THE LONG AND WINDING...PROBE

I now have photos of parts of me I have never seen nor will ever see in person. 

Last Wednesday I underwent a colonoscopy and an endoscopy, both of which were filmed.  The wonders of digital photography!  These are truly what can be called close up shots.   Inside shots?  I'll let you look at them if you really want to.  I’m talking about this event because of the statistic my doctor gave me.  Six out of 100 people have colon cancer.  If it’s detected early, it can be zapped.  If not, you’re a goner.

All went well and I've been checked out top to bottom.  Or bottom to top.  I wasn't aware enough to know the order of things.  At any rate, it appears that, with the exception of a hiatal hernia and diverticulosis, both of which I already knew I had, I'm fine.  No ulcers.  Parts of me were clipped for biopsy and those parts came back negative.  That’s good news.

If you’ve never had a colonoscopy, here’s how it goes.  The process is so much more streamlined than it was nine years ago when I had my first one.  Three days before the procedure, you stop eating nuts, seeds, berries, and red or purple food.  I learned that most of what I eat is food with seeds, nuts and colored red or purple.  Some green.  Do you know how boring white food is?

The day before the procedure you eat no food at all.  You may have bouillion or beverages except coffee (no coffee) or jello, but not red or purple jello or beverages.   I think you can wear lipstick, though.

The day I didn't eat any food, only liquids, I thought about how at least three/fourths of the world every day has no food.  My head ached and my brain was foggy.  I knew why school students who don't have a breakfast can't think.  I'm so glad for people like my friend Georga who coordinates the summer Lunch Buddies program in my town, the ones who make sure kids get something to eat when school's out.  I wondered how actresses and ballerinas don’t eat day after day.  A day of fasting puts abundance in perspective.

At 4:00 p.m. you swallow two Ducolax pills to start the cleansing procedure.  At 6:00 p.m. you begin drinking 64 oz. of Gatorade mixed with 238 grams of Miralax.   For the next four hours you spend most of your time in the bathroom, so have a fascinating book ready.  I read Steve Martin’s new book, The Object of Beauty.   I learned all about the buying and selling of art over the past 20 years.   The Gatorade helped with my headache.  I slept very well despite getting up four times during the night.  The last time I had this procedure, I endured two days of fasting and a more violent cleansing, so this time I was pleasantly surprised.  It’s all relative, remember.

You can drink something the morning of the procedure, up until a certain hour.  No coffee, remember, and you should lay off the caffeine, too, so the nurse can find a vein.  Nurses have a difficult time finding a vein on me.  You’re already dehydrated and caffeine shrinks your veins even more.  I drank green tea, forgetting about the caffeine.  Then I started to worry because once in the past I got poked eight times by a needle and then was sent to the hospital where I think the expert there opened an artery or aorta or something similar.  I don’t like getting poked even once.

Once you stop fluid intake, you wait until time to arrive at the clinic.  Waiting is boring and for me with an overactive imagination, my muse on overdrive, nerve wracking.  I worried about the vein issue and the minute possibility the procedure could cause a tear. 

Finally we went to the clinic and I had to read and sign a waiver form that said in many different ways that if something bad happened, the clinic would not be held responsible.  Of course, all the terrible things were listed, just so I could worry even more.

While we were seated in the waiting room and I was worrying, a nurse came to get a gentleman also waiting.   She told him that the nurses could not find a vein on his wife and they couldn't spend any more time trying.  He was to come inside to a conference room where the doctor would talk with them both.  The man gathered up his things, softly saying, “Shit.”  Nurses walked the wife out of the preparation/recovery room.  When she saw her husband, she screamed and fell to the floor.  Several more nurses came running.  She flailed about and screamed for at least 15 minutes before she was upright again, calmed, and escorted into a conference room.  I saw it all right over the top of the receptionist’s head, happening in the hallway.  I recommend a wall be constructed there immediately.  (Hello? HIPA?)

I told my husband, "This is not what I need to see (or hear) right before I go in there."  I was already, with my vivid and overworking imagination, worrying about everything that could go wrong and thinking how pissed I'd be if they couldn't find a vein so I would have done all that fasting and pooping in vain. 

