Save The World Entire

By Darren Lisse MD

So, you ask, who should read this book? Certainly anyone involved in the medical field. It may

overwhelm that all time favorite The House of God. Clearly, anyone who is interested in the

trials, foibles, illnesses, and tribulations that affect people everywhere. It's chock full of true

events and humorous stories that actually occurred that on occasion beggar belief. And

foremost, anyone who someday will be lying unclothed in an Emergency Department bed

staring up at a complete stranger who will be asking you the most intimate questions about

your health and behavior before pawing you mercilessly and then sticking sharp needles into

your body. That pretty much includes everyone on the planet. Just remember we have control

over the narcotics that you undoubtedly will need for that terrible pain so you'd better be nice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Darren Lisse MD
• Release date: Apr 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224464883

Book preview

Contents

Introduction

The West Virginia pre-test

Growing up

On becoming a chef

College days

Good deeds

Meet the parents

Searching for a life partner

Meeting the parents: right woman this time

Med school interviews

Medical school

Evelyn

Ronald Reagan

My modeling carrer

Internship

Lepers

AIDS

Highland hospital

On how I arrived in West By-God Virginia

A word or two about west virginia

Museum curator

The west virginia medical staff

With regard to my first shift in west virginia

Speaking of head injuries

The incident at the bridge

This one pissed me off

Why not restore a house

The incident at the other bridge

Election landslide

A new drug for a new age

Why not restore another house

Time to move

Reston

Baksheesh

We may as well get this part over with

A likely story

Getting married

Move it on over

School time

The auction

Taking it overseas

Cameron's Coach and a life lesson

Cameron

Scooby

The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority

Workplace Medical Services

Awakening without a penis

The FBI, CIA, and various sundry dignitaries

EDstat

Work related injuries

9/11

Anthrax

These are a few of my favorite things

Not my pants

Ebola

Patient satisfaction

Drug mules

I was here first

Nec fasc

Redskins

Lawsuits

Full circle

Covid

God

Where do we go from here

The West Virginia post-test

INTRODUCTION

First, a brief education for those of you younger than forty. The following memoir includes references to the days of yore, a time in which people communicated through archaic methods such as speaking on the telephone or writing actual notes and letters with pens and ink. A time when the latest news flash wasn’t displayed a minute after it occurred and where texting fruit and vegetable emojis hadn’t been invented and didn’t reference any sexual organs. It was a simpler and slower world. Not horse and wagon slow, but certainly different from now. All of what you will read is true, although admittedly filtered through my aging neurons. Some things may not seem plausible because so much of the technology has changed in the world in the last 40 years. Medical education and practice has also changed significantly, and not necessarily for the better in all ways. On the plus side there are modalities available now to eradicate diseases which were pretty much 100% fatal in the past. The rapid development of the medications, diagnostic tools, and treatments are nothing short of miraculous. In short, the science of medicine has grown exponentially over my many years. Unfortunately, what has been sacrificed, and for no good reason other than profit margin, was the art of medicine. Art takes time, as does human interaction, particularly when related to the patient-physician relationship. Over the years physicians have slowly seen their power erode as the MBA’s and their EBITDA’s invaded. It was and is an unstoppable fungus that is eroding the very root of the medical tree of life. Primary care doctors are now required to treat a ridiculously high number of patients a day and given time slots in which to do so. Our Emergency Department at Reston was expected to see all patients within 10 minutes of their arrival. Not infrequently during a shift I was multiple times involved in an extreme battle to keep someone alive. Was it the expectation of the hospital’s administration that I was to walk away from the stroke or heart attack patient to examine and order an Xray on a sprained ankle just to keep their time clock happy? The answer was yes. As the years passed there erupted endless graphs with huge numbers of incoherent columns displayed by the CEO at every meeting showing every conceivable statistic. At one meeting late in my career when asked why it was now taking 2 minutes longer this year than last to see and discharge a patient I offered that it was all my fault, as I am much older now, and what with a prostate the size of a cantaloupe it takes me exactly 2 minutes longer to pee. This was not received with the obvious good humor with which it was intended. In all those many years of practice I was blessed with 11 different hospital CEOs. The first ones were really good people and the one that lasted the longest became one of my best friends despite an incredible difference in our political opinions. Slowly but surely the nice guys retired or moved up the corporate ladder. The last one was pretty much a living nightmare. In his mind strict adherence to those median times some non-clinician had cooked up in their office to improve productivity was critical as a company man whose bonus was undoubtedly tied to these metrics. Often I thought it would be awfully nice to go into his office and insist that he follow my new corporate rules. To start with, no more messing around on your phone during meetings because that simply sends a message to all in attendance that you are too important to be bothered with them and what they have to say has no value. Next, stop playing solitaire in your office and get off your ass and maybe come visit the wards to say hello to the patients and employees. And last, since you’re so enamored of all these time intervals, let’s watch yours. Every phone call must be answered on the first ring. Every email must be dealt with within 5 minutes. Every individual who wants a word with you must be brought in immediately without appointment and all their concerns resolved within 10 minutes. Metrics, oh how I hate that word, which for some reason has taken over the world. Does the measurement of every aspect of our existence really add to the quality of our lives? In the ED each counted minute spent in documentation at a computer so you can collect data translates to a discounted minute taken from patient care. I assure you that it takes extra time to speak with an elderly debilitated man and his family or to adequately assess and treat a paranoid schizophrenic. So to the insurance monsters, lawyers, and hospital systems that promote all these requirements I say shame on you. What you are doing is destroying a relationship between the physician and their patient, and you are doing it to pay yourselves exorbitant salaries and to show your shareholders an extra penny per share in the upcoming quarter. To the Federal government that condones and promotes all this, please spend your time on solving weightier issues such as world peace and international famine. Maybe give it the old college try to keep the government open for longer than a month. I know the kraken has been released and there’s no putting it back in its cage. But honestly we managed all this for several thousand years rather well without any of you. Hippocrates and Galen served their patients in ancient Greece in a fine manner. Granted the barber, surgeon, and dentist in the Middle Ages were basically the same guy but that made for one stop shopping. All those years physicians were respected and felt truly worthy in their pursuits. Patients were happy and felt like somebody actually cared about them and their family. Insurance companies didn’t exist to steal money from both patients and doctors to line their own greedy pockets. So go away and leave us alone so we can restore the doctor-patient relationship of ages past. The country will be far better served without you. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

