Uncle Dave's Blog

“Cookies” by Douglas Adams (author: “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”)

This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person was me.

I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I’d gotten the time of the train wrong.I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. I went and sat at a table.

I want you to picture the scene. It’s very important that you get this very clear in your mind.Here’s the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. There’s a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase.It didn’t look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it.

Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There’s nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies.You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know. . .

But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do a clue in the newspaper, couldn’t do anything, and thought, what am I going to do?In the end I thought, nothing for it, I’ll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself.

I thought, that settled him. But it hadn’t because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie.Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice . . .” I mean, it doesn’t really work.

We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one.

Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away.Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back.

A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my cookies.

The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who’s had the same exact story, only he doesn’t have the punch line.

(Excerpted from “The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time” by Douglas Adams)

I am at once humbled and intimidated to have someone’s else body part inside of my own body, in this case the endothelial layer of my right cornea.

Humbled, because I know that this could only have been harvested from someone who died. I don’t really dwell on who it is or how they died, and unlike other organs for which one has to wait for the right person to die at the right time, cornea’s are stored in an eye bank and generally more readily available. Nevertheless, I am grateful for the donation and the opportunity to see clearly through someone’s else eyes.

The intimidation comes from the fact that, for the rest of my life, I will have to take eye drops to prevent the rejection of my new corneal layer. Our bodies do not like foreign matter introduce in them, and your immune system naturally fights anything it considers an invader, in this case my new corneal layer. So I must take Prednisolone (a corticosteroid drug which is both an anti-inflammatory and immunosuppresant) for the rest of my life. Currently I must use it four times a day, but I am told that evengtually I will be able to taper down to one drop a day, which I am looking forward to after reading the side effects of Prednisolone.

All in all, I am really looking forward to that happy time a couple of months from now when my improved right eye and my somewhat less impaired left eye get themselves fully in step so I can have prescription glasses for the first time in my life!

I’m hoping to see a golf ball again!

Learn more about DSEK.

Learn more about eye banks.

A blonde walks into a bank in New York City and asks for the loan officer. She says she’s going to Europe on business for two weeks and needs to borrow $5,000. The bank officer says the bank will need some kind of security for the loan, so the blonde hands over the keys to a new Rolls Royce. The car is parked on the street in front of the bank; she has the title, and everything checks out. The bank agrees to accept the car as collateral for the loan. The bank’s president and its officers all enjoy a good laugh at the blonde for using a $250,000 Rolls as collateral against a $5,000 loan. An employee of the bank then drives the Rolls into the bank’s underground garage and parks it there. Two weeks later, the blonde returns and repays the $5,000 and the interest, which comes to $15.41. The loan officer says, “Miss, we are very happy to have had your business, and this transaction has worked out very nicely; but we are a little puzzled. We checked you out and found that you are a multimillionaire. What puzzles us is – why would you bother to borrow $5,000?” The blond replies…..”Where else in New York City can I park my car for two weeks for only $15.41 and expect it to be there when I return?”

1- I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
2- Borrow money from pessimists – they don’t expect it back.
3- Half the people you know are below average.
4- 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name
5- 42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
6- A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
7- A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
8- If you want the rainbow, you got to put up with the rain.
9- All those who believe in psycho kinesis, raise my hand.
10- The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
11- I almost had a psychic girlfriend, but she left me before we met.
12- OK, so what’s the speed of dark?
13- How do you tell when you’re out of invisible ink?
14- If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
15- Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
16- When everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.
17- Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy .
18- Hard work pays off in the future, laziness pays off now.
19- I intend to live forever; so far, so good
20- If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
21- Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.
22- What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
23- My mechanic told me, “I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.”
24- Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?
25- If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
26- A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
27- Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
28- The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.
29- To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
30- The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
31- The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up.
32- The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it.
33- Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don’t have film.
34 – If your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work