I learned to type on a Royal Standard, and spent four years on my student newspaper and my first year as a reporter pounding out hundreds of stories on Royal Standards. I saw one in a thrift store a while back, and I could barely push the keys. I still have two manual typewriters around here somewhere, just in case of the end of civilization as we know it. I need to put by a supply of ribbons.

If the world ends, will somebody come take my dictation?

A Smith-Corona portable lives under my desk. It needs a good cleaning. It's kind of an icon. Where it is, is my home.

Nearly every job I've gotten can be traced back to a Secretarial Typing course I took in high school. IBM Selectrics, those honking big beasts. First day of class, first instructions. "Turn on the machines". Big whirr of fans. "Hit the Return button." The guy sitting behind me does, and the carriage return flies off the machine onto the floor. He stares at it, then looks at the teacher.

"I should just drop this class now, right?"

BWAH!

Cool, Beverly and I can run the post-comet craft club. She'll make ink and I will laboriously make lumpy paper by hand.

This isn't drabble-y, or about this week's drabble theme. Just something I wrote yesterday.

****

I am astonished at how fragile the human body is -- and how strong. And how it can be both at the same time.

Dad had his 4th heart attack on Monday. This is the man who, for 12 years and 27 hospital visits, drove himself to the ER every single time he felt those tell-tale crushing pains. Except this time. This time, the pain was so severe, he said -- in fact, the worst it's ever been -- that he called 911. It sounded to me like it was The Big One.

I got that all-too-familiar phone call fron a Cath Lab nurse -- "Ms. Lang? I'm so-and-so, at Christ Hospital. Your father came in with chest pains. He has some blockage, so we're doing an angioplasty." Angioplasty #12, if Dad counted correctly. The 5th time in the 8 years since his quadruple bypass that the same vein graft has re-occluded, requiring another angioplasty, and another stent -- or 2 -- to try to prop the vein open.

Vein grafts re-close much more often than arterial grafts do -- I learned this from reading the medical reference books in my office, and from the doctors who perform miracles on my dad's heart with depressing frequency. Vein grafts re-occlude more often -- and 1 out of the 4 grafts in my dad's heart, just one, is a vein graft. The other 3 -- all arterial grafts -- are still beautifully wide open, 8 years after the bypass surgery.

The human body is so fragile. One vein, out of my dad's entire body. One vein, just millimeters in diameter, blocked by a bunch of platelets that decided to clump, platelets that were only doing their job by rushing to a weak spot and trying to patch it. One vein that just wouldn't allow blood to get through to the heart, and my dad's life was at risk. The human body is so fragile.

The human body is so strong. Dad has survived 4 heart attacks, a quadruple bypass, and 12 angioplasties over the last 12 years. He's not bed-ridden, not frail and puny, not a sad shadow of the man he used to be. He's slowed down a little, but who's to say that wasn't simply a result of the passage of 12 years? He still walks for exercise, does yardwork, and takes care of the apartment pool all summer long.

When Dad had his quadruple bypass 8 years ago, the doctors told us that the average patient stays in the cardiac ICU for 3 days and is home after a week. Dad was out of the ICU in less than 24 hours and home in 3 days. The doctors urged him to walk laps around the hospital floor as he recovered; 4 laps totalled a quarter-mile. Dad, just out of the ICU, walked a mile. Before breakfast.

The human body is so resilient. After each hospital stay (close to 30 over the past 12 years), he bounces back like it was nothing -- a cold, a hangnail, a headache. He resumes his life, his activities, walking, pulling weeds, mowing the lawn, mocking the disease that tries to stop him but only manages to slow him down momentarily. He gets the upper hand on his heart disease.

Until it returns. One small clot in one small vein.

The human body is so strong. And so fragile.

Wow, that's good, Tep. And your dad is...like Timex Man or something...with the keeping-on-ticking, I mean.

The man is a brick, truly. It's a little amazing.

Yeah. Totally. Of course, my dad made me think acid stomach is fatal cause he carried on so much.

Tep, that gave me shivers.