In 40 years of practicing Emergency Medicine I saw on average about 3,500 patients a year. A few simple calculations means a total of 140,000 individual patient encounters not to mention somewhere between 1 and 6 family members for each. That’s an incredible number of human beings to deal with in an environment where stress levels can become pretty extreme. Naturally I saw more than my fair share of complex medical cases including stokes, heart attacks, asthma, newly diagnosed cancer, and whatever else could possibly go wrong with the human body. I also cared for a rather astonishing number of trauma cases. When I started in the ED it was not uncommon that the one doctor, one nurse, and one technician set-up would receive nine critical patients from a head-on collision. It was truly like drinking from a firehose. The tales to be told in the forthcoming chapters begin with highlights of my early years and education and some interesting occurrences that happened during my practice. While I could recount each and every routine case it’s unlikely that this would hold a reader’s interest for long. So while I intend no offense to the kidneys, admiring them as fine organs indeed, they will be unlikely to be mentioned much here. Folks like the juicy stuff.

THE WEST VIRGINIA PRE-TEST

As one may or may not be aware all physicians are required to maintain their licenses with Continuing Medical Education. The amount of hours varies by state but one can obtain these through meetings, lectures, online courses, and several other means. But if it isn’t done when licensure comes up every two years you may be audited and if they find out you didn’t comply then it’s no license for you. Sometimes I went to meetings to acquire these but whenever the mood struck or an interesting email arrived offering CME I often thought I’d grab an hour or two of credit.

Most of the online courses offer the same format. Usually there is a pre-test of 5 or 10 questions that proves to you how much of a moron you are regarding the subject to be presented. Then the video is shown and if you’re lucky the topic is both interesting and presented by someone who will keep you awake. After the show is over the post-test (often the same 5 or 10 questions) must be completed proving that you absorbed the information and are now competent at least for the next 48 hours to apply what you learned until it leaves your mind completely and you revert back to the same idiotic state you began with.

So here’s our West Virginia Pre-Test. The Post-Test (and answers) will be provided when you finish reading this book. Providing you stay awake.

