Sending you this posting is indicative that I “survived.” I have been publishing bad news and sad stories lately. For a change I’ll give you something to read that may just relieve you momentarily from the bad and sad things that happen around the world including in Australia. This is a story from my life and I hope you enjoy reading it and hopefully it will bring a smile to your face.
SMILING is infectious; you catch it like the flu. When someone SMILED at me today, I started SMILING too. I passed around the corner and someone saw my grin. When he SMILED, I realized I'd passed it on to him. I thought about that smile, then realized its worth; a single SMILE just like mine could travel 'round' the earth. So if you feel a SMILE begin, don't leave it undetected. LET'S START AN EPIDEMIC QUICK AND GET THE WORLD INFECTED!!! – So, send this on to your friends and get them “smile infected.” - Werner
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MY Sister Helga.
During the war (W.W.2) every household was issued with gasmasks. Helga was only a few months old, still wearing nappies and lying awake in her baby cot. My mother had to go to the corner shop and enlisted me to keep an eye, or possibly both, on my sister.
Helga started to cry and I tried to calm her by talking to her and gesticulating with my hands. Leaning over the cot and thus being very close by her side, I noticed a terrible smell emanating from the direction of her nappies. I surmised that it could be one of two things. One, that there I something in those nappies, and they weren’t roses. Two, a distant possibility, we were under a gas attack.
Early in the war the authorities had warned us that the enemy could drop poisoned gas on us one day. As we found out later, the latter conclusion was pretty close to the mark, but this was “friendly” gas and did not come from our enemies.
However, I thought it would better to err on the side of caution and be rather save than sorry, I fetched the gasmask from the cupboard and put it on. Then, I approached my little sister again, to deal with her crying and tried anew to calm her.
To my horror however, my sister was not impressed at all with my strange headgear, and her crying went up quite a few octaves and became high-pitched screams. She gave the impression of being a budding opera singer, with the exception that her face took on hues of red and blue. Patting and softly stroking her made matters only worse. I was at my wits end, I panicked, and ran to the neighbour’s wife, Anna, for help. She stopped immediately whatever she was doing and we raced back to my sister. Then Anna lifted Helga out of the cot and the crying stopped, then she went to the source of that terrible smell and rectified the situation.
Anna noticed then the gasmask still hanging around my neck. “Why on earth do your have that gasmask around your neck?” She wanted to know. I explained the reason for it, to which she exclaimed, “Oh my God, no wonder the poor girl was screaming!
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Some time later, Helga was unwell with a fever and mother called the doctor. In those days doctors made mostly house calls. In due time, the doctor arrived. He was the locum tenens and he was led by mother into the lounge room. I was promptly sent to the kitchen, as there was no way that my mother would allow me to witness the medical examination of my sister. Such things were considered inappropriate. However, inquisitive as always, my ears were pricked up and close to the wall, which divided us.
Suddenly, there was a bit of a commotion in the 'examination' room and I heard my mother apologizing for something. After a little while, mother and doctor came marching into the kitchen; mother walking beside the doctor and wiping his face with a clean nappy and, the doctor looking extremely shocked and was undoing his tie and at the same time saying, "this has never happened to me before". Mother went to the vanity basin to wet the nappy and gave the doctor a few more wipes while still apologizing for whatever Helga had done, and all he could say again, was: “That has never happened to me before".
By now I was dying to know, "What had never happened to him before", but I had been well trained not to butt into adult conversations and ask questions.
When the doctor had finally left, on the way out, still indicating some distress of whatever never happened to him before; my mother put an end to the mystery and told me what had happened.
The doctor had decided to give Helga an injection and asked mother to turn the baby on her stomach, so that he could insert the needle into the cheek of her behind. As the needle went into my little sister's bottom, Helga retaliated in a skunk-like fashion firing an accurately directed salvo of a very smelly substance at the doctor. What would normally be called a ‘bulls-eye’ would have to be called in this instance, a 'doctor's-eye'.
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My Thought for today. – Werner
A smile is an inexpensive way to change your looks. - Proverb
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Funny stories Werner, I read them in your memoirs and reading them again still gives me a chuckle. :)
ReplyDeleteThank you Werner, I certainly had good chuckle and I enjoyed immensely reading your story, you are certainly a good story teller.
ReplyDeleteWhat an amusing story, Werner. It certainly put a smile on my face and my two children as well.
ReplyDeleteWindsor Utilities Commission is be to commended for it's continued leadership role in assuring highest drinking water quality to its consumers and protecting source water supplies of downstream users. WUC's has demonstrated its integrity by regarding environmental concerns over fluoridation's dubious claims. In doing so, WUC honours the obligation of sensible engineering versus perpetuating the rhetoric of a baseless public health myth. Canada is better for this stance and Windsor too will join 24 million Canadians whose drinking water remains fluoridation free. Kudos WUC.
ReplyDeletePeter Van Caulart, Director
Environmental Training Institute, and
VP Canadians Opposed to Fluoridation, COF-COF.ca
"Further, the prestigious National Research Council’s (NRC) 2006 fluoride report revealed that fluoride, even in low doses, can harm the thyroid gland, kidney patients, babies and high water drinkers." "We have served as guinea pigs in this ongoing and failed experiment for far too long. In my position as Alderman, it is my duty to promote the health, safety and welfare of all our residents. Adding fluoride chemicals into our public water supply runs counter to this and therefore needs to end." http://www.endfluoridemilwaukee.blogspot.com/
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endfluoridemilwaukee.blogspot.com
TO AUSTRALIAN WATER SUPPLIERS
ReplyDeleteWater suppliers throughout Australia must unite and take a stand and tell the ‘Health’ Departments of each State and Federal Health Minster to take a flying jump, do not threaten you with fines etc., for refusing to add this hazardous waste to the populations’ drinking water supplies, that you have all united as water supplies, after carefully studying all the evidence of cumulative harm from ‘water fluoridation chemicals’ and you will now end permanently and irrevocably forever more, the addition of this hazardous waste fluorosilicic acid/silicofluorides and co-contaminants of lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium etc., to the drinking water supplies Australia wide.
Water fluoridation is not safe and not effective, end of story. The population have been lab rats for decades and this must be stopped urgently, permanently and irrevocably for all time for the protection of the long term health and safety of the population and our environment. The drinking water supplies of the population were not meant to be hazardous waste disposal areas nor are the kidneys of the population meant to be hazardous waste disposal/filtration units. End if now.