Tag Archive for ‘Story telling’

The Bitch

With a cigarette in his mouth and one hand on the wheel he drove north. Cursing the never ending speed limit signs. The lump of discomfort cramping in his stomach would not go away. He took a big sip of the booze he had in a bottle at the passengers seat. As he drank he could see her in the rear view mirror. God, how much he loved her. Sometimes he thought he loved her more than his wife. She looked up at him with her wet pleading eyes. His beloved bitch.

He had her since she was just a little puppy. Trained her to become the best hunting dog he ever had. All his mates envied him for his star. She could track down any game and drive in to shooting distance. Find any bird even if it dropped in the water. She had stamina and could go on for hours even in deep snow. Now she lay there in the backseat of his old Opel convertible. Tongue half way to the floor, watching up in anticipation. She knew that when he took her alone in the car they would go hunting.

He cursed again at a speed limit sign and took another sip from the bottle of booze. Quickly wiped away the beginning of a tear in his eye. He thought of the rifle in the trunk. It was a really good but expensive rifle he bought just before his second son was born. He remembered the cold look he got from his wife that could freeze hell.

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He could barely manage the narrow road down to the cabin. There was nothing left in the bottle and the last kilometers he had to use up the entire road. In the backseat the dog was going wild and barking as she recognized dirt road to the cabin. Cabin meant hunting and running free. Not stuck with a leash she had to wear in the city. As soon as he opened the door she rushed out barking, jumping and waiving the tail. When he took the rifle out of the trunk he was crying like a baby.

The dog stood a few meters away and looked at him. Waiting for his command. She was a bit puzzled when he didn’t act like normal. He dried his eyes, lifted the rifle, aimed and squeezed the trigger.

This is based on a true story and is the continuation of the post Bite. Please let me know your thoughts, like and subscribe.

2020-12-11 3 10

Stroke part II

This is the second part of the story of a stroke. The first part you can find here. I considered to call this part Strike but that could give misleading associations?!

More corridors with bright artificial light. The hospital architects should be forced to ride in a bed along the corridors. They might come up with a better idea for lighting that does not poke patients eyes. Some decorations in the ceilings perhaps? He was laying there with the early signs of boredom and anxiety of what was happening in his brain. Also this time he lost count of the lights as the orderly wide-charged the corners.

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Noise

Arriving in the ward he had to tell the story again to yet another nurse. The emphatic nurse heard his loud complaining stomach and offered something to eat. After the stomach has settled down he was taken in to a room. Now is past midnight but the room was not silent. Had he arrived in the engine room? Maybe a sawmill? No it was his new roommates snoring! Call the Work Safety Officer, earplugs needed! He was tired so he managed to doze off. Only to be woken up by the night shift nurses coming to draw some blood and measure the blood pressure. This goes on every two hours until the morning. They let people know it is not a hotel.

At six o’clock new nurses comes in and start drawing blood. He asked the nurse if the blood bank at the hospital was running low? The nurse only answered by showing her fangs (was there blood?). Almost like hearing a silent alarm the nurses was simultaneously ready with him and his roommates and went out the door with a wooshing sound. As the door closed it fell down from the ceiling. Boredom! He lay there with his arm folds looking like a teenagers face from all the needles. It is Amazing how much sound the human body from four older men can produce without anybody saying anything. Again he was thinking about having some art in the ceilings. There should be a hash tagg #hospitalceilingart!

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The Doom of Boring

The door opens. Strange that the doors closes with a silent woosh but opens with a bang! A nurse comes in and attaches him to a portable heart monitor. Gluing on the sensors at his chest. Later when they came of he wished he had gone over his chest with the razor. At least the nurse tells him he can wander around in the corridors of the ward. He soon realized that the monitor was there to make sure he did not leave the ward. Too far away from the ward the monitor set of an alarm. Now it came at him from three angles, the ceiling and each end of the corridor. Boredoom!

