Browse Category: chuckle

More stories from the grind…

Chatting with a 4-year-old girl (same one with the boyfriend)

“Can I tell you what my little sister did this morning?! She peed in her bed.” I gave her a surprised look and she said in a hushed voice, “That’s pretty bad, isn’t it?” She totally sounded like a teenager telling me something really scandalous. So I played along and said, “Yeah, but it happens sometimes. I bet you don’t do that anymore.” And she replied, “No, but I peed in my underwear yesterday.” and gave a spritely chuckle. HAHAHAHA. At least she’s honest.

Chatting with an 8-year-old boy

As he’s drawing a picture of a dinosaur, my little friend causally asked, “Do you have any kids?” I replied, “Nope.” He stopped drawing and slowly looked up at me. “So, you’re married but you don’t have any kids?” All I could say was, “Nope, but I’ll be sure to let you know when I get some.”

Muni loves me.

p1010892.jpgRiding public transporation in the morning is usually a quiet, somber ride with everyone hiding behind their newspapers, furiously typing on their Blackberrys, sleeping, or staring into space with their iPods on. However, there are two trains that I can take to the BART station and they each give off a different “vibe”. First there’s the N-Train, which starts just down the street and usually carries a bunch of people in suits or scrubs on their way to the Financial District or UCSF Medical Center. The second is the KT-Train, which starts in the ghetto, goes through the Financial District, and then ends in the ghetto on the other side of town and usually transports people from the projects. It’s also very crowded, often littered, tagged all over, and just plain sucks.

Anyway, I’ve somehow managed to catch the same 7:40 KT-Train every day this week, which has made my morning commute a little more of a pain in the butt. However, there has been a silver lining in this. The driver of this particular train is someone worth writing about. Typically on any of the trains, the driver will usually announce the next stop. For example, “next stop, Folsom”. It’s helpful, brief, and impersonal. It’s good. Well, this particular driver has come from a different planet. It’s like he’s at Disneyland or something because he talks to us like we’re VIPs on a tour of San Francisco. Today, in his heavy Hispanic (I think) accent, he said, “The next stop is Embarcadero Station. Thank you for riding the KT line. I hope you have a wonderful, beautiful, fan-TAstic day and I will see you tomorrow again on the KT line at the same time on the same train. Remember that Muuuuni loves you and I love you. Thank you for being such good passengers and don’t forget you belongings.” Haha. I can’t help but smile. In fact, even some of the thugs couldn’t help give a chuckle or give a confused look to the guy standing in front of him. He’s done this every day this week, which makes me think that Mr. Muni is making somewhat of an impact in his seemingly mundane job. If he can make a sleepy thug smile, he’s doing a good job. Keep it up, Mr. Muni.

Off to Mormonland!

We are now in Salt Lake City and before we even landed in Utah, there was a sweet announcement overhead on our Southwest flight:

We have a special request. There’s a young lady who has a test and she’s forgotten her book. If anyone has The Book of Mormon available for her to borrow, please push your call button. Thank you.

5 seconds later…*DING!* *DING!*

I had to cover my face with the newspaper to control the silent guffaw that I had to let out.

Stories from the Daily Grind

I just finished a rather busy week at work but it ended with some cute stories:

Trying to Pee
One of the things that I work on with my patients is their morning routine. At the hospital, it seems weird to have to actually get up, brush your teeth, and get dressed when all you’re going to do is go back to bed, right? Well, that’s not how it goes in rehab. I saw this little 4-year-old boy yesterday in the wee hours of the morning as he was getting up. As he was trying to put on his socks and shoes, his little bum started tootin’. I asked him, “Do you need to go booboo?” He said, “Nooooo….but I have to go pee pee.” That’s great! We’ve been trying to teach him how to use the toilet all week. So, we made out way over to the bathroom, pulled down his pants and diaper, and waited. He’s really unsteady on his feet so as I was stabilizing him in front of the toilet, he started to rock side to side like he was doing a little dance. I asked him “What are you doing?! You’re supposed to be aiming!” He said, “The pee won’t come out!”. So I turned on the water at the sink and we waited some more. At one point the two of us were yelling “Pee Pee come out! Pee Pee come out!!” It didn’t work but at least he told me that he had to go instead of automatically going in his diaper. What a way to start a morning.

Growing Up
On Wednesday, I was working with a little 4-year-old girl on handwriting. We had the treatment room open and our Rehab Aide, Ian, came in to ask me a question. The little girl stopped her writing and asked me, “Who’s that?” I said, “That’s my friend Ian. She helps us out here in the hospital.” There was a brief pause and then the little girl said, “There’s a boy in my class named Ian and I’m going to marry him when I grow up.” Nice! So I asked her, “So is he your BOYFRIEND?” She sheepishly said, “Yea.” Trying to change the subject a bit, I asked her “So do you know what you want to be when you grow up?” She replied, “Yea, I’m going to be the mommy and he’s going to be the daddy.” Awesome…what a way to bring the conversation back to the boyfriend.

trees and cheetos

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We got our Christmas tree today! The Sokol-Juns met up with us and they picked out theirs as well. With December here and the cold air pushing its way through the Bay Area, it certainly feels more like Christmas is just around the corner.

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As we were unloading the tree outside in the alley, we found a panicked Susie across the street. She had Smush in his carrier and they needed a ride to the vet. Susie went for a run this morning and came home to find Smush with an empty bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos stuck on his head. He had eaten about two handfuls of cheetos and for a 5-pound dog, that’s a lot. I drove them to the vet and we waited a good two hours for them to get Smush to vomit it all up. The vet said he threw up about 4 times and all of the bright red stuff came out. Silly doggie. That’ll learn ‘im.