As soon as the door closed on the screamer, a nurse opened the door and said, “Karen?”  Why would a person want to go into that chamber of horrors after witnessing the scene that had just played out before me?  I didn’t want to, but I stood up, kissed my husband good-bye, not for the last time, I hoped, and followed her.  I was absolutely valiant.

We entered the preparation/recovery area.  The nurses’ station was centered in the large room, and curtained cubicles covered three walls.  A true ASS-embly line, I know my friend Jerry would say.  The room reminded me of those swimming resorts in the 1930’s, with their little changing rooms and the pool in the middle.  No swimming today.

The curtains drawn provide visual privacy, but every conversation up and down the walls can be heard just fine.  Everyone agrees that you can’t hear but you can.  We all got the same questions from the nurses who typed into the computers our answers.  Our blood pressure was taken and we removed our clothing and put on the cotton gowns.  The first nurse tried to get a vein.  Poke, poke, poke.  Nope.  Wasn’t happening.  I wondered if she was the one who had tortured Screaming Woman.  She left and returned saying that another nurse would come to give me an anti-nausea shot and insert the IV needle.  When she arrived, I told her to just use the vein in my hand.  That’s exactly what she did and my vein worry evaporated. 

Of course I was so nervous I had to pee, so I traipsed over to the restroom and back, holding on to the back of my gown.  I knew someone would soon be seeing my butt, but I didn’t want it to be just yet.

Back at my cubicle, I lay down and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  I don’t wait well.  I used all the meditation techniques I knew to try to calm myself down.  Chanting works best for me because I can focus my mind on the sound.  Silence never works because I have trouble shutting off my blathering mind.  I tried to chant the holy harmony chant I know, the most powerful healing chant that is the name of Jesus, but I was so nervous I forgot one of the words.  I began softly singing "Amazing Grace" but then I thought I'd better shut up because everyone can hear everything from every cubicle and that's a song usually sung at funerals.  Nothing else would come to my mind, so I lay there blankly.  FOREVER.  Almost.

Finally, a woman who looked too tiny to move my bed and me, transported me to one of the procedure rooms.

One funny thing that happened was that when all my tubes and wires were being hooked up by nurses, the song playing was, "Knock, knock, knockin' on Heaven's Door."  I told all who were assembled I surely hoped that wasn't prophetic.  They changed to another song and apologized.  Somebody there needs to do some deleting from his i-pod.  :-) 

Electrodes were placed on my chest and one under my heart, so for a couple of days afterward, my chest read, “OO.”  If you read from bottom to top, my torso read, “OOO.”  Ghostly.

Jeff introduced himself to me, saying, “I’ll be assisting the doctor today.”  He wore the blue smock and cap.  My doctor came in to talk with me.  He wore regular street clothes.  Right then I figured who really would be doing the dirty work.

The doctor told me what they would be doing, which I already knew because why would I be there otherwise?  He walked over to his computer and another death and dying song came from the speaker.

I removed the plastic device that held my mouth open so a tube could be inserted and told them they needed to get Elton and Leon's "Union."  Jeff said, “Thanks for the recommendation.  Now put the plastic piece back in your mouth.”  The next thing I knew, I woke up in my cubicle.

I was so glad when I woke up and it was all over and nothing at all hurt and hasn't.  Glad again when I ate dinner.  Really glad when I got the news Friday of a ten-year reprieve because all biopsies came back negative. 

If there is a medical procedure you should be having, then go do it.  People love you and want you around a bit longer.  Besides, now you get photos.

Burlesque

We went to see the film Burlesque last weekend.  This, even after I had read review after review panning it.  I don‘t care.  I idolize Cher and I’d go to see anything she was a part of.  I was not disappointed and neither was my husband who normally doesn’t care for this film genre.  I laughed, I cried, I clapped my hands, all the way through the film and at the end—just like everyone else in the theatre with us, including that guy sitting beside me. 

Critics complained that Christina Aguilera sang the hell out of every song.  Well, duh.  She did and her renditions were fabulous.  The moment she opened her mouth to sing, electricity zinged from the screen, transforming into a frisson of excitement and delight pinging up and down my spine.  That’s what musicals are all about.  The dancing was tantalizingly thrilling as well and would make one heck of a workout to do behind closed doors.   I wish I had just one of the glamorous costumes to wear around the house for a day.  Paul Giamatti made a loveable sidekick and got his own little sub-plot whose resolution was probably the most real-life scene in the film. 

