The Old Lady Put WHAT into Her Mouth?
Michele bustled into an exam room. Since Navajo Health is not Cedars of Lebanon, she’s not a doctor but a physician’s assistant. She’s blonde, big of hip and bosom, undeniably cute, and unstoppable as a HumVee.
An elderly Navajo lady huddled in a chair opposite, dressed traditionally in velveteen skirt, turquoise bracelets and necklace, head scarf, and jacket. (For whatever reason, even in August at a temperature of 102, there’s always the jacket.) As Michele opened her mouth to ask what the problem was, a stink bug skittered across the floor between them.
Michele raised her foot to stomp it. The old lady was quicker. She snatched the bug up and popped it into her mouth.
Michele kept her voice down to a low scream. “What are you doing?” She reached, but the old lady averted her head.
“Get that thing out of there.”
The old lady said, “Mmphphssrrhhss.”
Michele tried to pry the mouth open, but the old lady clamped her teeth tight.
Michele fingered. The old lady said, mushing her words out around the bug,
“These things heal mouth sores.”
Michele babbled. The old lady froze her mouth closed and glared.
Michele left and sent a nurse in to perform the bugectomy.
Soon the old lady trundled down the hall toward the waiting room and the front door. Michele looked at the nurse but thought better of asking about the insect.
“Respect for tradition,” said the nurse.
Michele sighed.
—Storyteller
Great blog.
Funny story!! Maybe you could add pictures to make it more attractive.
THANKS for the great idea. Photo at the top.
EVERY CITY HAS A SMALL TOWN INSIDE IT
Yes, that’s true. I thought I couldn’t be included in this line of stories because I don’t have any small-town experiences. But, as Storyteller says, we are all pretty nuts. Meaning not normal.
Here is my small story. More like a vignette. It is short and it is recent.
I went to the laundromat at 3 a.m. Now, why I was there at 3 a.m. is probably the real story, but it’s too long and involved and all that other stuff.
Anyway, there I was, sticking the Bounce into the dryer, when a black guy walked in. He was about 30, nice-looking guy, tall, well-dressed. Especially for the middle of the night. He sits down and opens a copy of People magazine.
The man is wearing those pink, sponge rollers like people wore two generations ago, and I didn’t even know they MADE them any more. And then I’m thinking, “WOW! I am more interested in the fact these rollers still exist than that a black guy is wearing them in a laundromat at 3 a.m.” And I think, “Well, this must mean we are progressing as human beings and a species.”
Although, if HE is at the laundromat at 3 for anywhere near the same reason I am, this progress is not so clear to me. We both just had a weird night–but we can do that together and be good with it.
That is my spongy, pink–and big city–story.
I remember the spongy, pink rollers…
What a picture!
Funny! Was the woman in the clinic because of mouth sores? Maybe they should have charged her for the crunchy critter. “That’ll be two bucks and be sure to get your parking ticket validated on the way out!”
What a riot! Thank you for sharing. I think you are absolutely on the write/right track with this blog. Perhaps me thinks I will have some future contribution for FreeFall. Certainly, local eccentricities play into my latest writing project.
Georgiana, I would love to hear your stories. And stick up some photos, too!
Thank goodness. True storytelling. Reminds me of my experiences on the rez up at San Carlos. I’ve been photographing Na’ii’ees (coming of age) ceremonies for the girls, their families, and the Diyin (medicine men) since 1994. Even in chaos and crisis, there is laughter. You are invited to visit my blog at http://www.lorifaithmerritt.com
Lori, Okay, now I feel like a little kid…
Tell us a story!
Tell us a story!
August 26, 2009 at 11:02 pm | Reply Sarita
I will no longer look at a stink bug the same way. (And I probably don’t have the guts to use it for mouth sores.) But…
Here’s another tale from the desert:
My friend Gloria and I were listening to a bunch of writers talking about the west. (They could only scare up one who was willing to say he’d written screenplays, or who wanted to commit to be somewhere at a specific time, to head the panel.)
His, we’ll call him Milo, claim to fame was his father’s screenplay. After he had called someone ‘Buckeroo’ for the 3rd time, we’d had it. (Okay, this part is not true. We had already hidden the device before the deal happened because we’d been waiting for this chance, and we knew where being in the presence of Milo would lead us.)
Gloria pulled out the control box. The device was squarely behind Milo. She let it go. The crowd hushed. Milo spoke. She let it rip again. The crowd tittered. Severeal more guffaws and we wobbled off to the tent next door.
There we handed it to, we’ll call her Jean. She was an ex-rodeo queen in Mexico and is quite remarkable. She got the hang of the device pretty quick, and she had to admit that, when attending a panel, at least one person should be equipped with a remote-control fart machine.
Myself? When travelling, I consider it a staple item.
SOUTHERN GOTHIC: SLIVERS OF STORIES
I’m from a little town in southeast Georgia that, because so much of my past is still my present, we’ll call Sunflower. I’ve always said that there must be a Stephen King haunted freakin spaceship buried somewhere out in the woods, sending out crazy vibes and making messed-up things happen. But maybe Sunflower is just like any other tiny town; it’s just the concentration of the weirdness that makes it seem profound.
My grandfather used to run the general store and post office in Sunflower, but that was way before I was born. A prefab building that houses the town fire engine stands on the site today.
There are two churches in downtown Sunflower, two more on the outskirts, and countless others in the surrounding woods and fields. But no one lets their formal religion get in the way of their other agendas. One of the lingering legends of the town regards one of the local backwoods preachers who got into a fight with his wife while standing outside their house on a country road. He tied her up, tied plow points on her, and threw her in their pond. A passing motorist saw what happened and got her out before she drowned. I knew that girl and she was mean as a snake. She later went to jail for beating her mother with a hammer – but I do think that her husband acted in a most unChristianlike manner.
OF LINGERING LEGENDS, to felixrouge.
I believe you are right. Tying someone up and shoving nail-like things in them–now there is some Christian tradition in that. But the whole pond thing? That part is totally outside the box. Maybe the spaceship is at the bottom of the pond…
LOL! Good theory, Sarita. It might just be. Of course, there could be more than one spaceship. Maybe a bunch of little ones, sprinkled around the whole county.
Another of the lingering legends of Sunflower dates back to WWII days, when (according to the oral tradition) some of the townsfolk castrated somebody and the person bled to death. One version that I heard when I was little was that a stranger passing through town hit a pregnant local with his car, resulting in a miscarriage, and the woman’s relatives reacted. My aunt Rinny, however, debunked this story. The real facts, she said, are that a bunch of drunk friends were horsing around and the horseplay went dreadfully wrong. They never intended to hurt the guy and certainly didn’t intend for him to die. No one was prosecuted because the law was not able to prove who really did it, but locals all agreed among themselves that it was the guy’s girlfriend.
The end result grew into an insult to be flung at kids from Sunflower by kids from elsewhere. “Sunflower?! Y’all castrate people down there, dontchoo?” We heard this rather often from kids from Swinesburg, the county seat, where they bussed us to high school. The proper retort was, “At least we don’t put our babies in the freezer.” Which had happened in Swinesburg. The conditions under which the baby got into the freezer were never related. One day I ought to look that up.