Figure it out, kids

I just remembered this story, and I should probably save it until Christmas, but I'll forget between now and then. So, here's a little Christmas in July. Or August, actually.

It was December, just before Christmas break, when I was in college in Wisconsin long ago. One afternoon I went down to the dormitory lobby to check my mailbox, and I was happy to see what I thought was a letter from my mother. When I opened it, however, I found only a small, oddly-shaped fragment of a Christmas card.

Four of my friends received similar envelopes and, recognizing the sender's return address, came to my room to ask me if I knew what was going on.

Being extremely bright college kids, it didn't take us long to figure it out. My mother had cut a card into five irregular shapes, making a Christmas card jigsaw puzzle. Once we put it together, we were able to see the pretty card and read her hand-written message wishing us all a very merry Christmas.

The girls were delighted and said that my mother was "fun."

Yes, she was.

Herby

Yesterday my wife mentioned, pointedly, that I had not posted anything on this here blog thing for a while (okay, since May), and asked me why. I replied that I had nothing to say.  “All my stories have been told,” I said. The look she gave me was – well, shall we say, skeptical.

Today, however, while thinking about something else altogether, I thought of a story not told, at least not here.

In a posting last fall (“A Name by Any Other Rose,” September 25, 2018) I mentioned that because my wife tends to name everything, I occasionally give names to various inanimate objects of my own.

In 2007, after having experienced what is called a “silent” heart attack (that is, one I knew nothing about because I never felt a thing), the medical types decided to implant a pacemaker/defibrillator in my chest. I like to joke with people that I can’t say "pacemaker/defibrillator," so I call it "Herby."

How I chose the name is simply that after the surgery, while I was lying in my hospital bed thinking about having a device in my chest to regulate my cardiac rhythms, it occurred to me that if you took the word HEARTBEAT and started leaving some of the letters out here and there, you would end up with:  HE R BE.

And that’s how my ICD Herby got his name. I suppose it's possible that my natural creativity was enhanced to some degree by the very enjoyable effects of a cocktail of morphine, Valium, and Versed I had been given, but I like to think I have a flair for whimsy.

It also helps me understand how people become addicted to drugs.