Of course, the story was predictable and the characters as well.  Every commercial American film is predictable in that there is a certain formula that must be followed in order that the film be produced at all.  As an amateur screenwriter, I know that formula by heart.  What’s fun for me is to see how the screenwriter makes the story come alive and how it goes from point A to Z.  I know in the last 5-10 minutes every conflict will seem as though it cannot be resolved and then, magically, the writer presents the solution for every single one.  Voilà, the happy ending American audiences expect.

If you’re not paying attention all the way through, you miss the foreshadowing that makes resolution possible.  Who knew the seemingly innocent exchange about retaining air space rights between the seductive bad guy and the good girl trying to make it in L.A. and still retain her morals will have such import by the end of the film?  Writers know.  Nothing is in a well-written film without a purpose.

Besides Cher and Christina, the dancing, costumes and music, what I liked about Burlesque was that this film about a “naughty” entertainment form was not a naughty film.  There was no continually streaming F-word, no violence, no gratuitous sex, no car chases—none of the obligatories I detest, stuck in films for men ages 18-34 which we are told make up the largest movie-going audiences in the United States.  In Burlesque, morality reigned.  I need some of that, living in this chaotic world where often people don’t seem to care about anything or anyone, including themselves.

Here’s another thing.  Cher and I are the same age.  She is like the real me inside.  For a few hours and a few bucks, I can be her.  Cher learned her smarts the hard way, through life’s knocks and without the benefit of higher education, so I like listening to her in real life, too.  She tells it like it is.  She should be writing a book of her philosophies learned.  I know she can write because she wrote one of the best scenes in the film, the one where she shows Christina how to apply her stage makeup.  She works hard to be who she is and to look like she does.  Well, Cher and a few plastic surgeons, and an intense physical workout every day walking in the Malibu hills.  That perseverance and truth-telling inspire me.  I identified with the song she sang in the film.  Most women my age who’ve been through a world of crap would.

Diablo Cody (another wonder) wrote the first go-round script of this film and then it went through two other writers’ hands, ending up with final touches added by the director.  You can find out more information about the film on Wikipedia or at IMDB.com.  A sound track of the music is available, songs sung by both Christina Aguilera and Cher.

Like those critics, I have my own prediction.  This film will end up on Broadway and may inspire new forms of burlesque itself.  I’d like that, because being naughty while being nice is fun.

Just sit with the idea.

One of my favorite people, Karin Montgomery Kaser, is a school counselor, who thanks to difficult economic times in education, must work half-days at an elementary school and half-days at junior high.  Everyone knows half-days always turn into a full's day's worth of work to do crammed into a half day's worth of time.  Here's the philosophy Karin has created to help her deal with her life:  "If I frame the daily absurdity with art and poetry, then some days I cry, but mostly I am happy."

Banishing the Melanoma

I am sitting here at my desk illicitly.  I am supposed to have my leg elevated all the time above my heart.  That's OK if a person is lying down, but in my chair watching TV, that would mean my leg would need to be at almost a 90 degree angle and who can do THAT with your knee next to your lips?  I COULD do it, thanks to yoga, water aerobics and zumba, but not for a whole week and all the TV shows would be ruined with a giant leg in the middle of the screen.  A giant leg with a lumpy white bandage right in the middle.  So I'm sneaking a computer break.  I didn't want to get bed sores from lying around for hours at a time.  I do not languish well.

 

The operation went well.  The needles were the worst.  The nurse tried to get my attention off what she was doing by asking me questions, but Neal was in the room with me then and he kept answering them because he was as nervous as I was due to the fact he had a clear view to the savagery and I had to peer over my chest, so we foiled her plans.  Besides, that trick stuff never works on me anyway.  Most of the time I know exactly why people are doing what they are doing.  Neal told the nurse her tactics would not work on me because I was FOCUSED.  On the needles.

 

She said her shots would not hurt as much as the ones for the biopsy had.  That was .09% true.  I think I got eight shots all together.  I was busy blowing out breaths as the numbing agent was being squirted in so I lost count.  I was so tense my back was out of the chair and my blood pressure was 132/70 when it's usually 110. 

