Q: “So, how did you start your ‘creative writing’?”
A: “I ‘fell’ into it.”
Scene 1. Cable TV
I liked Cable TV, when it became widely available in the mid-1960s. I first watched Cable TV programs on a service that was provided to me ‘free’ by the landlord at the apartment I was renting at the time. He even provided the TV and the Cable TV tuner-box.
But, as with most things that I like, Cable TV has become an ever decreasing good-deal. My favorite channels and programs were moved into the ‘premium subscription only’ tiers. Cable TV was originally sold as commercial-free television. However, Cable TV service providers began to insert commercials into the Cable TV programming, claiming that running commercials would keep subscription costs down and provide for more programs. As the percentage of the program schedule time dedicated to commercials increases, more time is cut from the programs.
The subscription fees also increased, adding mandatory fees for the inclusion of local broadcast TV channels and sports programming, thus becoming the most expensive household utility, more than all the other utilities combined.
So as the half-gallon ice-cream tubs shrank over time, the cost-value of Cable TV also shrank. A 'Cable Box', only available for rental from the service provider, is now required for access to the new ‘digital-only’ service. A special adapter is required for each TV in the house, to access the ‘free’ cable programming. These adapters must be provided by the Cable TV service and can only be rented for a monthly fee. ‘Premium service’ cable boxes, to record programs and provide wide-screen, high-definition TV service are also available, at a price.
All of this aside for their lousy customer service, with their take-it-or-leave it attitude.
Scene 2. Cancellation
In January 2017, I find myself standing by my mailbox. I open an envelope marked ‘Legal Notice, Please Read’, in large font. It is a letter from my Cable TV service provider informing me of a substantial subscription fee increase, to be imposed automatically next month.
I laugh as I read the notice cheerfully boasting, in bright color lettering, of the new cable channels they will be offering. Of course, the new channels are only offered on premium cable service subscription, none will be included in my current subscription tier. They do offer the premium service free for the first month. Of course, I would have to call and cancel the premium service or be billed for it from then on.
The new channel line up also moves many of my present subscription tier channels up into the premium tiers. The letter goes on to boast that these mandatory changes are to improve the quality of their service and the viewer’s experience. I shout to the street.
“I don’t think so, guys. Thank you for making this decision easy.”
I immediately called my Cable TV service provider to cancel my contract. The Cable TV service provider’s phone troll takes my call and attempts to keep my subscription.
“Sorry sir that you are canceling your service with us. May I offer you a deal?”
I am adamant.
“No deal. I wish to terminate my service effective immediately.”
The troll proceeds with a threat.
“Sir, you will be charged a service cancellation fee. You will also be charged for the cable box and associated hardware. To avoid the hardware charges, you must return the items personally to our service center, by ‘appointment only’.”
I was furious and did not schedule an appointment.
“I will be over.”
I immediately drove over to their strip mall service-center and stood in line for ‘only’ an hour.
Why waste a bad mood? I say.
Eventually, I am called. I set the cable box and remote control down on the service counter. A large male customer service troll gathers my old Cable TV hardware and trundles it to a back room, no doubt to issue it to someone else.
The troll returns to the counter, surprised that I am still there. He grumps at me.
“Would you please stand aside and let the next person up?”
I stare right back at him.
“Where is my receipt?”
The troll continues.
“You will get a receipt in your final service bill.”
I fold my arms and stand my ground.
“No. I would like a receipt now, please. If there is a problem, let me speak to the manager.”
The troll gives me a grimaced smile.
“I am the manager, and we don’t give out receipts, so would you please move out of the way…”?
“Yes, you do, and I am not leaving here without one. I am not having your company sending me a bill charging me hundreds of dollars for all this old, obsolete crap. I have paid you pirates enough. Please don’t make me call the police. You know as well as I that you are required by law to give me a receipt for returned hardware.”
The troll slams his fist on a pad, drags it and scribbles something on it, with a
“Grump, Grump, Grump.”
He scribbles the device names and serial numbers on the pad and violently tears a page off, wads it up, and throws it at me. I pick the wadded receipt up from the floor, read it to see if it is complete, not moving from my place at the counter. The troll walks out from behind the counter.
Is this troll going to slug me?
He starts talking to the person in line behind. He continues to aggressively stare at me, but I avoid eye contact. I walk out of the service center, now crowded with people holding cable boxes, no doubt to cancel.
