Strange or Funny Stories from Your Past

G

GoodEnuff

Member
In nursing school, one of the things they taught us was to use the proper term for body parts. It's "breast", not "tit" or "boob" and so on.

I worked in a large county hospital in south Texas where many of our patients did not speak English or whose English was limited. In addition to that, most of our patients came from poor backgrounds and were very uneducated. I do not say this in a derogatory way.

Early on in my career, I had a young (19 yo ?) male patient, for whom the dr had ordered a urinary catheter be inserted. I do not remember the reason. I gathered up the needed supplies, went into the room and asked the patient if he had ever had one. No. What is it? I said, "It's a tube we insert into your p*n*s to drain your urine." He replied, "What's a p*n*s??" Seriously. I thought about it for a moment, cringed internally, and said, "It's your d*ck."

Healthcare can not be the only profession where things like this happen. Tell yours, please.
 

Children in my 3 year class had me draining my brain with the word "Boo Boo" to some it meant a hurt finger, knee, etc.
To others it meant their rear end. That got confusing and almost scary to make sure what part of the body it was they were
talking about before I grabbed dressings.
 
Bubba Joe goes to the doctor's office and says, "I gotta see the doc. There's something wrong with mah pen!s!"

"BUBBA JOE!" exclaims the nurse. "There are women and children here! You can't say that out loud like that!"

"Waal, what am Ah supposed to say then?"

"When you first come in," she explained, "Just say there's something wrong with...uh...your ear. And then we'll get it all figured out when we go back to the examining room. So, let's try this again. Why, hello, Bubba Joe, why are you here today?"

"I gotta see the doc. There's something wrong with mah ear!", he says.

"What's wrong with your ear?"

"AH CAIN'T PEE OUT OF IT!"
 

My Great Granny used chewing Tabaco since, I don't know when. She carried a small 1 pound coffee can with lid in her
purse to spit in. She was at the doctors office and when she got called into the room she took out her can and spat her
snuff into the can.
The young nurse observed this and being shocked asked Granny "How long have you been doing this?"
Granny told her "Near all my life"
Nurse "Have you told the doctor, that is very abnormal, you should be tested"
Granny said she smiled, pulled out her can of snuff and replied "Oh sweetie, he told me which brand to buy"
 
Body parts, part 2:

A sentence in the German poem "Belsazar" (1819) by Heinrich Heine reads
"Doch kaum das grause Wort verklang,
dem König ward's heimlich im Busen bang".
("But no sooner than the gruesome word had faded away, the king secretly felt a chill in his heart").

The German word 'Busen' means exactly the same as the English 'bosom'. But in the language of the poets it also means 'heart'.

A male student in high school read the whole poem and laughed as he spoke the word 'Busen'. The teacher for German got angry.

This little episode happened 50 years ago and I still remember it.
 
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My absolute favorite job was in late 1970s when I was 20. I became the bridge tender of the drawbridge in a super touristy small town on Cape Cod. The gig lasted for a year. I still have my paycheck stubs, I got paid almost nothing. Thousands of tourists, scientists and students from all over the world, hippies and some mentally challenged individuals walked across my bridge that summer. I never could comprehend the thought processes of the people who would put a 20 year old stoner in charge of a bascule drawbridge with a 45' span held up by a 376,000 lb counterweight. It was good times.

Two long and two short was the signal a boat would blast on it's horn to have the drawbridge raised. There was no shortwave radio.

The bridge tender before me was nicknamed Tiny who was not tiny but must have weighed 400+ lbs. He filled the bridge tenders shack. Tiny trained me to be the backup bridge tender. Back then there was a lever that controlled the bridge. It looked like an old elevator lever that swung in an arc. Swing it left and the bridge went up, swing it to the right it went down and when in the middle the bridge stayed where it was. The further you swung it the faster it would go. Cool.

Tiny had this thing he did for the tourists when lowering the bridge. He would slam the lever all the way to the right dropping the bridge as fast as it would go. Then when it was about 5' from crashing into the ground he would swing it hard left to where it was almost centered and float the bridge to a gentle landing. It would freak tourists out with them backing away as the bridge came flying down but it always got applause at the end. I got pretty good at it too but after Tiny died and I took over I was bummed to see they had replaced the controls with buttons. One button for up, at a constant slow speed, and one button for down at a slow speed. Boring.