 

After the shots started taking effect, she told Neal she would walk with him out of the room, a nice way to say get out of here and he was very, very glad to go because he almost fainted from all the shot giving.  He grabbed up his book and coat and my purse and coat in one fell swoop and jetted from the room.  If anyone gave a prize for room-getting-out-of, he would've won.

 

The doctor came in and also a resident.  He asked me if I minded if he made the chair go back and relief flooded me.  He said that way I wouldn't have to see his handiwork.  I said I thought that was a super idea.  I could feel it and that was enough.  The cutting didn't take long but the stitching did.  When he was finished, he moved the chair back to sitting and I saw the incision which is about four inches long.  Then he showed me what he took out of my leg.  It's about the size of the plug that fits in the bottom of a bar sink.  I looked at it quickly and said, "Yeah.  Wow."  He left.

 

The nurse moved the chair down so I could get out of it and then she left to go get something, so I picked up the jar and sneaked another peek at the piece of leg.  Specimens are so interesting, even your own.  I almost dropped it.  I don't know what miracle saved me.  I would have been so embarrassed. 

 

When she returned, I got all the instructions of what to do and not do.  She said, "You look confused."  Well, duh. 

 

I said, "I'm trying to remember everything."  She said, "Oh, don't bother.  I'm giving you these sheets so you'll have everything written down.  I just wanted you to hear it all, too."  Whew.  I'm not too good at remembering things after my blood pressure's been up around 132 and a chunk of my leg is floating in a jar. 

 

I have ice on the incision now.  I have chanted through one healing CD and read the newest Diary of a Wimpy Kid book so I'm all mellowed and laughed out.   I did not have to cook dinner.  Thank heaven for small favors.

 

One of the lines on the instructions reads, "This incision should not be painful."  Huh?  I hope to heck that's true.  It itches right now.  Another line reads, "No strenuous exercise."  Darn!  That's what I'd had planned for tomorrow.  Now all that's on my to-do list is 1) lie in bed, 2) read books, 3) watch movies, 4) take shower at 2:30 because I have to wait that long. 

 

"Have a nice Absolut Ruby Red vodka and tonic" is not on the list because another line on the instruction sheet reads, "No alcohol."  Darn again!

 

From all indications I have made it through my little surgery successfully and should know results in a week.  I go back on the 29th for inspection.  In the meantime, I am gluing my knee to my ear.  Elevate, elevate.

 

(Also remember, if you have a mole or skin coloration mark that changes shape or color, hie thee to a dermatologist, pronto!)

 

PLUCK!

 

I first spotted it as I began to apply make-up before an outing with my Mah Jong group to see a local theatrical revue of the music of Cole Porter. 

AACCCHHH!  What I thought I saw was not De-Lovely.  Was what I saw true?   Or was it a trick of light?  Wrinkly revelations scare me on a regular basis in that larger-than-life-sized mirror. I shuffled to ascertain my reflection from a different angle.  Perhaps only a rearrangement of position was in order.

Ohmifreakinlordy, as my friend Judith says.  Holy fuckanoli as my friend Nancy says.  Shit!  (That’s me.)

That black hair sticking straight out like errant stubble dead center of my chin was real all right.  Thank you, hormone loss.

I fumbled for the tweezers and yanked out the culprit.  I felt no mercy for yet another signpost of my aging self.  Why had no one told me it was there?  I hoped it was because no one else had seen it.  At the same time, I knew that people can be polite when you least want them to be.

Another terrifying thought struck me.  What if there were more lurking?  I checked under my chin but the combination of light and shadow and the trying machinations it takes to see anything you really need to if you wear tri-focals foiled me.  Have you ever tried to look under your own chin?  Or in my case, chin, chin, and dewlap?  I decided to let what I didn’t know not hurt me and set off to enjoy my evening.

I relished the pleasure afforded me by music and the companionship of my friends.

Looking around the table at the musical revue, I reflected upon our assembled group.  I saw one friend who recently had a heart attack scare, one who has raised a son with a mental disability, one who cares for her ailing husband, one who has lost a breast, and two who have lost their husbands. 

 No one emerges air-brushed and perfect, loss-free, from the miracle of having lived.  All of my friends have their own facial hair to deal with.  Yet these women are beautiful.  Me, too.