The Cable TV business model must be passé.
Vowing to never do business with that company again, never receiving any subsequent communications until,
Scene 3. Solicitors
January 2017, when two cheerful young men materialize at my front door. They are both wearing shirts displaying the logo of my erstwhile Cable TV service provider. I open the inner door, and we regard each other through the metal bars of my security door.
I am happy to give them my opinion of their employer, but I know they will not relay my message, as my opinion is not essential to anyone at that company. All Cable TV service providers regard their service as ‘essential’, take it or leave it!
I am glad that I have my Internet access through a Digital Subscriber Line (DSL).
I listened to the boys’ sales pitch, featuring the usual a first-year bait-and-switch subscription rate, with a subsequent three-year commitment at a much higher rate. They cannot tell me what my subsequent higher rate would be. Saying only.
“It depends.”
I related my prior experience with their company, and they both nodded their heads, as if they were listening and agreed with me.
They are pulling out subscription forms as I shout to them a final “NO” and firmly close the front door in their smiling faces.
Through the door, I hear one say to the other.
“He’ll be sorry…”
Scene 4. OTA-TV
A modern digital Over-The-Air Television (OTA-TV) receiver system works much like the 1950s analog television receiver systems. An antenna is mounted as high up as possible, usually on the roof of the house, for best reception. The TV channel selector is projected on the screen. The old channels, such as 2, 4, 5, etc. still exist, but these channels may host sub-channels 2-2, 2-3, 2-4, each with separate, typically unrelated, programming schedules. The modern OTA-TV ‘digital’ format allows for many more channels, so periodic re-scanning is necessary to add them to the channel selector TV display. The old analog TV video small screen aspect ratio of 4:3 with a video definition of 480i, has been augmented by the new wide screen size ratio of 16:9 and high definition video formats of 1080p or greater.
In March 2017, I decided to set up an OTA-TV system to augment my Internet streaming services. Free ‘electromagnetic’ station broadcasting was the only home TV service available in the middle of the last century. Broadcast TV has become obscure, with the rise of Cable TV and Internet streaming services.
I called my ‘construction friend’ who installed a metal pipe antenna mast with a large VHF-UHF TV antenna, ran the cable to the Cable TV distribution box in my attic, providing service throughout my house.
All went well for a few months. I received hundreds of stations, in many languages, from several transmission sources. But, with time, the received signal quality declines. We used interior-grade cable, and the sun baked off the insulation, leaving the bare wires. In addition, the wind draped the TV cable over the garage floodlight.
One beautiful Fall morning, I am standing in my driveway, waiting for my sister, as we are going out to breakfast, then shopping. I looked up to see the deteriorating antenna cable dangling down, teasing me.
I can fix this! It will only take a minute!
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
I retrieved the extension ladder from the garage and leaned it against the garage roof. I deliberately placed the ladder legs far out from the wall to avoid crushing the rain gutters.
Too far out.
I climbed the ladder and onto the house roof, quickly and successfully completed the task of running the new cable.
Stepping on the third rung of the ladder, preparing to descend to the driveway.
Scene 5. Splat
I stepped onto the top rung of the extension ladder, feeling satisfied with my accomplishment. The extension ladder leg footings suddenly slipped out away from the wall on the slick concrete. Trapped, standing upright on the top rung of the ladder, I plummeted feet first, watching the hard concrete driveway as it rose to smite me.
There was a sudden burst of painful red and a loud bang as the ladder struck the driveway pavement. I collapsed over the fallen ladder. All is quiet.
I tried to stand and cannot. My left foot, still attached to my ankle, was lying at a grotesque angle, to one side of my leg. Staring at my leg, confused, I did not immediately realize what had happened.
Did I break my leg? Why isn’t there more pain?
Fortunately, I had my trusty old 'flip-phone' on my belt.
I called my sister who, on answering, thinking I was calling because she was running late, says to me.
“I’m coming! Don’t give up on me!”
(I miss my old LG flip-phone. It was subsequently removed from service by my wireless telephone service provider. My new smart-phone 'replacement' would not have survived my Fall.)
“I think we may need to take a detour to the county hospital emergency room before breakfast. Oh, and be careful pulling into the driveway. Don’t run over me.”
“What did you do?”
“You’ll see…”
My sister arrives at my house and carefully pulls next to me lying in the driveway. She tries to drag me into her van, but I am too heavy and I cannot help. I am stuck in the driveway.
