My lungs are clogged. After surgery at Mount Nittany Medical Center, the hospital commissioned a van to take me and my mobility device (a.k.a. scooter–an Amigo [accept no substitutes]) from State College to Pleasant Gap. There on my 69th birthday the HealthSouth Physical Rehabilitation nurse tried again to get me to breathe deeply–handing me the contraption from the night table. But [why is there a “but”?] but I felt too sick. Hence I am paying for it now.
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Hint. Hint. Try singing this stanza. See what it does to your breathing.
Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, Television North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe Rosenbergs, H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom Brando, The King And I, and The Catcher In The Rye Eisenhower, Vaccine, England's got a new queen Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye
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It is 2:41 A.M. I am awake after four hours of sleep because my lungs are clogged with phlegm and so I sing (cough, spit, breathe) to Billy Joel’s Vevo video–a stylized recreation of my youth (and Billy’s [I am two years older than he; we share joint memories of the Edsel and Diem Bien Phu). [See Footnote 1.]
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See what singing this stanza does to your lungs.
All clear?
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Joel (finally more sleep and more on the subject of sleep; don’t touch that dial)
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Footnotes
- Wikipedia explains each of the proper noun stanzas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Didn%27t_Start_the_Fire
- ]Two follows one.]