Scratchy Throat, Star Wars, and Super 8 Movies – Thoughts from February 8 and 10, 2024

February 8, 2024

I’m sitting in Kaiser waiting for Patti to come out of her appointment for a pain that sounded like a kidney stone pain. While I was here, I got my flu and Covid shots.

February 10, 2024

I was about to talk about this on February 8, but Patti finished her appointment too soon. My throat has been scratchy for some time now. About a week ago, Patti mentioned that I could have tonsil stones. I looked them up and thought that’s exactly what I had. You can scrap them off if you have the right tools. The closest I could find was a plastic spoon. My first goal was to see them. I had Patti use my phone to get a picture of them. Several tries later, she accidentally took a video of the back of my throat. This was the only time I could actually see the white stoniness on the left side of my mouth.

The next day I had a day off, I attempted to scrape them off with a plastic knife. I could hold a flashlight in one hand and the knife in another. I made some headway when the knife broke in half. Back to the spoon I went. With the back of the spoon, I could reach the stones and attempt scraping up and down on them. The closer I got, the more I gagged. My eyes were watering by the time I stopped. I could tell it didn’t remove the stones. A coworker who works at a hospital suggested scraping them off with a long cotton swab. We didn’t have long cotton swabs, and I realized that most households don’t have them. They are in doctors’ offices and few other places.

I was going grocery shopping yesterday, so I looked to see if there were any long cotton swabs near where I was going. Google told me where I could get them, but they did not have them at the two places I tried. I had also tried when I was at Kaiser getting my shots. They didn’t have any for sale. They don’t want people to be their own doctors. I picked up a shower curtain liner at one place. We needed that. Giving up, I went back to my regular shopping. I finally ordered a tonsil removal kit online. I should get it tomorrow. It comes with 100 long cotton swabs and other tools that should work much better than the plastic spoon. Now I can open up my own medical practice.

I watched the movie 5-25-77 on my days off. Nerds like me might know exactly what this date refers to. If, like Patti, you have no clue what it could refer to, it’s nice to know that non-nerds can appreciate my words too. It refers to the day they released Star Wars in theaters. I was six years old on this date so I only know about its significance as it became the phenomenon it developed into. Patti saw the first fifteen minutes of the first Star Wars on VHS and fell asleep. She represents the rest of the people who had no idea this wasn’t just another science fiction space movie. Actually, Star Wars is a space fantasy. People may have seen 2001: A Space Odyssey and thought it would be like that. It was nothing like that. Star Wars changed the life of the main character in the movie and mine as well.

I was too young to appreciate the first Star Wars more than buying the toys from the film. By the time The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi came out, I was making my Super 8 movies. I still remember my brilliant shot of a sparkler on a fishing line being raised to my toy Millennium Falcon. It felt brilliant until the Millennium Falcon caught on fire. The damaged ship is still in a large box of toys we have in storage. The burns make it look like it has truly been in a space battle.