“I had better call The Truck.”
I called ‘911’ on my flip phone. The county sheriff’s emergency receptionist answered.
“County emergency services. What is your emergency?”
“I have fallen, and I can’t get up.”
“The Truck is in-route.”
Scene 6. ER
A few minutes after my call to ‘911’, I heard approaching sirens blaring, to alert all the neighbors to come out and look at the old man, who was lying dead in the driveway. A large red fire truck and an ambulance then arrived from nearby County Fire Station 21. Several large 'fire-dogs' emerged from the fire truck and examined me and my foot. They don’t ask about the incident, as the torn-down rain gutters and the collapsed ladder piled in the driveway told the story. They gently lifted me onto a stretcher and loaded the stretcher into the ambulance. The ambulance then backed out of the driveway and headed to the County Hospital a few miles away, with my sister following in her van.
We arrived at the County Hospital Emergency Room entrance area. I was then taken out and carried to the ER waiting area on the stretcher. After waiting in the ER entrance hallway for some fraction of an hour, I was wheeled into the ER ward and two polite but large bovine orderlies gently lifted me into a bed. This ER ward room had ten mostly occupied beds separated by draw curtains.
An ER doctor entered my curtained area after a short time. She is young and slight, like a mouse in a white coat. She bent down and peered into my face through her wire-frame, nineteenth-century style glasses, precariously perched on the bridge of her narrow nose, with the wire earpieces framing the high-cheekbones of her thin bony face over prominent incisor teeth. The large round lenses of her glasses comically magnified her bulging eyes into saucers. Her face was alive with expression, darting black pupils, wrinkling pink nose, and curling pink lips.
How do glasses even stay on that nose of hers? Tape? Glue?
The doctor examined me thoroughly, but she caught me staring at her odd face movements. She turned her head to face me and grinned into my stare, she asked,
“What happened to you?”
I gave her a summary version of The Fall.
The ER doctor then moved quickly to the end of my bed and stared at my left foot. Without any warning or permission, she grabbed my limp left foot with both hands. Presuming that my foot issue was a simple joint dislocation, she attempted to set my foot back into the shattered ankle socket by violently pushing, pulling and twisting my foot with all of her strength.
I was startled by the doctor’s sudden actions. Although her actions were probably painful, I didn’t react, but laid limp, oblivious to my pain while being jerked back and forth. I was fixated on the bouncing ER doctor and her succession of facial expressions with her physical effort.
Meanwhile, my poor sister witnessed the doctor’s possibly destructive activities, panicked, jumped up from her chair, reached out over my bed, guarding me from the doctor, protested.
“Stop it. You are hurting my brother. Get away!”
As the ER doctor retreated out of the booth curtain and away from my angry sister, I was sad to see the cute doctor go, waving to her.
“I am hungry, I didn’t get breakfast.”
The doctor nodded and waved back with her odd smile. The doctor returned, handed me a sandwich with a wink, and turned to walk out. I asked her.
“Doctor, how would you like to adopt and old weasel? Free to a good home. Housebroken (usually).”
“I already have one.”
As she left, she waved back to me again, laughing.
My sister sat down, still grumbling about the doctor’s treatment of me. I stared at the ceiling and the curtains.
The curtains suddenly move aside, revealing a large bear of a man, a sharp contrast to my small female ER doctor. Smiling as he walked up to the side of my bed. I presumed him to be the resident orthopedic doctor, standing tall and wide, blocking out most of the room light. He spoke in a low melodious voice, with a friendly, but toothy grin.
“Hello and welcome, I am doctor 'Smokely'. What happened to you?”
I am not used to seeing giant monsters up close, even if they do appear friendly. He peered down at me, the victim, lying in the ER bed on my back like a dead slug. He appeared to me to be a large brown bear: massive, handsome, reassuring and strong. I also notice that inside his white coat he is wearing a smartly tailored suit.
Where did that big bear find such a good tailor?
The orthopedic doctor reached for my foot, wiggling his large paw ‘fore-toes’.
“Let’s have ‘a look’ at that stubborn ol’ foot!”
I don’t think he is planning just ‘a look’ with those large sausages.
The doctor firmly grasped my left foot and began to rotate it in the broken ankle socket. I screamed in pain.
He stopped rotating my foot and smiled.
