Down in Flames
Unlike certain politicians, I have no problem admitting that I’ve made many…many mistakes in my life. There definitely are a few I prefer not to share. That still leaves a lot of doozies that I’ll own up to. I consider smoking a big one, as is the following incident that I’ve never lived down.
Cheap Date
“I guess I’m just a cheap date,” I announced on my radio program many years ago. It was a Friday morning and my guest didn’t show, so I invited my friend and program director, Frank Dawson, to join me in the studio for a show on cheap thrills–inexpensive activities for weekend fun.
At one point, I mentioned that to me a great evening activity was popping a big bowl of popcorn and playing a cutthroat game of Monopoly. With a shrug in my voice I added, “I guess I’m just a cheap date.”
Frank’s mouth made like a railroad tunnel and he crumbled into an impossibly small ball for such a lanky guy. Maintaining that position, he rolled onto the studio floor and howled silently.
I looked up and saw staff from the am and fm stations showing way too many teeth at the studio window.
Good thing it was nearly the end of the show and we were able to struggle along until it could cut the mic and ask what the heck had happened.
Well, I was given a definition of cheap date that I wasn’t aware of. (Loosely, well, it was like a woman of easy morals.)
Up in Smoke
Yep, I’ll admit to a lot of stupid mistakes. But I’m not sure any are of the caliber of the screwup made by a patient of Methodist Dallas Medical Center last summer.
The poor fellow was supine on his hospital bed with a non-removable mask shooting oxygen into his damaged lungs. Things must have been a bit dull and that old cigarette lust kicked in.
So, the patient lit up.
So did the hospital room. Fortunately, a sprinkler system helped confine the fire to the one room and its fortune of medical devices. As a precaution, 100 patients were evacuated, just to make sure that butt wasn’t smoldering somewhere.
The fellow who lit up? He was moved to the burn unit at another Dallas hospital for treatment of severe burns.
DON’T SMOKE!
ESPECIALLY, DON’T SMOKE WHEN WEARING AN OXYGEN MASK.