First the details of the case. And yes this really happened…

One Thanksgiving evening in the ED a call came over the EMS radio that they were transporting a young man with a gunshot wound to his face that wasn’t conscious or breathing all that well. When he arrived it turned out they were right. He had a perfect little hole in his upper left cheek that looked to be about the size of a .22 caliber bullet. We went to work immediately to stabilize him in the usual fashion by inserting a breathing tube and attempting to resuscitate him. A quick portable Xray showed that the bullet had shattered and was currently in many pieces scattered throughout his brain. This for the non-medical personnel out there is generally not a good sign. Of course the state troopers arrived to try to figure it all out since it appeared a crime may have been committed. While all this was going on another EMS call came in about a middle aged man who was complaining of chest pain and had a history of having a heart attack. When they wheeled him in it turned out I recognized him from several prior visits and although he was having chest pain it didn’t appear on initial evaluation that he was having a heart attack.

Please answer the following questions. Write them down in ink and no number 2 pencils with erasers. You need to answer 75% correctly to pass.

1.What the hell happened? It’s Thanksgiving night for God’s sake.

2.Who shot the young man?

3.Who came in next on foot and not complaining of any medical issues?

4.Who accompanied that individual?

5.What do they want?

6.What do you do with the man having the chest pain?

GROWING UP

Like many folks today I’m quite interested in genealogy. Before this DNA thing took off I knew from family lore the basics back a few generations. I knew for a fact that all my ancestors were Jewish all the way back to Abraham. They undoubtedly lived happily raising sheep and growing olives on the fertile but unfortunately indefensible flat plain of Judea and Samaria wedged between the Mediterranean Sea and the Judaean desert. It just happened to be the route between mighty kingdoms like the Egyptians to the west and the all sorts of mean and unfriendly folks to the east. The Old Testament, known as the Torah in Judaism, is chock full of a great deal of begetting, smiting, and wandering. Over the centuries the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians, many of whom must have really liked sheep and olives, decided to pass through and kill, rape, and enslave the local inhabitants. All this went on for what seemed like an eternity until the Romans finally showed up. The Roman method of world conquest was to march the legions in, wipe out any local resistance, and then basically set up a system of government that included a Roman governor and a friendly assortment of the populace that would follow the rules. The rules included paying tribute to Rome and generally not stabbing Roman officials to death. This was something the Jews, and in particular the Zealots, didn’t seem capable of agreeing to. No amount of forced labor and crucifixions seemed to solve the problem so in the end the Romans just gave up and kicked everybody out. The Jews wandered everywhere since they were particularly skilled at this after all (see Torah as referenced above) and eventually ended up all over the place with the largest populations in North Africa, Spain, and Northern and Eastern Europe. Eventually they got kicked out of some of those places too until the horror of the Holocaust became the aptly named Final Solution in Europe. Fortunately for me my ancestors saw the writing on the wall and left for the welcoming shores of America. My father’s father was from Lvov, now part of Ukraine but originally attached to either the Russian, Polish-Lithuanian, or Austro-Hungarian empires depending upon the century. At one time up to a third of Lvov’s population was Jewish. But my great-grandparents had it up to here with the discrimination and persecution so they packed up the house around 1890 and came to Philadelphia. My father’s mother was from Iasi, Romania, a descendent of Jews who probably originated in Germany since their last name was Braunstein. Her parents also ended up arriving in Philadelphia about the same time and settled in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Somehow they all ended up in Atlantic City NJ, a barrier island which at the beginning of the 1900’s was one happening spot. The famous Boardwalk was lined with luxury hotels that were always packed full of vacationing Philadelphians in the summer. No one ventured out on the Boardwalk without their finest clothes and jewels since it was a promenade on which to see and be seen. After all they didn’t base Monopoly on Scranton. Amusement piers jutted out into the ocean and hosted all manner of entertainment. My father’s parents met at a dance on the Million Dollar Pier, fell in love, and married in 1921. They didn’t have any money but weathered the Depression as well as the next family and ended up buying a house in the 1940’s in what was then the suburban part of Atlantic City on Bartram Avenue away from the night life and bright lights. The island was really thin there so it was 2 blocks in either direction to the ocean or bay. In the summers they rented the house to wealthy city folks from Philly and lived in the basement. During one terrible summer storm when I was there the ocean and bay decided to have a meeting in the middle and the basement and all inhabitants were afloat. My grandfather had lost his leg to cancer the year I was born and trucked around on crutches when he wasn’t falling asleep in his chair. Most days summer days he could be found there with a lit cigarette and an AM radio listening to the Phillies blow yet another game. My nana doted on us and made a mean borscht. I recall all this so well because if you said beach and slobbery kisses I was all in as a child.