Why?  When we have problems, we have suggestions, sharing what we’ve learned from life with each other.  Our lifetime acquired knowledge is prodigious, the group of us their own private Google.  We laugh and make each other laugh.  We create beauty with our paintings, sculptures, gardens, and jewelry.  One runs a county-wide program feeding hungry children.  We use our talents to love—our families, our friends, our communities. Yes, life has dealt us loss and our answer back, to a woman, is love.  Women who learn, laugh and love are beautiful, errant hairs notwithstanding.  

Once home, in the bathroom, passing the mirror, I thought, "Why not take another look?"  Late evening now, the ambient light was darker.  Shadows are often more revealing than light.  I notice on CSI the agents always leave the lights off when searching for clues.

AAARGH!  Right away I spotted three long and curly hairs, like three butterfly probiscae, happily nestled in their shaded refuge under my chin.  I could have braided them but instead I grabbed those tweezers again and plucked, plucked, plucked.  Sigh.

Remember that old Chinese curse, “May your life be interesting!”?  What a body does as it ages is interesting, all right.  Furrows and ridges appear.  Parts pucker and sag.  Joints ache.  Hair arrives where it’s never been before.  When you look in the mirror, you see your grandmother and your mother.  As much as you love them, you aren’t ready to be them.  Time travels too fast, especially at this end of life.

But you know what?  Despite what advertisements define as beauty for us, despite the fact the older we become, the more invisible we become to younger generations, despite the various declines we endure, despite our losses, we can take what life dispenses.

So what am I going to do about my hairy chin?  I think I’ll write a musical about the wonders on this side of life and call it Hair—the Next Generation.

The Marbled Blotch

So I went to the dermatologist because I thought the thing on the back of my
knee was a cancer.  It looked like the ones that my mom gets taken off her
face from time to time.  Nope, it was OK, and I had the whole body check,
ending with what I thought was a lovely dark brown marbled splotch on the
left side of my left knee. 

"That doesn't look good," the resident, Gretchen, said.  Three torturous needle pricks of lidocaine later, she
scraped off that artistic piece of leg for the lab.  Dr. Parker, the teacher doctor, said he'd call within
the week with results, and he did.  He gave me the name and phone number of the surgeon he
wanted me to use.  Same place, OHSU Center for Health and Healing.  5th floor. 

So far in my experience, there's been more slice and dice than healing.  And three
crummy pricks.  (Aren't there always crummy pricks in every story?)  Ariana, the surgeon's receptionist described for me the two methods that could be used. 

One was excision.  I know that means "cut it out."  OK.  The other was the Mohs method, which as she described it seemed like another level to Dante's Hell, one he didn't know about when he wrote
The Inferno.  Cut out, wait, analyze and come back for more of the same, again and again, until there's only clean tissue.  Oh, yippee!  Then Ariana told me I could not wait until December when my husband had a free day at work, that December would be TOO LATE and this had to be done as soon as possible.  So November 16th was the date we chose together. 

Since he's coming with, Neal will have to miss work that day.  She called later
with the semi-good news that after analyzing what Gretchen had scraped off,
the surgeon will use the "excise" method.  There's already a big hole where
Gretchen did her handiwork last week so I don't think that part of my
anatomy will be very happy to be re-sliced.  And I'm not looking forward to
the lidocaine pricks since that's an area always inflammed thanks to my
fibromyalgia pressure point and zumba dance.  And that's the knee that might have
to be replaced.  To Knee or not to Knee.  Going through all that new knee or not process comes next. 

Well, not really.  Having a colonoscopy on the 8th of December comes next.  Girls just
want to have fun!!!
I am calling Ariana tomorrow to see if I can take Xanax before I arrive at
their office.  I get so nervous that the adrenalin rush after-effects leave
me limp, light-headed and unable to control my muscles.  Xanax might unnerve
me enough to sail smoothly through it all.

Complaining is what I do best, as you can see.  Really, I am ecstatic
knowing that I felt I had to see a dermatologist even if it was for the
wrong thing.  I think my friend Frank, who died from this very thing, sent
me the message I needed to go.  So thanks, Frank.  I'm always open to
messages from any dimension.  Anyone have anything to say about my
intestines?  Anyone?

