Those were the words of the after-hours nurse we called when our son could not sleep due to severe itching. I allayed my son’s fears by demonstrating on my own arm that yanking Scotch tape off doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as pulling off a Band-Aid. Then I dutifully did what the nurse directed and sealed the sample in a zippered sandwich bag.

I felt a bit like MacGuyver. Or maybe George Clooney’s character on “ER.” He was in Peds, after all, and was known to improvise with what he had on hand.

We told the doctor that we had collected and brought in a sample, per the nurse’s orders, and he said, “Yeah, that doesn’t really do anything. There are lots of things like that going around the Internet.”

After we left, bewildered at our boy’s second positive test for strep at the opposite end from where most people get it, I thought maybe the doctor hadn’t understood. We had gleaned that advice from the after-hours nurse we reached through his clinic’s main number. We didn’t subject our son to the first cockamamie medical advice we found on an online forum. In fact, we didn’t research it at all until after talking to the nurse, because she had been our source of terms to search.

Surely their paid professional nurses don’t dispense advice based on their own half-baked Web research. If so, then someone needs to know it and put a stop to it. Here I go, dialing the clinic’s number.

What’s the weirdest medical advice you’ve received from someone who ostensibly could be trusted to dispense it?

Yes, on my last work trip I saw someone with very dark hair and blue eyes; there was a Subway employee sweeping the floor while I ate; and there was a woman who somewhat comically heard me wrong when I mentioned her eyes.

Rather than write separately about all three, I decided to combine them into one person. I hear “real” writers do this all the time, which is one way they are able to put the disclaimer in their books saying, “characters depicted in this work of fiction… not real people… blah blah blah.”

On the plane ride into the customer site (or the nearest airport, anyway), I saw a little girl, maybe about four or five years old, sitting directly across the aisle from me. A scruffy man I guessed to be her grandfather sat next to her. Her hair was very dark — almost black, yet she had pale skin along with bright blue eyes that nearly glowed.

At the Subway, which was the only fast food establishment in the customer’s town or within 15 miles of it, I saw a young, hefty woman sweeping the floor, and except for the parts about her eyes and my getting between her and the Thank You trash can, that scene went down exactly as I described it.

On my way back home, at the airport security point where someone checks the travelers’ ID and boarding pass before letting them go through the scanners, an older woman checked my driver’s license and used her neon yellow highlight pen to make an approving mark on my boarding pass. I noticed her eyes were a shade of green I rarely see, and, hoping that the fact I most likely never would see her again decreased her suspicion that I was flirting with her (I was not), I commented that they were nice. Our dialog played out as I depicted it in “Sweeper’s Peepers.”

So, while the scene itself (except for my stopping Sweeper and talking directly to her) was completely real, the character was a combination of three different people — all complete strangers — whom I saw during the trip. I guess I wrote it as practice just to see how it felt.

Little did I know we would be doing all the cooking, and Simon’s wife would be doing most of the flirting with Lisa.

Lisa was our server, and from the start we all liked her. While educating us about the fondue experience, she flashed a sweet but sincere smile and said that the cook pot is very hot and we needed to be careful.

“If something happens, don’t worry, I’m also a nurse,” she said.

“When do you do that?” I said.

“Days. I left my shift and came straight here.”

(click pic to enlarge)

“So you’re on your feet all day and now you stay on your feet all night?” I said.

“Yep, but I have these great butt-toning shoes.”

“How are they working out for you?” Amy said.

We all craned our necks to look around behind Lisa.

She laughed. “Well, why don’t you watch as I walk away, and then tell me what you think when I come back?”

We watched, but the dim lighting and her black pants made it impossible for me to discern any gluteal details. I didn’t have the heart to mention that I had just read an article debunking shoe manufacturers’ butt-toning claims.

When she returned, she said, “So, what did you think?”

“I think the shoes are working for you,” Amy said.

“Thanks!” Lisa said through a wide, toothy grin.

After placing our raw food in front of us, Lisa explained how we should cook it. “If it walks on land, cook it for 2 minutes. If it swims in the sea, cook it for one and a half minutes. And veggies swim in the sea.”

For $23 I got several large shrimp, cubes of chicken breast, and cubes of lean beef steak. I won’t say I barely shoved it all in, but with our eating pace considerably slowed by the cooking process, I felt full before I finished.

By the time we left, Amy had told Lisa she was going to add her to her Facebook friends and create a fan page for her. I admit she was a skilled server, and very friendly, but I wonder whether waiting tables was the thing for which she wanted to be known.

“If you’re as good at nursing as you are at this, then you have very lucky patients,” I said.

“Oh, I’m a great nurse,” Lisa said.

I didn’t need to go all the way to Canada to experience three hours of fondue dinner wonderment. In fact, the very same restaurant chain – The Melting Pot – has a location just a few miles down the road from us.

The difference was that I had my Internet buddies there with me. Yes, I said it out loud. Again. I met these guys (and the one wife present) on the Internet. Lisa’s great attitude made it a standout night, too.

The earpieces on her glasses push into the side of her pudgy, pink cheek, but her young, taut skin refuses to wrap around them. Her tan shirt outlines the contour of skin on her back as she moves a chair out of her broom’s way. Dark brown hair, clean and neat, spills down just a few inches below her baseball cap.

Each metal chair skids across the tile floor, the heaviness of the sound belying its size. The area under that table clean, she noisily slides the chairs back into place and keeps sweeping.

She has about half the floor clean now, but a customer making her way down the sandwich line steps around large chunks of dirt.

Three men wearing bright orange t-shirts enter, welcomed by the automatic doorbell’s wordless ping. One of them stops and shuffles his feet on the welcome mat, but still his heavy boots drop tiny clumps of mud in a jagged trail to the sandwich line.

