I went back to work on Monday for the first time since my Total Knee Replacement on 9 March. My orthopedic surgeon last Friday was kind enough to endorse my wife's unspoken contention that while she did marry me 31 plus years ago 'for better and for worse' it didn't include for three meals a day, every day for what felt like forever I'm sure. He reviewed my therapy records, took an x-ray of both my left knee with the TKR as well as one of my unicompartmental right knee (I tried to order just the wallet size, but the photographer only offers the big package) and talked with me about the next ninety days of recovery before releasing me to return to work.
I, in a rare moment of clever clarity (previous instance was just before the most recent Comet Kohoutec sighting), saw no reason to share with him Friday that I'd be hiking and hauling junk for a couple or three hours on Saturday as part of a Mayoral Candidate CleanZ Norwich Earth Day event. Why upset the man?
I don't have a strenuous job, by any stretch of the imagination which is really good as I am not brave, not especially talented in any arcane skill nor very strong, swift or smart. I suspect if dropped from a great height I'd look an awful lot like hairy strawberry ice cream with toes (and I'm not sure I even need to be dropped to pull off that look). Those with whom I work are very forgiving, considering how bad their luck has been in drawing me as a colleague, but I don't always successfully interact with them because I have no actual people skills.
I got to work early, not as early as my brother the lawyer (who thinks he's a farmer who must get up with the chickens) but early in the way our father always arose in the middle of the night to ride the train into Manhattan to go to work. Another part of our genetic inheritance I guess; the gift that keeps on giving. Most of my colleagues arrive within two minutes, plus or minus, of seven o'clock. They are so consistent I can't help but wonder if they don't all actually meet up outside someplace, perhaps around the corner behind the outcropping of rock and synchronize watches. I've attempted in my idea of subtle and stealthy, to spy and see if my conspiracy theory is correct. I'm not good at finding the outcropping much less the grassy knoll.
Anyway on Monday, and I appreciated the gesture and the kindness, though I suspect he'll never believe that, someone whom I know only casually wandered by and, not having seen me 'in quite awhile' (= the amount of time from when it's noticed you are absent PLUS an estimate of how long it took to even notice in the first place) stopped to chat about nothing, but with a dogged single mindedness I almost had to admire. Compounding my distracted disquiet, in addition to the seven weeks of work sitting on my desk, my in-basket and on the floor and windowsills, was also that I couldn't remember his name. Total blank. It took me years to learn my own name (Mom actually sewed it into my underpants and for months at a time I answered to "Hanes" and "Jockey") and I know I should pay more attention but I don't. Besides, it's his name, let him remember it. I choose to Remember the Maine but will settle for just the former.
About five minutes into a conversation about I have-no-idea-what, perhaps attempting to sum up and then move on (I am an acquired taste and quite concentrated; a little of me goes a long way), he smiled and cheerily offered, 'well, you sound great!' I gave him one of those looks a bug splattered on the windshield of a freshly washed car gets, and explained loudly (but only for emphasis) that I had undergone knee replacement surgery, not a larynx transplant.
He winced as if stabbed and in a hurt tone made it clear he thought I didn't try too hard to be nice, which was and is, of course, absolutely correct. I offered him a deal: "I promise to be nicer, if you promise to be smarter. Which one of us do you think has the easier promise?" He hurried off in a snit, sort of a two-tone, late model snit with a six speed manual transmission and the six cylinder engine that whines when the tachometer nears the red line. And people wonder why I've never needed a second chair in my office.
-bill kenny
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