The Palacio Curse Strikes Again

Melinda Palacio

My View

After four years of avoiding a serious injury, my ankle twisted and swelled up to the size of a tennis ball. I've spent the past two days hobbling from doctor to x-ray technician to specialist. Lucky for me, the injury, which happened while I was gardening in the backyard, wasn't as bad as the one four years ago that sent me careening down three flights of stairs and left me with a broken leg, surgery, and several months of bed rest. This time around, the sight of the crutches makes me feel faint. After two days of crutching around, I feel exhausted and all of four years older than I was the last time injury struck.

Sometimes, I feel cursed. How can one person be so clumsy? And it's not just me. My grandmother was famous for falling. She always had an ace bandage handy. If anyone knows how to lift this fallen ankle curse, please help.

The podiatrist is calling this injury a level one sprain, meaning I'll live and I should be up and running sooner than later, perhaps by the end of the month. RICE, no chopsticks is the recommended treatment: Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. This time around, I also knew to refuse big pharma's pain pills. Those things kept me in a fog that had my jaw tingling and me blathering something about my bed traveling at light speed through outer space along with the Starship Enterprise. I had to throw out the prescription for the pain pills.  I have a big tolerance for pain and will do just fine with natural remedies and plain generic aspirin.

I'm also lucky I was able to see a doctor. I had to be persistent and explain over the phone that I could not walk and that I had a giant ankle and a previous injury and surgery. Then doctor number one gave me a referral for x-rays and a visit with a specialist. The visit with the specialist was almost postponed by one week, but I called and asked to be put on a waiting list for the next day. After the podiatrist poked at my swollen ankle, he said I was lucky no bones were fractured.

Although some of my late summer plans will have to go on hold,  I'm able to sit with my foot propped up and write. I can even play my guitar if I hobble over to it. Things could be worse. I guess I'm not cursed after all.

Parked on the couch. 

No Longer Taunted by My Six Eyes

Melinda Palacio

Selfie with Glasses

As a nerdy kid, the casual taunt of "four eyes" didn't bother me much. Glasses were a welcomed alternative to fuzzy vision and flinching every time a spherical object sped towards my face. I was ten years old when someone realized I needed glasses. Before my age reached double digits, I went through life seeing only what was at the end of my outstretched arm. Nearsightedness was a plus because I could read books in bed and study people's body language up close. Even though I couldn't see the chalkboard, I was a pretty good student who coasted on a good memory and an innate desire to please. I always sat at the front of the classroom and was quick to raise my hand even though I was very shy on the playground. 

            I remember the day my teacher at Middleton Elementary in Huntington Park finally figured out I couldn't see. She held a large laminated chart up with houses and trees, statistics was the lesson. My teacher at Middleton Elementary, Mrs. Schaeffer called on me to ask how many houses were in the first column. It was my last year before Junior High School and everything was odd about that day, especially the fact that the teacher had to call on me (when other students call you school girl and goody two shoes, the teacher doesn't have to work as hard) and that I had stayed quiet and didn't offer an answer. The teacher talked and pointed to her blurry chart, then pointed back at me. Everything she said sounded garbled like the teacher's voice in the Peanuts' movies. When I said I didn't know the answer, she got mad and sent me to the principal's office. She probably thought I was making fun of her. Her reaction was as surprising to me as mine was to her. It seems as if teachers often were angry when their supposed "good" students veered from expectation. It reminds me of the time I was punished for becoming emotional the first time I heard an orchestra play at school. I started sobbing when the cellist played her solo. The kids seated all around me turned to point at me and giggled while I was in tears because the music was so beautiful. My teacher sent me out of the auditorium and I missed the rest of the performance.

            Fast forward a few decades and the child is now a middle-aged woman who still wears glasses and who is still moved to tears by live music, especially the cello. This year, I must wear bifocals to adjust for print that is as close as my phone and as far away as a street sign. I have several friends who admit they need bifocals, but are afraid they will not be able to adjust to the varying magnifications. I suppose I am lucky that my brain can make the adjustments automatically and that I can also wear multifocal contact lenses. I'm just as eager to see all things near and far as I was when I received my first pair of spectacles. The best part of being a woman of a certain age who wears glasses is that instead of being called four eyes or six eyes (thank you bifocals), that I often receive compliments on my current frames. Perhaps, it helps that I chose frames that are very similar to the glasses Diana Prince wears in the new Wonder Woman movie.

Looking Down the Barrel of History

Guest Post
by Steve Beisner

In 1965, when I was nineteen, Louisiana was at war with itself, as some of its citizens marched for the right to just be, while others struggled with their consciences in a messy reaction to the civil rights movement. Ultimately, I'm proud to say, Louisiana's citizens, black and white, chose the right side of history.

            In the middle of that summer, I sat with three friends, and guitars, a banjo, and harmonica on Doctor Loupe's front porch in the town of New Roads in Pointe Coupee Parish. We were buoyed by changing times, adolescent optimism, and our home-made music.

Our songs were anthems to better days ahead. Our talk was of recent confrontations that had roiled the town. We were singing an old Lead Belly tune when a raggedy pickup truck turned onto the street, slowed, and stopped at the curb, twenty feet from where we sat. Two men, the driver, a local loud-mouth, and his passenger and partner in poor choices, peered at us.

The passenger eased the long barrel of an ancient double barreled shotgun through the truck's side window, resting it there, pointed in our direction.

            "Y'all wouldn't be none of those northern agitators, would ya?"

            There was a long silence. No one moved. Then Joe stood up, still grasping the neck of his guitar, and walked to the edge of the porch.  "What the hell you boys talkin' about? Any fool can see we're just sittin' here by the river, tryin' to catch us a catfish dinner." Of course there was no river and no catfish!

            I don't know if the men were completely confused by Joe's words, or just embarrassed, but the driver hit the gas, the tires squealed, the truck fishtailed down the street and disappeared around the corner.

            I knew some Louisianans who mourned the passing of officially approved racism. Some are alive today. To a person they have embraced a new champion, one who shouts euphemisms about making America great again.  But it's the same old hate, same old fear.

            Last year as the good people of the United States contemplated a racist running for the highest office, I sat with three friends in a cafe in Santa Barbara, reputedly one of the land's more enlightened enclaves. We sipped coffee and talked, trying to ease our shared election trauma. The talk was consoling, not bitter nor angry, just sad.

            At the next table, a red-faced man with a voice loud enough to ensure that everyone at surrounding tables could hear, growled, "Damned pseudo-intellectual liberals... worthless, just living off the fat of the land."

            Everyone laughed.

            The only things missing were the truck and the shotgun.

            Sometimes hatred falls by its own ridiculous weight.

about the author

Steve Beisner

South Louisiana native Steve Beisner is a writer, musician, and computer scientist. He has published short stories and poems, and has been recognized for his short fiction by the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and by Country Roads Magazine. Steve was editor of Ink Byte, the online magazine for writers. He is now working on MetaWrite, an evolution of the word processor into a more effective tool for the writer to compose, construct, and analyze long form manuscripts.  Steve lives in New Orleans, LA. and Santa Barbara, CA.