The Old Man Hits the Deck

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Now and then as He sees fit, the Lord drops us into an interesting situation to make sure we’re paying attention and a week ago Friday night, having begun a stand-up comedy tour in Bend, Oregon, to a full house and a standing O, I awoke in Carson City, Nevada, with a bump on my head, unable to move my left arm and my face was scratched and my left shin hurt.

No, I hadn’t been drinking; old age is excitement enough, no need for intoxicants, I set the bottle aside twenty years ago. My best guess was that I’d had a seizure — I’m 83 and on anti-seizure meds after a stroke, maybe two, and probably I tumbled out of bed and crashed into something, a bedside table, but had no memory of it, not a sliver. I went back to sleep.

In the morning my manager Sam Hudson drove me to the Carson Tahoe Hospital ER where a young doc questioned me and it was determined that I had dislocated my left shoulder and would need surgery so I was wheeled up to room 317 and admitted to the gentle universe of nurses. A parade of granddaughters, exquisitely polite, good humored, and my job was to amuse them.

It was the day Mr. Trump’s freelance ICE cowboys were snatching people off the streets of Minneapolis in my mother’s old neighborhood, where one of them shot and killed Renee Good, the mother of a small child, after her wife addressed him as Big Boy. Barbaric cruelty in the news from back home, meanwhile I was tucked into bed and an alarm button put in my hand. If I simply stood up, a light flashed, a robotic voice warned me not to get up, and moments later Patricia or Sylvia or Aileen stepped into the room and said, “Where are we trying to go?
What can I get you?”

Women in their twenties, practicing endless resilient cheerfulness, checking my vitals, testing peripheral vision, making sure my marbles are intact, that I know who and where I am.

A CAT scan was taken and an MRI. What happened to me was tragic: a fully functioning adult on a roll, doing his work, amusing paying customers, and then hit by a lightning bolt. My left arm in a sling, I needed help buttoning my trousers, buttering my bread. Amazing what a lame left arm can mean. Even blowing your nose is an interesting problem. Jenny joined me and we booked a flight back to New York.

The underlying spirit of nursing: Life is a comedy, injuries have remedies, help is on the way, and when each shift walks into the room, we fall into lighthearted banter. “How are we doing?” she says.

“We? We’re a couple already?”

“How are you doing?”

“Never better,” I start to stand up and lose my balance and lurch forward and she grabs me and says, “You okay?”

“A man fantasizes about being in the arms of a powerful woman.” She laughs at the harmless flirtation of a wounded elderly man.

A pair of physical therapists take me for a hike, ask if I’d like to see a chaplain. “I’m Episcopalian,” I say. “You torture me, I’ll put you in a story.”

“It isn’t torture as long as you show improvement.”

On Monday a friendly surgeon, Pete Althausen, walked in; he said he had grown up listening to me on the radio, his parents were fans. The admiration of a certified M.D. — who could ask for more?

The next day I was wheeled into OR and he performed a simple procedure to put the shoulder back in place; no incision, but under full anesthesia, awakening in Recovery to cheerful professional voices, and a day later, off to the airport, arm in a sling.

We flew nonstop over the Mississippi, scenes of oppression below, ICE thugs tailing small children home from school, based on their foreign appearance.

Two different countries. I’m a Minnesotan, I grew up in a mannerly culture, a “Pardon me” culture, people ever prepared to apologize and step back.

New York City is different. When ICE went around without warrants, bullying civilians on the basis of appearance, proud NYPD cops stood up to them, yelled in their faces, “You can play your games in other states, but not here, this is Brooklyn.” And ICE backed down.

Insanity is at the wheel and it must be resisted. Minneapolis cops need to protect the people of Minneapolis. Taking over Greenland is insanity. The people who put the president in office need to extract him. Our country cannot survive this.

Garrison Keillor © 01.19.26