My mother’s parents were of a different ilk. My mother’s father was the son of a merchant who left Ulm, Germany at about the same time as the Atlantic City contingent on the other side. He came to the United States apparently not to seek his fortune but mostly because he was pissed off at his family. They owned multiple department stores in various cities and had quite a bit of wealth but believed strongly in the concept of primogeniture. In other words, my great-grandfather, as the second son, was due to inherit squat. So he left, immigrating to the German speaking areas along the Pennsylvania-Maryland border. He settled in Cumberland, Maryland and opened his own haberdashery store downtown. The building is still there. Sadly most of the family he left behind did not survive, having been slaughtered by the Nazis. His son, my grandfather, was born in 1907 and decided he wanted to go to medical school. He enrolled at the University of Maryland and graduated in 1933. My mother’s mother was from a very accomplished family in Latvia who basically came to America to escape the czar’s pogroms. As if things weren’t bad enough with in America with run-of-the-mill anti-semitism from the surrounding population it turns out that German Jews didn’t feel that Russian Jews were good enough for their children to marry. But somehow my grandparents managed to overcome all objections or just didn’t give a shit and marry they did settling eventually in a large multi-level house in an upscale neighborhood in suburban Baltimore. My grandfather on that side was a gentle, brilliant, and humorous man who really provided the impetus for my becoming a doctor. His wife was a witch. She never learned to drive or cook and spent most of her time smoking cigarettes and playing the stock market from the luxury of her pink shag round bed. She had very strict regulations regarding her home with regard to her grandchildren. We were on arrival immediately relegated to the den downstairs that had a bar. We were too young to get into the liquor but there was a TV and there were always some stale Cheese puffs made in the pre WWII era to be had. The two places that were absolutely forbidden to us were my grandfather’s office on the first level and her cedar closet off her bedroom where she kept her furs. So naturally as soon as she disappeared for a moment we made a beeline for both. The cedar closet was one cool place which I can still smell today. But the real draw was my grandfather’s office that had a variety of metallic devices that could probably have been used in the torture rooms of the Middle Ages and huge glass syringes that easily could have supplied antibiotics to a hippo. But by far the biggest prize was the ability to handle and examine a real skull that he had named Oscar. Messing with a real dead skull gave me a one up on the other kids at Halloween. Oscar, for his part, sat upon his desk staring blankly into your little soul begging to be fondled. My grandfather had a clever nickname for everyone. He called me Minuscule since I was from birth, well, huge.

My parents met on the aforementioned Boardwalk in Atlantic City. A swarthy young sailor and his incredibly fair and red-headed bride to be came together when my grandmother introduced them in the jewelry store where she worked. So there I was the third of five sons born to a Navy veteran and a stay at home mom in Baltimore although I grew up mostly in the Washington DC suburbs. My Dad joined the Navy and went to sea when he turned 18 just after the victory in Europe. He was on the troop transports that brought soldiers home from the war in 1946. A large number of these ships left from Italy and he loved that county which he learned a great deal about during shore leave. It was the reason I was subjected to the torture of endless operatic arias on long car trips when for God sakes the Orioles game was on. I believe the KGB invented this. Where he found those stations on an AM/FM radio was a true conundrum but find them he did. I always wondered why I had to eat repetitive Sunday breakfasts of salami and eggs when the man was a Jew from southern New Jersey.

My dad first went to pharmacy school on the GI bill and then later re-enlisted with the Navy during the Korean War. After that he got an engineering degree and worked with a new idea called computers. His speciality in the days of punch cards and reel to reel tapes was working in inventory management with drug store chains. My mother of course ruled the roost and if you pissed her off you were dead meat as soon as Dad came home. One always had a clue if trouble was coming because she had a novel way of warning you. Somewhere along the line she picked up an inexpensive but exceedingly effective wooden piece of art that may have been intended to be a key holder but instead functioned as a warning beacon. It had a a dog house painted on it on the left and five little beagles. Each was equipped with a little hook as was the dog house. It hung on the wall just inside the kitchen entry door we all used. (I’m certain there was a front door in that house but I couldn’t tell you where it was since none of us were allowed to use it). Anyway if you came home from school and your dog was in the doghouse there was going to be hell to pay. The problem was there was no appeals process. When you were 2 ft 4 and your ex-Navy Dad was 6 foot 4 all he had to do was use The Voice. And if the infraction was exceedingly vile he had severe punishments like going to bed after dinner or the auto-de-fe equivalent of no dessert for two weeks. Burn me at the stake but don’t take away my ice cream.