The Best Literature Teacher I Ever Had

     High school Junior English was a drag. Because I’d chosen not to take chemistry or Latin, my schedule placed me in the English class to accommodate those students who had failed the class once or those whose skills were below par. Performance expectations were low.
     To make matters worse, our instructor, Mr. A., had that very school year moved from teaching elementary school students to high school. He was not skilled in judging how much time students might take to complete an assignment. He sat at the front of the totally silent classroom, waiting. And waiting. The students struggled to finish reading the short stories; some of them reading the same stories they’d struggled with the year before. As the year drug slowly on, Mr. A must have realized there never would be a cogent, lively discussion on tone or mood or character from this bunch. He must have been bored to death. No speculation on that point necessary concerning me. Spending two or more days on a single short story until Joe across the aisle could finish reading it was painfully boring.
     Some students felt they’d lucked out to have been placed in an easy class. Not me. And not Susie Workman, who sat in front of me and who turned out to be the best literature teacher I ever had, high school, university or grad school.
     From somewhere, perhaps an older sibling, she procured popular novels, some of them banned, and she shared her bounty with me, passing to me a novel as soon as she finished reading it.
     After reading our required short story or poem and answering the requisite three to five questions following, Susie and I’d prop our huge textbooks open on the front of our desks and stick the delicious, new, forbidden novel in the middle of it and read the REALLY GOOD books.
     No other students ever noticed our clandestine reading. Still, given our conservative town and school administrators, I tingled with fear of exposure as I read Catcher In The Rye. Had we been discovered with this book in our possession, we’d have been expelled. The excitement I felt was the same as I fantasized it would be when the lips of the boy I’d been dying to kiss were coming to touch mine any second now. Joe across the aisle could have read this book and understood it, too, as it utilized much of the same vocabulary he employed.
     We read Lord of the Flies, and Franny and Zooey and To Kill A Mockingbird, among others.
     Choosing great literature wasn’t Susie’s only talent. She so impressed me when she said she’d memorized some Shakespeare. We’d had to read Julius Caesar the year before and never did it occur to me to memorize any of it other than “Et tu, Brutus?”
     During the remainder of passing period one day as we were settling in our seats, Susie remarked how this class reminded her of a soliloquy in Macbeth. She began reciting to me, “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time.” (Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5, 19-28) I’d never even heard of Macbeth but felt the poetic music of the speech and understood what a 16 year-old can of the meaning.
     The actress in me set straight away to learn that piece. The thought that life signifies nothing—how luscious is that to a girl full of teenage angst who wanted nothing more than to escape her crypt of a classroom and get on with real life before she turned to dust?
     Today, I can still recite Macbeth’s soliloquy, at this end of life when the meaning becomes more evident daily. Whenever I’m full of pent-up emotion, I act it out for myself and I feel better.
     Not only that, I later memorized and still have with me Hamlet’s advice to the players, “Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue.” (Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2, 1-36)
Thanks to Susie, I have found memorable segments in novels and plays I’ve wanted to keep with me forever. If I have not memorized them, I have written them on scraps of paper and tucked them into drawers and file folders where I can take them out at my leisure to enjoy anew.
     WWSR? What Would Susie Read? became my mantra as I chose reading material the rest of my adult life—my feminist and science fiction phase (which curiously occurred simultaneously), my Black Lit phase, my Native American phase, my spiritual/alternative lifestyle phase, my memoir phase.
     Although I haven’t spoken with her face to face for 47 years, I am certain she read Bright Lights, Big City when it first appeared. I know she’s read authors James Frey, Augusten Burroughs, Margaret Atwood, David Sedaris. I’ll bet she’s read the titles Middlesex; Eat, Pray, Love; The Glass Castle; The Help; and Little Bee.
     How fabulously ironic and a measure of Susie’s ability to choose what constitutes good literature that all those books we read, banned and contraband, eventually showed up in high school classrooms across the U.S. as required reading. I had the joy of introducing them to thousands of students. Mr. A., from whom we kept them hidden, may have taught a few of them himself before he retired.
     When I read yet again a list of books parents want banned in schools, I am heartened in knowing one truth: Kids will get their hands on good books, the ones that speak to them, the ones that are about someone like them, no matter how parents or schools finagle to keep the child separated from the book.
     I am so grateful for Susie’s early guidance in the language arts and for the lessons she taught me: When your friends recommend a good book, check it out. When you come across a lovely, meaningful chunk of language, memorize it to keep with you forever. And remember what you need to learn can come from the most unexpected of sources, sometimes only one seat away.