Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (82 page)

Pregnancy offers so many novelties: stretch marks, mood swings…and the chance to give birth to a slimy little human in the unlikeliest of places
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P
OST OFFICE
Sonia Marina Nascimento went to a post office in Wisbech, England in May 2009 to buy some minutes for her mobile phone—when her water broke. Postmaster Paul Childs, 58, jumped into action and moved Nasciemento from the lobby and into an office. Then, before an ambulance could arrive, Childs, his wife Helen, and an employee delivered a baby girl. “It was jolly good,” Childs said to reporters afterward. “She hadn’t even been having contractions. She dropped her jeans and out it popped.” Childs weighed the baby on a post-office scale. “She weighed 5 pounds, 15 ounces,” he said. “We worked out that that’s the equivalent of an £8.22 first-class parcel.”

SHRIMP BOAT

In August 2007, shrimp boat skipper Ed Keisel was 30 miles off the coast of Texas when his cook, Cindy Preisel, went into labor. Keisel grabbed a roll of paper towels and a first-aid book and got ready. But there was trouble: The baby came out breech, or feet first. “I’m no doctor,” Keisel said, “but even I knew that’s not supposed to happen.” He stayed calm, but there was more trouble: The umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck. “So I did the only thing I could,” the skipper said. “I waited for a contraction, and then slid my fingers in around the top of his head and scooped him out.” But now the newborn wasn’t breathing. Keisel cleared the baby’s nose and mouth and gently performed CPR. After an agonizing 25 minutes, the boy sucked in air, turned red—and started bawling. “I was so happy and relieved,” Cindy Preisel said. “It’s hard to put into words.” She named the boy Brian, after his father—a crewman on the boat—and gave him the middle name Edward, after the skipper who delivered him.

JET PLANE

Nicola and Dominic Delemere of Scunthorpe, England, took a flight from London to the Greek island of Crete in August 2007. Nicola was six months pregnant, far from full term. But at 30,000 feet, her water broke and she went into contractions. There were no doctors on board, so while the pilots turned the plane around, flight supervisor Carol Miller and a passenger delivered the baby—which weighed only one pound, one ounce. The tiny baby boy wasn’t breathing, so the quick-thinking Miller used a straw to clear fluids from the newborn’s lungs, gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and massaged his heart until the plane landed at Gatwick Airport. The boy was rushed to a hospital, where doctors said he’d gone too long without oxygen and had almost certainly suffered brain damage. They were wrong: Four months later, little Alfie Delemere was home and was expected to be just fine. And the airline offered the whole family a free flight.

Spivey’s Corner, North Carolina, hosts an annual festival to “revive the lost art of hollering.”

TREE

In February 2000, Sofia Pedro of Mozambique was about nine months pregnant when the Limpopo River flooded. To escape the rising waters, she, her two children, her mother-in-law, and several of their neighbors climbed a large tree—and were all trapped there for the next three days as the flood raged. On the third day, Pedro went into labor. Thinking fast, her mother-in-law tied Pedro to a branch with a blanket, then caught the baby when it arrived—with the floodwaters six feet below them. Just then, a rescue helicopter appeared overhead and a medic was lowered down. He cut the baby’s umbilical cord and hoisted baby and mom to safety. Everyone in the tree survived the disaster.

McDONALD’S RESTROOM

Danille Miller was working the night shift at a McDonald’s restaurant one night in December 2007 in Vancouver, Washington, when she suddenly ran to the restroom. A co-worker followed her in, asking if she was okay. Miller said something felt wrong, but she wasn’t sure what. Within a few minutes, she had her answer when she began giving birth to a baby. This was a shock—because Miller had no idea that she was pregnant. Her equally shocked co-worker told someone to call 911, then helped deliver a six-pound baby boy. Mom and baby (later named Austin) were transported to a nearby hospital, and both were fine.

Roto-Rooter contest prize: The “Pimped-Out John,” a toilet with built-in mini-fridge, TV & laptop
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KILLER KARAOKE

“And now, the end is near…” is the opening line of the song “My Way.” Alas, in some karaoke bars in the Philippines, that’s not just a lyric but an eerily accurate prediction
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H
E DID IT HIS WAY
In 1968 Frank Sinatra invited 27-year-old singer/songwriter Paul Anka to dinner, where Sinatra revealed that he was thinking of retiring from the music business. He asked Anka to write a farewell song for him. Anka already had a tune—he liked the melody of a song called “Comme d’Habitude” (“As Usual”) that he’d heard while vacationing on the French Riviera. He did not like the self-pitying French lyrics about living in a loveless relationship, however, so he got the composers’ permission to write new English lyrics for it.

Anka began the lyrics that very night. As he worked, he tried to make it a song about Sinatra’s life, written from Sinatra’s point of view, heavy with swaggering bravado. He finished at 5:00 a.m. and flew out to Las Vegas to sing it to Sinatra. The song: “My Way.” It became the archetypal later-Sinatra song, so much so that Sinatra didn’t retire. It became one of the most popular, most recorded songs of all time, and a staple of karaoke bars around the world. But in one country, the Philippines, the song has taken a dark turn.