Summertime was awesome with huge crowds of people. I was like the information booth for the town and even had my own parking spot on the street. Someone was always stopping to talk. Wintertime on the other hand was brutally boring and it was a cold, cold winter. The channel was iced up solid but the Army Corp. of Engineers said it had to be manned all year round so I sat there. Actually I spent a lot of time in the small cafe across the street that winter.

There was a trapdoor in the floor to where the giant counterweight was which was made up of hundreds of rusty iron bars about the size of a loaf of bread. I always wondered that if the counterweight had been calibrated to a certain weight, did the motor have to work a bit harder every year as the bars rusted away. Probably, some of those bars had shrunk a lot from the salt water.

The only negative incident I had one summer day involved this big expensive sailboat with a mast taller than the bridge when it is all the way up. The captain blew two long and two short wanting to come ithrough. I pushed the boring button that started the bridge going up. The traffic lights at either end of the channel automatically went to red and remained red as long as the bridge was moving. Then I had to manually change one side to green to let a boat know it was their turn to go through.

For some reason the captain decided to run the light. Maybe he didn't see it? I couldn't speed the bridge up like the good old days so it was a race seeing whether he would beat the bridge.

People waiting at the bridge along with a couple cops were watching the mast and then the bridge their heads moving back and forth like they were watching a tennis match. Finally when it became obvious he wasn't going to make it everybody started waving their arms and yelling at him to stop, but he didn't hear them over his motor. He just kept coming. I remember the sound of his mast bending backwards, the front cables popping out of the deck. Sproing! He was about 5 seconds too early and hit near the top foot of the bridge. Then people stopped yelling and started applauding. The cops disappeared.

I waited for the captain to come and try and blame me for it. I was expecting it to become a big serious thing but I never saw the guy again. The same thing happened again at that bridge somewhere in the late 2010's where a mast hit the bridge and there was a long investigation where the bridge tender was suspended with pay and federal agencies got involved. It took nearly a year to finally clear the bridge tender. In my case I figured if the captain of the boat that hit the bridge didn't report it why should I so nothing ever came out of it. They probably would have drug tested me. I probably would have failed.
 
So this male patient was in a coma, no ventilation tube, just laying there completely out. His wife/SO came in to visit. I closed the curtains to give them privacy. Ten or fifteen minutes went by and I had to go in there to perform something (don't remember). The wife/SO had stripped from the waist up, was straddling the patient in the bed, rubbing her breasts across his face. I just stood there trying to decide what to do or say. She looked up at me and said, "I'm trying to wake him up."

I thought about that for a moment and said, "Well, sure. Why not? Let's hope it works." Closed the curtain as I left the room. He didn't wake up, sadly, but I give her E for Effort.
 
Then there was the mother of a young man with a severe brain injury. He was placed in a chemical coma, totally unresponsive. It was so sad. When I was speaking to her about his condition and treatment, she asked, "Can he get a brain transplant?" I came close to bursting out in laughter except that the situation was so very sad. I didn't know what to say to this grieving mother. After a minute or two, I said, "I'm so sorry, we don't have the knowledge or technology for that yet."

But that did get me thinking... The brain is the center for who a person is. If a brain transplant succeeded, that person would wake up in a different person's body, with a different past, different memories, etc etc etc. What if a cop woke up in a criminal's body and was taken straight to court, then prison? What if a Nazi woke up in a Jewish person's body and was hauled off to the gulag? Would the brain have to come from the same sex donor? Same age? Old brain in a young body? Something to think about.
 
IrishEyes said:
My Great Granny used chewing Tabaco since, I don't know when. She carried a small 1 pound coffee can with lid in her
purse to spit in. She was at the doctors office and when she got called into the room she took out her can and spat her
snuff into the can.
The young nurse observed this and being shocked asked Granny "How long have you been doing this?"
Granny told her "Near all my life"
Nurse "Have you told the doctor, that is very abnormal, you should be tested"
Granny said she smiled, pulled out her can of snuff and replied "Oh sweetie, he told me which brand to buy"
Click to expand...
One of my great-grannies smoked a corncob pipe. I can remember her sitting out on her porch puffing away.