The only thing breaking the looooooong hours was the ever occurring blood drawing and pressure measuring. He never thought that breakfast, lunch and dinner would be such highlights of a day. Even when he was taken away by an orderly to a new test with a machine going “ping” or “pong”. He was amazed by how far into his body the probes could reach. As a Star Trek fan he found his dream come true when entering the loudest machine in the hospital. That is apart from his roommates. The Magnetic Resonance Imaging Machine (IMR)! At least he was offered earmuffs for the sound. The result was that the ears was the only part of his body not going blue from cold. He was pleased to hear they found something in his head! Not so rude at this machine!

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Not so pleased when the doctor later told him they could confirm that he suffered a smal, but yet a stroke. The words hit him like punch right in the face. Would he now turn into a walking zombie like the other patients in the ward? They reassured him that he would probably be fully recovered but they needed some more test to figure out why he had this stroke. He was convinced the nurses only wanted him to stay since he was the youngest inmate, no sorry, patient in the ward.

Needles and pins

He had to spend a few more days at the hospital to find out how many differents sizes of needles there is before he was sent home. Finally this is over he thought. Just before he was leaving the doctor gave him a long list of medicines he needed to eat for the rest of his life. So this was the reason for all the probing, to make sure the pills would fit the throat. As he went of in the Taxi did he not see the doctor carrying a golf bag with a medical company logo?

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Hope you like this story and if you do you know the drill. Like, subscribe and please comment. Check out more from me here.

2020-11-01 0 5

Friendship

Everyday with good weather he passed by the house. Walking or cyckling. With his black packpack. When she sat in the garden she saw him coming. Most of the times it was the dogs barking that alerted her. She waited for this moments. A small chat with the nice young man. There was something special about him, of that she was sure. At first he hurried pass with just a quick hello. But she wanted to know more so she tried to start a conversation with him.

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She was long retired and lived on a peninsula and the house was at the end of the road. Passed her house was only a tractor path to the fields. Surrounded with water and cliffs this was the only way to the fields. On the fields there was sheeps grasing all summer. The dog was her only companion since her husband passed away several years ago. The house was a bit big but she enjoyed living there in the tranquility. Even so it soimetimes became a bit loonely so when somebody went pass her house she wanted to know who it was. Some of the summer houses in the area also had some break-ins. After that she took upon herself to check for outsiders.

So she was not letting this young man pass her house many times without knowing who he was. On the seccond or third time she stopped him and bluntly asked who he was and what he was doing there. He was very polite in his answers. The grandson of the local farmer at the beginning of the road. He came to sit among the sheep to practice drawing and painting. He could do that now due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The university was closed and all lectures was online. He even attended some out there in the green pasture.

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As time passed that spring and summer it became a ritual and the days he did not come or she missed him she wondered what he was doing. She knew he would not come on rainy days as it was not possible to draw or sit with a computor in the rain. She really enjoyed those short conversations and he seemed to do the same. At one point he told her passingly that he was autistic and struggled with social interaction. She did not reall know what that was but she noticed that gradually answered with longer sentences. In mid August he stopped coming and she knew in her heart that something bad happened to her friend. Yes, she really considered him a friend.

By Ulle Haddock 2020. Please like, subscribe comment and share. Find more from me here.

2020-10-18 0 12

Sheep

So today the story of why sheep has a very special place in my heart and this is not a cheap story.

I have always told stories from early childhood. In the school yard, already from first grade, I told stories for my friends mostly because I was not very good at football, what the Americans call soccer, in fact quite lousy. I would make up stories about places we talked about during class even if I never sat my foot there or the strange man living alone in that old farm outside the city. This went on even as I was growing older and even as I did military service I sat there making up stories around the tent stove. I met my wife and we got two kids, two lovely boys with less than two years apart. Even before they were born I started to sing, rhyme and tell stories for them and when they were born and a bit older I use to involve them in the creation of the stories. Many of those stories were rhyme and we also love to read books with rhyme.