As the third of five sons in our scientifically oriented Jewish family it became necessary to view this growing up thing as an experiment. Although my brothers, who all are incredibly successful in their own rights may well disagree it’s abundantly clear that in every case perfection and consequence is attained in the middle of any research. The first two trials in any study are involved with honing the equipment and ideas and the last two are commonly afterthoughts to see if any improvements can be made. It’s that middle run that is the shining star and such was of course the case in our family. Anyway being third wasn’t so bad. I ended up being the tallest at 6 feet 6 inches. I had hazel brown eyes and copious curly brown locks, the former of which I still possess although the latter seems to have remarkably disappeared in later life. As I recall our mother gave us each a written questionnaire when we turned three. It looked like a voting card but only had two choices, doctor or lawyer, with an adjacent checkbox to indicate your choice. It is true that the others did through some fluke of nature all become equally successful in that 4 of us became physicians and the last one has a PhD in either Physical Chemistry or Chemical Physics. His PhD had something to do with super cold 3 degree Kelvin studies. When I asked him what that was about he explained that there was a significant amount of missing matter and energy in Einstein’s equations and if they could just figure out how to measure these dark particles and waves they could prove him right. If this was found it may explain that the currently rapidly expanding universe could eventually run out of gas and begin to contract back to the whatever existed before the big bang. I asked him if I should sell my condo or at least stop paying real estate taxes but he told me not to worry because the sun will eat the earth anyway in about 5 billion years and this whole expansion/contraction issue will take far longer than that. Anyway these days he’s usually busy running satellites into asteroids or measuring black holes or wormholes while the rest of us are exploring human holes.

There was an early although entirely undeserved blight on my record as the angelic child which hopefully by now has been completely expunged. I only bring this up in an effort to prove that as human beings none of us is prefect and we all have our flaws. I maintain to this day however that I was completely innocent and it was all a setup. It is an undeniable fact that I was arrested when I was five. At that time I used to hang around with the 8 and 9 year olds whose main enjoyment was derived from throwing rocks at the side of semis passing speedily along on Route 40 at the end of our street in Baltimore. We were all about the same height since I was already excessively tall for my age. They didn’t use big rocks but liked to hear the sharp dinging sounds that emanated from a successful launch of a fist sized piece of brown river stone impacting metal. One day while I was standing there with them watching it all take place an errant stone struck and shattered the windshield of a lady who was not the intended target. She stopped immediately on the shoulder and ran up the hill. Those of us with any brains scattered like rockets into the wind but I was only 5 and didn’t know I was supposed to run away. After all, I wasn’t throwing any rocks. But that woman grabbed me by the arm in a citizen’s arrest and demanded that I take her to my mother at once. This seemed reasonable to me at the time since she was hopping mad so that’s what I did. After explaining the entire incident to my mother she insisted that the police be called. My mother, being the law abiding citizen that she was, did just that. On their arrival the entire escapade was recounted again for their report at which time they turned to me to ask what exactly was the meaning of this outrageous behavior. To which I answered I didn’t know since I was only five. The policeman looked at the size of me and told me to stop lying at which time my mother piped up that this was in fact the unabashed truth. The policeman was still skeptical and asked her to provide my birth certificate. Thank God she knew precisely where it was or I was looking at 90 days in the hole. After perusing the document and showing it to the still angry woman they all agreed that I was certainly tall for my age but unlikely to be the perpetrator of the alleged misconduct. Just too stupid to run.

On moving to the Washington suburbs when I was six we found a house in a new mostly Jewish neighborhood. My friends were Ginsbergs and Steinbergs and Schwartzes. My honorary Uncle Sid and Aunt Betty Kramer lived directly across the street. They had two girls who were clearly destined to marry my two older brothers. They also had a son who was a year younger than I. I had no intention of marrying him but I was more than happy to play with his Hanukkah toys which were always much nicer than mine. The danger in that house I am sorry to say was Uncle Sid. The elementary school was a block away just past his house and he made it a mission of his every time I passed their door to run out, give me a hug, and turn me upside down before allowing me to pass. I loved every minute of it. When we hosted a joint celebration of my daughter’s graduation from PA school and my mother’s 90th birthday we invited the Kramers including Uncle Sid who by then was 93 and reliant on a wheelchair. During the requisite speeches to the hundred or so attendees I recounted the trials and tribulations of a defenseless child being constantly accosted on his way to secure an early education. I then invited Uncle Sid to come forward so we could reenact the scenario so everyone could get a visual but he said he had noticed that I had increased in size a bit and politely declined.