Another great-granny "dipped snuff". I loved her dearly but I didn't like to kiss her. Her lips and tongue were purple from the snuff and it really grossed me out as a young child.

Both of them were quite proper ladies, but with farm backgrounds. I guess it was acceptable to do those things. One was a Northerner (pipe) and the other a Southerner (snuff).
 
CinnamonSugar said:
Maybe she was floating nurse from pediatrics? Otherwise, poor terminology

One male COPD patient I had could not figure out how to say ‘nebulizer’ for the compact machine. He kept calling it a ‘n!pplizer’
Click to expand...
Doubtful - It was a surgical center at a large Kaiser facility so it's unlikely they would have tapped a peds nurse to sub.

Even if she had been a peds nurse, she showed a surprising inability to shift gears from saying "poo-poo" to "bowel movement" when dealing with an adult woman versus a toddler. I'd hate to entrust her with any job requiring more skill or judgment than I'd expect of an average 8 year old.
 
GoodEnuff said:
Then there was the mother of a young man with a severe brain injury. He was placed in a chemical coma, totally unresponsive. It was so sad. When I was speaking to her about his condition and treatment, she asked, "Can he get a brain transplant?" I came close to bursting out in laughter except that the situation was so very sad. I didn't know what to say to this grieving mother. After a minute or two, I said, "I'm so sorry, we don't have the knowledge or technology for that yet."

But that did get me thinking... The brain is the center for who a person is. If a brain transplant succeeded, that person would wake up in a different person's body, with a different past, different memories, etc etc etc. What if a cop woke up in a criminal's body and was taken straight to court, then prison? What if a Nazi woke up in a Jewish person's body and was hauled off to the gulag? Would the brain have to come from the same sex donor? Same age? Old brain in a young body? Something to think about.
Click to expand...
To some extent even organ transplantations of today transport parts of the donor's behavior.

In her book "A Change of Heart" Claire Sylvia describes how she after receiving a heart and lung transplant from a male young man started to like beer and chicken nuggets.
Obviously there is a kind of cellular memory.

https://www.amazon.com/Change-Heart-Claire-Sylvia/dp/0446604690/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=6C1TE4BH2LIC&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.brV7HlVUWU9fGgq2Mpkpf8S1Lqk-LaIOPLn0tfxdopLGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.0pQyBhNkRVXyRb8aYEgQt1rS75SC1NcZodi-VjKPVHY&dib_tag=se&keywords=a+change+of+heart+claire+sylvia&qid=1757400332&sprefix=claire+syl,aps,693&sr=8-1
 
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George1959 said:
To some extent even organ transplantations of today transport parts of the donor's behavior.

In her book "A Change of Heart" Claire Sylvia describes how she after receiving a heart and lung transplant from a male young man started to like beer and chicken nuggets.
Obviously there is a kind of cellular memory.

https://www.amazon.com/Change-Heart-Claire-Sylvia/dp/0446604690/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=6C1TE4BH2LIC&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.brV7HlVUWU9fGgq2Mpkpf8S1Lqk-LaIOPLn0tfxdopLGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.0pQyBhNkRVXyRb8aYEgQt1rS75SC1NcZodi-VjKPVHY&dib_tag=se&keywords=a+change+of+heart+claire+sylvia&qid=1757400332&sprefix=claire+syl,aps,693&sr=8-1
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Interesting, eh?
 
Another classroom story:
Youngest daughter of a family with 5 girls, feral lil thing, mean, conniving, selfish, fighting her way through her 3 years of life. But darn,
she was cute. She loved this phone in the dramatic play area and would run to get it first.

One morning she was acting up during carpet time and was not chosen to go to centers the first round. She sat watching that phone.
Another child had taken the phone and when her turn to go came she marched right over there and took that phone away. The girl loudly
proclaimed "I had it first" and lil ms. feral flipped her off without a word.

