” He snatched up another baked potato. As he was bringing it up to his face, I grabbed him by the wrist. The potato flew up in the air. My eyes followed the hot potato. His right fist hit me square in the nose. Before that moment, I had a nice Roman nose. I staggered back a few steps. Lowell was a big lad … much bigger than I. I felt for my nose. It was under my left eye … or so it felt. I saw red and the adrenaline rush came and I charged poor Lowell. He never had a chance. With the quick response of other staff, we had him subdued, in a straight jacket, and a needle in his rear in moments. That was such a fun place I eventually had surgery on my nose about a month, or so, later. They had to wait for it to heal before it could be broken again. [The Psych Ctr. told me I was fine – I KNEW it was broken – so, it wasn’t done right away.] The process involved packed my nose with cocaine to numb it, putting me into semi-consciousness, and then smashing my face with a little hammer and chisel. Really! After it’s reset to specs, they stuff the nose with gauze and stuff to keep it in place. One thing I cannot tolerate is a stuffed nose. As soon as I got home, I pulled all the gauze out so that I could breathe, only I couldn’t because as soon as there was no gauze, my nose swelled up shut. It was torture and ruined all the work the doctor’s had done. Now I’m stuck with this schnoze, making me, at the Post Office, “The Long Nosed Rascal.” That was such another fun place. 😉  And that reminds me of a joke. Maybe you have heard it. Maybe you don’t want to. 🙂 This always struck my funny bone … The stud and the dork are talking about getting women. The dork wonders how the stud manages to attract all those women down at the beach. The stud says, “I just put a potato down my bathing suit. Works every time”. So, off the dork goes in his swim suit, potato in hand and on down to the beach. He sticks the potato down his pants and begins parading up and down the beach. Nothing. No girls. In fact, it’s even worse than usual. Back at the house, the dork explains his problem. Stud says, “show me what you did. ” The dork does. “No man,” the stud says, ” You’ve got to put it in the FRONT of your pants.” Ha Ha Ha