Sweeper’s expression never changes. She continues on her original course while they order, get their food, and leave. Sweep, skid, sweep, sweep.

“At least they didn’t walk in the part you already swept,” I say, and something tells me that was not by accident.

She knows the heavy traffic areas. There for my second time, even I can tell by now that most lunch hour patrons get their food to go.

A woman’s voice comes from the kitchen, where only a head of shaggy, dishwater blonde hair is visible. “That’s what you get in a farming community.” The hair shakes with each word.

The blonde head tilts back and reveals a middle-aged face. A gap-tooth grin spreads across it. “You just do what you can, when you can.” She laughs.

Sweeper remains expressionless and silent, methodically working her way across the floor. Sweep, sweep, sweep. She stops just long enough to look up and take a deep breath.

Her eyes are blue. More unexpected than fetching, they shine through her thin glasses, from below the ball cap, above those high, puffy cheeks. She looks back down and continues the task at hand.

I want to make her say something, but instead I wordlessly carry my empty sandwich wrapper to the fake wood box with the flippy door labeled THANK YOU. Out of habit from my days of wearing an orthodontic retainer, I check the tray one last time before pushing one end through the flap and sliding its contents into the shallow abyss. I stack it with the others.

Sweeper leans the broom on a chair and makes her way toward me with a full dustpan. I cross between her and the THANK YOU box and look directly at her. “You have nice eyes,” I say, trying to appear neither flirtatious nor furtive.

“You, too, sir,” she says as she looks around me at the THANK YOU.

I stand there, certain she heard something else. I raise one eyebrow.

“I mean, um, thank you.” She laughs nervously. “I just thought you said, ‘Have a nice day.’”

I smile. “That’s okay. Do that, too,” I say and turn to leave, back to my own work.

Simon calls out to me, “Hey, Mark, Dex doesn’t want to go, can you take Tav?”

I need a good angle for my picture, and I don’t want to miss the blast of dragon fire. Tavish wraps himself around me and I climb the stairs two at a time. Moksha takes him so I can ready my camera. (click any pic to enlarge)

The beast opens its mouth and discharges a blaze that sends me back a step. I steel myself for the next blast to get what I can in the split second given me.

——-

There are no zombies, despite George Romero’s best efforts, and there is no silly, overweight cop acting like a fool. I remind myself that we are not in America, where one would expect those things. Nope, we are in Canada.

Instead we “settle” for a fire-breathing dragon and a larger-than-life Yoda, which I already featured here. Much less deadly and wiser than the zombies and Paul Blart, respectively, the dragon breathes real fire straight at us, and Yoda hovers over the automated ticket buying machines, presumably ready to comment on each decision.

On top of that, Simon shows us the place he used as a meeting spot with friends when he was a youngster. So, the mall is big, but it also is personal.

After the Mindbender, Simon and Moksha take a more leisurely ride that looks like the results of a roller coaster mating with a Tilt-a-Whirl. I run around the indoor amusement park snapping pictures while Amy and the kids find an operational Whack-a-Mole machine.

All in all, a great day at the mall.

(Next in this series: Not Your Father’s Fondue)

I tried to make a story out of our trip to the largest mall in North America, but I decided to let the pictures speak. My narrative description would have been based largely on these, anyway.

When a mall contains more than 800 stores; a replica of the Santa Maria (scale uncertain); a full-sized amusement park with the Mindbender and other roller coasters; an ice rink; and a water park complete with a wave pool as large as two (American) football fields, what exactly can I say?

Big.

That is an inept summary of the West Edmonton Mall, but the following pictures help tell the story. (click any pic to enlarge)

My camera was still set on 1600 ISO from the plane right into Canada, so these are a bit grainy.

(Next in the series: No Zombies)

Readers, if you add a comment, conceal that you otherwise would have had no idea it was this person’s birthday, just like on Facebook.

Remember that night I recorded you while you read one of your bedtime books? You read Slip, Slide, Skate, and then you asked me to record myself reading the next one.

In my hotel room on Tuesday night I listened to you reading the one about the little girl who goes ice skating. I listened to the whole thing, and you did a great job. I smiled when I heard your voice and the pages turning.

I thought that on your last day of being six you might like to hear the recording of me. If you are at home, then pull out Duck and a Book and follow along; if not, then just imagine the pictures. It’s only a little more than a minute long.

I am sorry my work trip got extended by a day and I can’t be there to read it to you in person. I will see you on your birthday.

Love,
Daddy

I parallel park Homer along a city street just two blocks off McKinney’s downtown square. Alvis and I grab our cameras — similar Nikon DSLR’s — and meander across the road.

As I step onto the opposite sidewalk, I see a dejected clown coming right for me. He is not smoking a cigarette, but he looks like he wants to be. We sidestep Sparkles and stroll along to a street barricaded at one end by a stage.

Onstage a two-man middle-aged band sits playing an upright bass and a steel guitar. Microphones pick up the sounds of both instruments, and a small PA mixes both and spits the results out waist-high speakers at the front of the stage.

The bass player’s creased khaki slacks, burgundy socks and black shoes belie the mood of his bright blue Hawaiian shirt. He occasionally blows on a harmonica mounted on a contraption that wraps around the back of his neck.

The guitarist’s scraggly gray goatee juts four inches below his chin, so that when he sings he appears to be trying to shake off a small kitten. While not a fashion plate, he at least looks like he planned his bright yellow sneakers, blue jeans, and southwestern shirt. His nose divides two seemingly opaque black disks that must be sunglasses.

Both wear what I can only guess are fedora hats. They’re no Razzmajazz, but they have style.

I clip my binaural mics on the ends of my camera bag and record a few bars while Alvis and I take pictures. It’s a great day to just wander around watching — and hearing — people.

(use earbuds or headphones for a more immersive, albeit short, experience)

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