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When my sons were ten and twelve we went on holiday to the lovely island Gotland. It is a rock in the Baltic Sea made of lime stone and there is an amazing cave Lummelunda we went to. My wife always finds the souvenir shop as the highlight of everything we visits and could spend all her time there. She was pushing the guys to buy a small bowl, probably made in China, with the text Lummelunda Grottan to remember the visit but the youngest refused and pointed on soft toy at the back shelf. It was a twenty centimetres long, ten centimetres wide and ten centimetres high cuddle sheep! He immediately named it Ulle and hugged him intensively for the rest of that trip (in Swedish Ull means Wool). In Visby Ulle got a friend half the size but looking exactly the same after some protesting from my wallet. It was decided to be a she so she got the name Ulla. On the ferry to the mainland another cuddly soft toys even smaller was added to the collection with the name Junior.

Ulle and his little “family” fast became the center of the story telling. With a deep voice, same depth as Chef in South Park, he began to tell about his adventures around the world. For all the adventures he has experienced he must be at least 250 years old. Ulle likes to eat socks and has built in socks sorting machine that sounds chew, chew, chew. He farts a lot specially when eating socks or lying. He always tries to find excuses to go to the sock drawer. He is also the only sheep in the world that can fly! He does that by farting and since flying is dangerous should he run out of air in column he has mastered the ability to fart inwards. Ulla his wife often wonders why more comes out than goes in. Ulles predilection to rod or fart often puts him in difficult situations where he looses a prestigious job. Like the time he was a mascot for a football team and eat the visiting teams socks. Something happens in Ulles inside when he eats socks so ha began to fart so much that the players on both teams start to pass out. The referee gave him a red card, big mistake! Ulle rod him in the rear together with the side referee so they flew up in the audience that now also started to pass out. So he was fired! He also held a job with a well known president but that is another story and since I am on Twitter I dare not write it down.

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Soon all soft toys sheep started to develop a personality along with the stories and the number of sheep increased as a sheep was bought on every travel we made. The rule was if you held it you must buy it. My son named them all. Ulla soon developed a personality to match Ulle but with a very high pitch voice. Her self esteem is very, very solid in fact she is the best of the best! Every day she explains the scientific proof of the fact that she is the best. She asks if she is cuddly and yes this is true and then she asks if she is the cuddliest and you cannot deny this. That means that she is the best of being cuddly, right. Cannot deny this so that must mean that she is the best! Logical proof! Baa! Ulla is the leader of the quite large pack keeping the rest in order with her high pitched voice. There are many common features between Ulla and my wife but that must be a coincidence! Ulla has a soft spot for long underwear and has a factory at Svalbard where she is convinced there are polar sheep. She is a hard business woman, Ewe, driving the factory with student lamb coming to see the production.

Ulla leading the choir with strong discipline.

Even today as my son is twenty years old the sheep play an important part of our daily life. All parents I think feel that their children are special and so did we even if the youngest was very special the entire childhood. It was when he was in high school we realized that he was really special, he was diagnosed with Autism spectrum or Asperger’s syndrome. This means he is extremely intelligent and high functioning in some areas while he struggles in other more basic areas and especially with social interactions. I realized that the stories and personalities the sheep develop was a way for us to communicate and for him to handle his emotions. We very rarely hug without the sheep between us. He is easily stressed and then he can say Ulle does not feel very well. As a high functioning autistic he struggled in high school where the teachers often choose to disregard his special needs especially in language classes where you need to express feelings and thoughts, in Sweden we learn also English and a third language, German, Spanish or French. Straight A:s in all logical subjects but often failing in the humanistic subjects drove him into a deep depression. We still struggle with this but the sheep is there to support.

On a small island in the fjord there are some sheep that likes to run away and is therefore put on this island. We call it the sheep Alcatraz. This island is our special place and when the sheep hear the sound of our boat approaching they come running to see if we have any candy for them. I will share some pictures of them with you and if you think someone could enjoy or benefit from this text please share. Like, subscribe and comment!