When I was in fourth grade a girl named Kathy announced to me that from that moment on I was to be her boyfriend. This was probably due to the well known fact that chicks dig tall intellectuals. As many girls were taller than boys at that age and Kathy was a prime example of this she zeroed in on me. I asked her what exactly was expected of me since kissing hadn’t been invented yet. She informed me that I was simply to tell all the other girls that I was spoken for if any other fourth grade harpy were to approach. This seemed okay with me. We moved to Tampa for a year shortly thereafter where my father got a job installing the computer inventory system for Eckerd Drug. Once he had completed it the company fired him and brought in much younger and cheaper employees to run it. We moved back to the DC area and once in a while I would get to visit my friends in the old neighborhood. This is when I found out that Kathy had become the school slut, whatever that meant. I suppose it was mandatory since every school seemed to have one. But what bad timing indeed that move proved to be for me. I didn’t know anything about women except that they were shaped kinda funny and would have been delighted to get some more information regarding them. And who better to provide this than a school slut who at one time I had first dibs on. It was damnable luck. I’d have to wait until later to explore just what women were all about.

Being the middle child wasn’t easy in the midst of all this chaos but as the Good Lord balances all he gave my youngest brother Scott a sweetness that he still has today and endowed my oldest brother Jeff with certain creative evil and occasionally homicidal traits. It’s a wonder any of the rest of us survived to adulthood Jeff is 4 years older than my second brother Brian and 5 years older than me. As a child, although I was mostly a near perfect paragon of virtue as mentioned, I did have a moment or two of odd habits. One was sleepwalking. Brian and I shared a bunk bedroom and the bathroom was adjacent to it. My parents like most loving parents left a nightlight on in there to guide me and assure my safety. A quick U turn and seat up or not in the middle of the night if nature called it was an easy trip there and back. One night when I was seven Jeff turned off the bathroom nightlight and illuminated a pathway down two flights of stairs which led out to the patio. Dutifully following the trail of luminescence as I had been imprinted I headed outside, urinated on an unsuspecting boxwood, and seeing Jeff there laughing reminded him that there was no bathroom out there. Honestly I could have been killed and I don’t think the boxwood particularly cared for it either. The second time he tried to off me when I was eight by taking the slats that supported Brian’s upper bunk out from under the mattress. I was studiously reading in my bed (it was either the Bible or the second book of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as I recall) when Brian hopped up at which time the combination of mattress and Brian came crashing down abruptly. Although the most likely outcome for me was paraplegia or limb amputation somehow I escaped unscathed. Let’s see whose beagle ass ended up in the dog house after that one.

Like all children in the 60’s we couldn’t wait for the yearly showing of The Wizard of Oz. For me it was a magical experience. I was far too young to lust after Dorothy and Toto was a rat dog with ears. I was scared shitless by that green witch and her flying monkeys and always wondered where they found all those little Munchkins. But no I stayed with it because of my man the Cowardly Lion. He and I had a lot in common which became more apparent as I grew older. Oversized, hairy, eminently lovable and funny. Sometimes I ask folks now who their favorite character was and a surprising number say the Scarecrow. But, I counter, he didn’t have a brain. Can’t help myself, I gotta throw this one in. No brain and hair just like Trump. Did someone know something in 1939? Anyway the point of the story is that after each yearly showing Jeff convinced Brian that a tornado was going to come up the stairs one night to get him and the poor child didn’t sleep well for 2 weeks. I told Brian it seemed unlikely that a tornado would make it up two flights with that 90 degree turn and nail him in the upper bunk. Little in reassurance was effective.

Jeff left the two younger ones mostly alone. I suppose it was because of the age differential but maybe he just felt sorry for a young hominid. He did convince my youngest brother Scott during his toilet training that there were lobsters in the toilet that only came out when you sat down. Giant lobsters like Lobzilla with monster claws. How the choices worked out between becoming a eunuch at two and eternal constipation is anybody’s guess.

Later in life when I was studying the Ottoman empire I read that when the daddy Sultan died in Istanbul the anointed successor son would have all his male relatives immediately strangled with a bowstring to be sure there was no competition. It was an Asian steppe maneuver originally engineered by the Mongols. I asked Jeff if he would have performed such a dastardly act and he