ALL YOU NEED IS DEATH

The “My Way Killings” is what Philippine newspapers call them. Nobody really knows how many people have been killed during a karaoke performance of the song, but in early 2010, the
New York Times
reported that there have been “at least a half-dozen” deaths in recent years. (The
Asia Times
estimates that the number is in the dozens.) Some of the cases include:

• A singer in a San Mateo bar who ignored a heckler who complained that the guy was singing out of tune. Midway through the song, the heckler pulled out a .38-caliber pistol and shot the performer in the chest, killing him instantly.

• Faced by hecklers, another singer took the initiative and shot two audience members, killing one.

Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia are building a golf course in an area that is currently a minefield
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• A “Sinatra-loving crowd” reportedly rushed the stage en masse and beat a singer to death for his poor performance of “My Way.” The situation so spooked employees and patrons that many karaoke bars removed the song from their machines, and families banned it from their sing-along gatherings.

As an inexpensive form of entertainment in a relatively poor country, karaoke has become an important part of Philippine culture. It’s hard to escape the sound of somebody singing along to synthesized music—you can hear it in bars and nightclubs, at family gatherings, even on the street or in malls, courtesy of coin-operated kiosks. And apparently singers take their performances seriously, taking offense at audience inattention or heckling; hardcore audiences can get ugly when someone steps up to the mike unprepared or out of tune.

MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY

But what puts “My Way” into its own category of karaoke danger? Observers suggest two possible reasons:

1
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It’s sung too often
. On any given night, a bar-hopper in the Philippines would likely hear “My Way” performed several times, enough to drive a music lover to despair even if it was sung well. When sung badly…well, get ready to duck.

2
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Because of its arrogant lyrics
. The lyrics brag about being a tough guy who follows his own course, implying that anybody who doesn’t is a loser. Perhaps Sinatra could get away with it, but when a taxi driver sings those lyrics, some listeners just want to pop the guy, or at least put him in his place.

THE END IS NEAR

In a hot, crowded bar, in a desperate society with millions of illegal handguns, it’s easy for irritation to boil up into murderous rage. Many Manila karaoke bars have now banned the singing of “My Way” to protect patrons from alcohol-fueled fights. (Even Sinatra grew to hate it. After performing it in 1984 at London’s Albert Hall, he was heard muttering “I can’t stand that song.”) Although “My Way” is one of the most played at funerals and is even quoted on gravestones, Sinatra chose another of his songs as his epitaph: “The Best Is Yet to Come.”

Beer, sawdust, and used diapers are all being considered for use as alternative fuels
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DOCTOR, NO!

So far, we’ve made you afraid to fly (
page 370
), afraid to call the police (
page 223
), afraid to send your kids to school (
page 301
), and afraid to vote (
page 178
). And now we’re going to make you afraid to go the hospital. (Sorry.)

A
LWAYS GET A SECOND OPINION

In 1989 a man identified as Mr. C was told by doctors at Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland, that he had Huntington’s disease, an incurable brain illness. The news shocked his family and they prepared for the worst—the onset of symptoms and his eventual death. The diagnosis affected all of their lives: His wife and one of his daughters terminated their pregnancies for fear of passing on the hereditary disease, and another daughter quit school because of the stress. But by 2007, Mr. C hadn’t developed any symptoms, so doctors tested him again…and discovered that he never even had Huntington’s. “We are deeply sorry for the anxiety caused to Mr. C and his family,” said a hospital spokesperson. A lawsuit is pending.

DO YOU FEEL A DRAFT?

Johanna L., a 78-year-old retiree, checked into the HochfrankenKlinik in Münchberg, Germany, in March 2008 to have knee surgery. But when she woke up in the recovery room, her knee hadn’t been operated on…and she felt a strange breeze blowing up the back of her gown. She called a nurse, who informed Johanna that she had been given an artificial anus. Apparently, there was a records mix-up: The patient who was suffering from severe incontinence got knee surgery; Johanna got that patient’s new anus. She sued the hospital, and the doctors were suspended.

SMILE—YOU’RE ON CANDID CAMERA

In 2008 at a hospital in the Philippines, officials were forced to apologize to a 39-year-old patient. Why? Because after he checked in to have a “canister of perfume” removed from his colon (no report on how it got there), the medical team assigned to remove it decided to film the procedure—and then uploaded it onto the Internet. The film, which featured doctors and nurses laughing around the patient’s unconscious body and cheering when they finally extracted the canister, became a hit. A hospital spokesperson later said that cameras and cell phones had been banned from operating rooms, and added that while it was acceptable at a teaching hospital to allow young doctors and nurses to watch an operation, it had been “a violation of ethical standards” for them to spray the perfume at the end.

Little blue pill: Some Viagra users have reported blue-tinted vision
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HE TALKS TOO MUCH

Eighty-year-old Tom Talks of Rochdale, England, was walking his dog in July 2008 when he tripped and broke his ankle. Doctors at Fairfield General Hospital put his leg in a plaster cast and sent him home. But the cast was too tight. “Every day for a week, I begged them to release the pressure,” said Talks. “It felt like my leg was trying to burst out of its skin.” They refused to loosen the cast…until Talks collapsed in agony. That convinced them to examine him…and they discovered an infection so severe that part of his leg had to be amputated. Afterward, Talks suffered a heart attack and developed kidney problems. His grandson, Karl Sanderson, said, “This is the 21st century—we should not be in a situation where someone might die because they fracture their ankle!” At last report, Talks’s family had filed a formal complaint with the hospital.