[wordup] "Cranking" by Merlin Mann

[Adam Shand]

Nothing to do with the usual 43 folder productivity crapola. This is
simply a lovely, and deeply personal, story. Like very much.

Adam.

Source: http://www.43folders.com/2011/04/22/cranking
Via: http://www.marco.org/2011/04/22/cranking

Cranking
Merlin Mann
Apr 22 2011

1.

Nothing wrecks your living room decor quite like a giant, rented hospital bed.

The one my Dad laid in for a couple months in the fall of 1974 was an
alarmingly stiff and sturdy affair, the frame of which was forged of
impossibly heavy iron, with half a dozen jaggy coats of putty-flesh
latex paint doing a shit job of concealing the dings and dents kissed
by dozens of clutches of burly rental guys trying to navigate
unaccommodating residential doors.

Jammed cattywampus between a teddy-bear brown sectional, an antiqued
rococo credenza, and what had until recently been my Father's favorite
armchair, the hospital bed left little room for easy socializing, let
alone aesthetic speculation. This was a living room where a very ill
person would mostly die soon.

The hospital bed's defining feature was the theoretical ease with
which the human trunk slumped in its top half could be raised or
lowered by turning a shitty little crank at the foot of its lower
half. Like the bed itself, the shitty little crank was ugly and
obtrusive and hard to live with. Mom and I tripped over the crank a
lot.

The theoretically useful but ultimately shitty little crank made the
hospital bed look like those old-timey cars we'd see in the bad silent
movies they showed down at Shakey's Pizza.

Mom and Dad despised the saltines-and-ketchup style of pizza served at
Shakey's. To them, LaRosa's over on Cheviot had way better pizza plus
a pretty good jukebox. But, I really liked Shakey's. They gave away
cool styrofoam boater hats with a red paper band that said, "Shakey's
Pizza Parlor." Which I thought looked smashing. So, they used to take
me to Shakey's.

In practice, the hospital bed's shitty little crank functioned mostly
as a recalcitrant and pinch-inducing mechanism for eroding my father's
dignity.

Dad would lay in the hospital bed that filled our living room while my
Mom slowly cranked. He'd try to make jokes. (Dad had always been the
funniest person any of his friends knew.) The hospital bed creaked.
Mom cranked. Dad's tired upper half would haltingly rise and bob with
reluctant help from the bed's upper half. Mom sweated at the crank.
Dad laid there and watched. Dad couldn't help. He watched. He was in
the hospital bed. Mom did all the cranking. Dad watched. He watched
while his wife turned a shitty little iron crank, trying impotently to
make her best friend just a tiny bit more comfortable as his body
worked to finally finish eating itself. But, he couldn't help out. I
think he wanted to help out. But, he couldn't help out.

She couldn't really help my Dad. My Dad couldn't really help her. But
they sure tried.

She cranked and cranked.

I was seven. I didn't know how to help anyone.

2.

The last time I saw my Dad, he was in a different hospital bed. That
one was a much more functional and aesthetically appropriate unit
neatly fitted into an overlit semi-private room in the highly-regarded
Jewish Hospital located on E. Galbraith Road. We weren't Jewish. We
were just sick.

Frankly, I forget what the crank on the second hospital bed looked
like, but I seem to recall that it worked just fine.
This was maybe a week before my Dad died.