Making fun of mortality

Facing your own mortality is nothing to make fun of -- but I'm going to do it, anyway.

As you may very well know, I've been less than 100 percent physically for the last several months (and less than 100 percent mentally for several years). A recent trip to the doctor led to the discovery of a small cyst on one of my testicles -- which, of course, has resulted in a near-constant stream of "three-ball" jokes from some of my poker buddies.

Whenever a member of the medical profession uses words like "cyst," they generally results in the individual they are examining to start asking a variety of questions. In my case, these questions have included the following:

-- Am I going to die before I see my daughter graduate from high school?

-- Should I make out a last will and testament now, and can I do it with a sentence that goes something like, "My daughter gets everything, and anybody I owe money to can just kiss my ass"?

-- How many more people are going to feel me up without me getting some enjoyment -- or at least a cigarette and 10 minutes of cuddling -- out of it?

Now I'm pretty sure answers to those questions are "no," "probably not" and "everybody with medical training in the greater Omaha area, if you're really lucky" -- but it has given me an opportunity to come to the realization that, eventually, the expiration date God stamped on the inside of my forehead is going to come around and that I need to make the most out of the time I have left, whether it's 24 hours, 24 weeks or 24 (or more) years.

I'm not concerned about the cyst itself. The radiologist I spoke with last week said that he's 99.9 percent sure it is benign, which means that I'll have one more unused spherical object hanging in my scrotal region until such time as the doctor feels it would be a good idea to remove it (and we'll be chatting later this week on how long it will be before she moves that idea to "right about now" stage).

The concern right now is what the radiologist called "unusual activity" in one of my testicles. He couldn't give me a definitive description of what the "unusual activity" is all about (although I would say, with some degree of expertise, that it's due to a complete absence of quality sexual activity with any good-looking single woman within a 200-mile radius of my apartment). That's why I'll be having an MRI done sometime in the very near future to get some more details about what kind of disturbance is going on in my testicular region.

In the meantime, I'm staying positive about the whole thing. First, I'm positive that the pain that this particular situation is causing is nothing short of sister-running-fingernails-on-chalkboard-while-you-watch-NFL annoying, at best, and excruciating can-I-just-jump-off-a-bridge-now-and-dive-headfirst-into-a-dry-creek-bed-to-make-it-go-away pain at worst.

Second, I know that things are in place -- physically, financially and spiritually -- to take care of the situation. I realize that with age comes more medical concerns, and that the number of people who deal with this sort of thing, in each area, know what they're doing and will make it better.

If God says it's time to go, then it's time to go and I'll go willingly (soon after I stop screaming and dragging my feet as they try and pull me away from this earth). Until that time, I'm going to enjoy myself, get caught up on life and have a little fun along the way so that, when it does come, I don't leave anything behind except a lot of laughs.

And my estate, which my daughter already has sewn up, of course . . . and what she does with $17.93 is her business.

* * * * *

Speaking of my daughter, she had her first competition performance of the year as the Millard West band competed in Starfest at Morningside College in Sioux City (which, when translated from its Latin originations, means, "depressing, smelly craphole of a town").

There was a lot of concern going into Saturday's performance. Kylie is a leader in the color guard, and she had expressed several times that the team just wasn't getting the routine down. She had always said this in previous years, but after watching them perform a dress rehearsal of it during halftime of a football game Thursday night, even I was concerned that this was not going to look good when they took the field Saturday.

I chatted with her Thursday and tried to keep her positive, offering her suggestions to help keep the troops from coming apart at the seams. As I drove up Saturday, I wondered if this was going to be a quick trip to watch the train wreck, followed by a quick trip home with a bawling 17-year-old sitting in the back of the band bus and in need of serious psychological counseling to concern myself with.

Those concerns were erased, though, when the band came out and performed quite well in the preliminaries. They finished fifth out of 14 teams and advanced to the finals, where they ended up fifth with an even better performance under the lights that night.

Kylie called with the news as I drove into Omaha late Saturday night, then called back a couple of moments later with some even better news -- the color guard, which looked like a Chinese fire drill on Thursday night -- finished second among color guards that performed at the festival. I'm not sure who was happier -- me, my daughter or the 20 or so over-excited teenage kids screaming in the background during Kylie's call.

The team performs at a competition this weekend in Sioux Falls, then has two competitions the following two weeks on their home field at Millard South, including the State Bandmasters competition. If Saturday's performance was any indication, we should be excited about the band's chances the next three weekends.

* * * * *

A final side note to Saturday -- during some down time between the prelims and finals, I made the short journey across the river to South Sioux City to pick up a copy of the paper I used to work at . . . and to unknowingly put myself through a quick re-hashing of the hell I went through there last summer.

It took one glance of the front page for me to realize that whatever changes I had made to the quality of the paper's design were no longer in place, returning it to the pathetic layout and design that was its signature before my arrival. The one full-time writer that was a big pain in my ass -- and one the publisher was hoping to get rid of -- is still there (and, yes, I think there's a connection between these two notes).

And a quick drive through downtown reminded me of just how depressing the area was to me. Suffice to say that I could not get out of the Sioux City area fast enough.

After her last performance, I went to have a last word with Kylie before heading home, and I found her walking toward the bus and crying like she'd lost her dog. When I asked her what the problem was, she said between sobs, "This is the last time I'm going to march in this competition" -- to which I thought to myself, "THANK GOD!!!" If it's the last time I'm ever in Sioux City (and, outside of a Sammy Hagar concert coming up in November, I don't see any real need to return), the only tears I'd be able to generate would be tears of joy.

That's my show. You've been a great audience. Stay tuned for Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reyonlds. That's it and that's all . . .