“Nyetovshchik,” by Dale Stromberg
Dec 29th, 2021 | By Defenestration
As I imagine you know, there’s a protocol for getting into an elevator.
As I imagine you know, there’s a protocol for getting into an elevator.
While the coronavirus pandemic has gripped the nation, a subtler, far more dangerous pandemic has silently infiltrated the minds and bodies of America’s men: Soy Boyism.
Nobody gets a cat on purpose, no one wakes up one morning and decides they want to take care of a small useless predator for a decade or more; cats just sort of happen to a person, we end up with them, like children or guns.
For my entire life anytime I complain about anything my mother responds with some newly acquired anecdote about someone who has it harder. I first noticed the pattern in college after I griped about a roommate and she told me about a boy born without hands who had taught himself to paint by holding a paintbrush between his teeth.
We’ve all heard horror stories about small town medical practices. I guess I got off lucky. I grew up in the 1950s in Frederick, Maryland, at the time a town of fewer than 20,000 people. I never had to go to the local orthopedist, a man nicknamed “Wrong Knee” or had a colonoscopy performed by that doctor who kept his patients awake and just had them lean over a sawhorse to let the scoping begin. Things were a little dicier for me, though, in the dental arena.