Two things

—1) Three hours and at least 30 miles for a simple blood-draw:
My wife had a medical appointment at Strong Hospital in Rochester, 10:30 a.m. yesterday (Monday, November 22, 2010).
I also needed a backup blood-draw for a PSA test (prostate-specific-antigen).
An earlier PSA blood-test delivered a high PSA level, and possible factors could inflate the PSA level.
So we needed another test.
Strong Hospital has a lab that could do the blood-draw, but if I did it there I’d be a walk-in, one of many, so who knows how long I’d have to wait.
So we passed.
We decided we’d hit another lab on the way home, maybe 15 miles from the hospital.
But first we’d have to patronize a supermarket for groceries, the Hylan Drive Wegmans.
It was 12:54 when we arrived at the second lab.
The door was locked, out-to-lunch.
Lunch 12:30 to 1:30.
Pass!
Back to home to rescue our dog.
I figured I’d let my wife out, and continue to lab number-three, my doctor’s office 4-5 miles east.
I arrived about 1:08.
Their door was locked too — out-to-lunch.
Lunch 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.
Back home.
Fiddle e-mail until 2, then back to the doctor’s office.
Can’t do it. No scrip for the blood-draw.
Back home; try again — this time with the scrip.
By now it’s past 2:30, and I’ve already done about 25 miles.
Success this time.
Back home; 4-5 miles more.
I’ve been trying to do this simple blood-draw since about 11:40.
—2) Former bus-driver:
We are at the hospital for the medical appointment.
My wife reports she is experiencing slight constipation.
“And what are you taking for it?” the doctor asks.
“Nothing,” my wife responds. “Nothing but the food I eat. Lots of roughage.
Okay, now switch characters. Make me the patient.
I report I’m experiencing slight constipation.
“And what are you taking for it?” the doctor asks.
“Absolutely nothing!” I shout. “I wouldn’t dare. No pills for this kid! Never in a million years!”
It’s similar to the response I make every time someone asks if I ever smoked.
And whether I drink soda or beer.
“I wouldn’t touch that stuff with a 10-foot pole!”
What matters here is not that we both abhor medication.
It’s the difference in our responses.
My wife responds like a normal person.
I, on the other hand, respond like a former bus-driver; all strident and prickly.
You had to be that way to successfully drive bus.
Some blowhard passenger would attack you verbally telling you you’re stupid and worthless.
My silent reaction was usually “NOW WHAT?”
Unfortunately the way to respond to such blasts was out-blast the miscreant.
“Go siddown! I drive, you sit!”
And “What are you? Some kind of nut?”
My blowhard brother-in-Boston started noisily badmouthing me verbally when I disputed his recollection of directions.
He became incensed, and went ballistic.
Who was I to have the awful temerity and unmitigated gall and horrific audacity to question his all-knowing superiority?
But it was the former bus-driver in me.
I was getting the same torrent of ad-hominems, put-downs, and name-calling I got driving bus.
“Now what?
Go siddown and shaddup!”
A good friend of mine, also a retired bus-driver, was being noisily badmouthed by other Transit retirees for the dirty condition of his car.
“I bought it to drive it; not wash it,” he snapped.
That’s an old bus-driver. Fire back at the slightest provocation. Shoot from the hip.
Our persnicketiness made us difficult to manage.
We’d fire back at every management pronouncement.
One day a manager was telling me we bus-drivers were paid too much.
“You’re telling me that?” I snapped. “You’re collecting over 60,000 bucks per year, twice what we make, to drive a desk.
You don’t even collect fares. Wherein are you contributing to the profitability of this organization?”
I, of course, found such blasts rarely worked on passengers.
The miscreants would wick it up and threaten me.
I tried a different tack.
“What prompted that?” I’d ask.
It always worked.
My father used to scream at me when I was a teenager.
What I did back then was disengage and go silent.
Made him madder still.
He started on me again after I started driving bus.
“What prompted that?” I asked.
Bam! Shut him right up. He was utterly dumbfounded.
I had thrown him a curve — he was expecting me to tune out like I had in the past.
But I fired back, with bus-driving experience.
As for my brother, I did what I would have done driving bus: quit, if things had gotten bad enough.
They never did.
Despite being a little guy, I could usually parry blowhards with guile and cunning. —After all, I was the ship-captain.
I once protected a pretty girl from loathsome creeps.
“Can’t you guys give her a break?” I asked.
They sat back down, cowed, and left her alone.
Miscreant bus-passengers eventually get off.
My brother isn’t a bus-passenger.
So I did what I woulda done driving bus.
I quit — I walked away.

• My wife of almost 43 years is “Linda.”
• “Strong Hospital” is a large hospital in the south of Rochester.
• “Hylan Drive” is a four-lane street next to a shopping mall in suburbs south of Rochester.
• “Wegmans” is a large supermarket-chain based in Rochester we often buy groceries at.
• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS — “Transit”) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and its environs. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that.