MASK ... of the Hapa
I actually had my camera in my pocket all day hoping to catch a glimpse of some neat costumes today, but hardly anyone dressed up this year.
Amy and I never dress up for Halloween. Too much trouble.
If we did dress up, she might have worn her one and only Chinese style Qi Pao dress ("chee pow," like in the drawing last entry), she bought several months ago. It was a bit too large for her then, but with her pregnancy-induced curvaceousness, it probably fits pretty nicely now.
I would have liked to dress up as my favorite Tekken character. Easy costume. I'd just need to die my hair orange, wear jeans, a leather T-shirt, riding chaps, and biker goggles … and hop around on one foot in Flamingo Attack Stance. (Of course, I'd probably be mistaken as a rejected member of the Village People.)
A few pediatric nurses dressed up. "We had to … for the kids," one of them said rather unenthusiastically.
Some (non-medical) people actually dress up as doctors (wtf?). One of the residents is dressing up as a convenience store worker. I saw a cynical trash-talking nurse dressed as a nun. A black male nurse dressed as a Roman emperor. A tech dressed as a rainbow haired clown (just what you want to wake up to, a clown putting a long ass catheter in your EXIT ONLY orifices).
That's what Halloween is all about. A socially acceptable time for some people to dress up as that thing they wish to become or that thing most different from themselves, at least for a couple hours.
The whole point is to become someone you feel you are not or wish you were, at least. Doctors don't dress up as doctors. Convenience store workers don't dress up as themselves. Korean people don't dress up as "Korean people." Geeks don't go out as geeks (they probably dress up as vampyrs, haha).
I would have dressed up as a strong cool Korean guy (the Tekken character above).
What does that say about my insecurities?
(Don't answer this.)
THINGS THAT DON'T GO THUMP IN THE NIGHT ... anymore
Today was the last day of the rotation for one of my medstudents. Being a big guy used to wearing The Mask of Stoicism, something was different about him today. So I asked how the call night went.
"I was in bed for a couple hours but I couldn't sleep … I got called at 3 a.m. to pronounce my first (dead) patient," he sighed,
"I actually took care of this person last weekend, talked to her, … and last night when the nurse paged me to the room, she was just … dead."
He looked down and covered his face with his hand, too exhausted to use any less obvious masks. I told him we have to do that a lot in hospital medicine, more often on the oncology floor. The Mask of Death, waxy, frozen, the last one I pronounced had an open mouth and wide open eyes. Like the old lady had seen a ghost in her last moments. No lie. I was almost taken aback when I first saw her expression. Almost.
"I've seen people die in CPRs, but that was kind of gradual," the student continued, "And cadavers in anatomy, of course. But this …."
"Was different," I finished for him, and he nodded. He had changed in that single night. Three A.M. on Halloween.
"I couldn't sleep after that," he ended.
Ghosts are really just memories. They can haunt you too. Especially the younger ones. Like Sleeping Beauties, only without the Disney ending.
I refrained from telling him that he would get used to it after awhile. I mean, some of us do indeed get used to it.
But that fact can be more frightening than Death itself, I suppose.
NIGHTMARE ON MY STREET ... the crappy candy house
We didn't get any trick or treaters.
Which is a good thing, because I have been finishing off the last of the GOOD Halloween candy all week.
Last week, Amy got Raisinettes. We both ate those within a few days.
This week, she got Kit Kats. Big mistake.
A Kit Kat has a half-life of about 2.5 minutes around me (*Half-life = the time it takes me to identify, unwrap, and devour half of the remaining Kit Kat bars in my vicinity).
Amy was joking at work that if I ate all the candy, she might have to give out her pistachio nuts to the trick-or-treaters. Or even those pink breast cancer pins she has at work.
Her co-workers suggested she may as well clean out the fridge and hand out that while she was at it. "Here's a roll (I was going to throw out)."
But we didn't have any trick-or-treaters at our house. Maybe not enough lights or enough decorations, I guess. Or maybe we are the "spooky house" at the end of the dark street.
So I didn't have to go out or get dressed, AND I still got all the good candy.
This was the best Halloween ever!
RANDOM PIC OF MY DESK AT WORK
I like to collect those little Korean magnet people. The toilet is ceremonially flushed when we finally discharge a patient who has been in the hospital for several weeks. The picture is from our honeymoon in Korea in 1999. With some touristy but pretty Korean keychains we got there as well.
The ball was given to me by my resident team this month after taking them to Gameworks. They saved up 500 tickets to get me that ball. (And it only cost me about $200 to take them out. It's worth it though.)
The post-its actually have the Korean words for "doctor" and "surgeon" on them. I keep forgetting.