I was not too far away and cleaning the cubbies and I quickly tore off 4 sheets of paper towels and went over to her, She turned around
and gave me the double eagle with a glare in her eyes. I wrapped her hands in the towels before the rest of the class saw her sign
language and said "Ohh, did you hurt your hands? Let's go get an icepack from the kitchen and get them to feeling better" and she walked
with me to the kitchen looking at me like I lost my mind not even trying to pull her hands from mine.

We came back and sat at a table and I applied the icepack onto both hands and wrapped them in the towels. The fingers were still in
the same position yet. "Now when your fingers feel better and you think you can play, you let me know, call me over"
That girl stayed there for 10 minutes before she softly called "Ms Sharon, I think my hands feel better now"

She was wanting me to react as all adults would have, she knew I knew what that meant. Throwing her off her plan kicked her anger
over the phone over to something else.
Later in the sandbox, I watched her body language and saw her signs, I got up and softly whispered in her ear "I sure do hope your
fingers are still OK, if not come tell me and talk to me, Yes?" she nodded and did not raise those middle fingers in my class again.
 
IrishEyes said:
Another classroom story:
Youngest daughter of a family with 5 girls, feral lil thing, mean, conniving, selfish, fighting her way through her 3 years of life. But darn,
she was cute. She loved this phone in the dramatic play area and would run to get it first.

One morning she was acting up during carpet time and was not chosen to go to centers the first round. She sat watching that phone.
Another child had taken the phone and when her turn to go came she marched right over there and took that phone away. The girl loudly
proclaimed "I had it first" and lil ms. feral flipped her off without a word.

I was not too far away and cleaning the cubbies and I quickly tore off 4 sheets of paper towels and went over to her, She turned around
and gave me the double eagle with a glare in her eyes. I wrapped her hands in the towels before the rest of the class saw her sign
language and said "Ohh, did you hurt your hands? Let's go get an icepack from the kitchen and get them to feeling better" and she walked
with me to the kitchen looking at me like I lost my mind not even trying to pull her hands from mine.

We came back and sat at a table and I applied the icepack onto both hands and wrapped them in the towels. The fingers were still in
the same position yet. "Now when your fingers feel better and you think you can play, you let me know, call me over"
That girl stayed there for 10 minutes before she softly called "Ms Sharon, I think my hands feel better now"

She was wanting me to react as all adults would have, she knew I knew what that meant. Throwing her off her plan kicked her anger
over the phone over to something else.
Later in the sandbox, I watched her body language and saw her signs, I got up and softly whispered in her ear "I sure do hope your
fingers are still OK, if not come tell me and talk to me, Yes?" she nodded and did not raise those middle fingers in my class again.
Click to expand...
Beautifully handled!

My nephew was a hellion, pure and simple. One day at day care, he decided he was going to say some "dirty words" and did so liberally.

Instead of making a big deal out of it (thus making it even more attractive to use "bad words"), his teacher said, "Well, we don't use words like that because sometimes it upsets other people. So, I think it would be best if you spend the day over in the Baby House. The babies won't care what you say and you can say the words as much as you want."

After an afternoon spent quietly at the Baby House with nothing to do or play with and nobody to impress, he agreed that he would refrain from saying dirty words.

Lesson well learned.
 
jujube said:
Beautifully handled!

My nephew was a hellion, pure and simple. One day at day care, he decided he was going to say some "dirty words" and did so liberally.

Instead of making a big deal out of it (thus making it even more attractive to use "bad words"), his teacher said, "Well, we don't use words like that because sometimes it upsets other people. So, I think it would be best if you spend the day over in the Baby House. The babies won't care what you say and you can say the words as much as you want."

After an afternoon spent quietly at the Baby House with nothing to do or play with and nobody to impress, he agreed that he would refrain from saying dirty words.

Lesson well learned.
Click to expand...
In licensed care you have to be so creative in how you handle things. I never believed in time outs like others did. I thought about when I was put in time out to THINK over my sin and all I could think of was how to get even. Those do nothing for most children
 

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