“Am I hurting you? Do you need a painkiller?”
“I have trouble with painkillers, they make me sick, and I hallucinate.”
His efforts at resetting my left foot proved no more effective than the ER doctor’s attempts. However, his attempts were much more painful, as he was much stronger. He finally stopped with my sister’s screaming.
Egad! What a ‘grip’ he has!
The ER staff had had enough of my screaming. An orderly pulled up a gurney and drug me into it. I am wheeled into a near-by storage room. Nothing more can be done for me in the ER, they were busy and needed the bed.
Alone in the stark white storage room, my sister stared at me as we waited for the doctors’ decision on my fate.
Scene 7. Writer's Block
The county hospital is located adjacent to a busy and poorly marked, multi-interstate, freeway interchange. The hospital gets a lot of ‘ground meat’ business from those freeways, so emergencies from the road above are usually the highest priority for the orthopedic (and other) surgeons.
So, I wait most of the day in the storage room for the surgeons to finish their high-priority cases. Toward the end of the day, I am wheeled into a surgery suite, laid out onto a surgery table, strapped down and immobilized. A nurse stabs my arm with a hypodermic needle with a plastic tube connected to a hanging intravenous drip. The surgical process begins with the anesthesiologist asking me to count backward from ‘one hundred’. I do not remember saying ‘one hundred’.
My eyes focus on the ceiling of a different hospital room. I look down at my bare legs and see that my left foot, ankle, and part of my lower leg are encased in a massive white plaster block, the same shape, mass, texture, and color of a standard concrete wall block. The block has eight thin, bright silver, metal rods sticking out at odd angles.
I presume that these long rods go all the way through the flesh and into the ankle bones, to immobilize everything until the reconstruction surgery.
As I am meditating on the events of the day, staring at my new Block on the end of my left leg. I hear a soft knocking sound at the open door frame. I responded to the polite knock.
“Please come in, the door is open to all.”
Four large, hunched, male figures in suits, slowly enter the room and face my gurney. I presume they are hospital administration staff pronouncing my ‘disposition’. They are all wearing solemn frowns and dower facial expressions, suggestive of Asian and European dragons.
Uh oh. It looks like bad news.
The center entity, presumably their boss, speaks.
“We must wait several days to a week or more, before reconstruction surgery, for the swelling to subside. Furthermore, we are not sure when we will have surgeons and the surgery suite available, so we are sending you home to wait. We will call you to set an appointment for the surgical reconstruction.”
I was mortified and protested.
“I can't go home like this!”
My sister added.
“My brother lives alone. No one can care for him at home in this condition. We will have to send him to an assisted ‘medical care’ facility.”
The orthopedic surgeon that I first met in the ER was outside the room listening to the administration’s conversation. He enters the room and speaks.
“I don’t think we should wait. His severe fracture should be set promptly, or it may not set at all, especially at his age.”
He must be responsible for my care, he has my age working to my advantage.
The hospital administrators grumble to each other about whether to let me stay in the hospital until the reconstruction surgery that the lead surgeon says is a priority. The oldest entity turns away from the scowling, grumbling group and walks over to the side of my bed. He turns and faces me through his rimless square framed glasses.
With that thin mustache, short beard, high cheekbones and large nostrils, he does look like a dragon.
“The hospital is short of ward rooms. Because of the new hospital construction, more ward rooms were torn down that have been replaced. This is another reason we wanted to send you home. If you stay, you will be moved to a ward room of the old hospital wing that is still standing, where we are sending our patient 'overflow', at least until the new hospital ward wing construction is completed.”
“Services and staff are limited in that building, especially at night and on the weekends. Telephone and TV service have been discontinued, room heat is limited. The room will likely be cold and isolated.”
Before I can reply, the old dragon stares up at the ceiling, pausing before revealing something else to me. He speaks again.
“That old ward wing is scheduled to be demolished soon. It is all that remains of the original County Hospital that was built even before my time. This old building is 'settling', and we have had comments and even complaints about sounds claimed to be heard in that building, especially at night. You must agree not to complain about the isolation, services, or any sounds you may hear, day or night.”
Facing the monster and his Draconian terms for me to stay, I forced a smile up at his clinched teeth, having no choice but to nod in agreement and capitulation.
“Yes, I promise to be good.” I lied.
And what is with that weird warning?
End of Chapter 1. Fall of 2018