If It's Real...

I’ve been through a lot since my last post… short recap of my trip to Utah:

• Family dinner with the Riddle Family
• BBQ with the Soelberg’s
• Teaching Matt how to apply an arm bar (including offering my own arm for him to practice on... he will debate who's actually made the decision to allow him to use my arm... him or me, but I maintain that it was me)
• Trip to St. George with Greg, Nat & Garrett (in which Garrett did his best 3-hour impersonation of a stabbing victim… I don’t remember teething being that bad…)
• Dinner at my favorite restaurant with 2 of my funniest/coolest cousins
• Trip to Golden Corral with the Phillips Family, in which my dad was suspiciously absent
• A smattering of blind dates

Needless to say, a lot happened during that trip. It’s hard to describe how much fun I had seeing everyone, and it definitely got me ready to head back to North Carolina.

Which brings me to the present… I started orientation for residency on the 17th. We practiced suturing in the morning and then in the afternoon it was off to the ropes course. For those of you have done a ropes course, you know exactly what I’m talking about. For those of you that haven’t done one, let me see if I can paint you a picture.

The way I figure it, the ropes course was probably invented by two friends (not unlike me and my best friend… very similar in a lot of ways, but extremely different in many many ways). The first friend (we’ll call M. Ropes) was probably like a modern version of Robin Hood… you know... into climbing trees, ropes bridges, cargo nets, and what not. Basically your average Man’s Man. The second friend (we’ll call N. Course) was much more touchy-feely and preferred to talk more about his feelings than to climb through trees… definitely the more sensitive of the two. So these two get together, and turn a portion of the forest into an obstacle course where you talk about your feelings... like Boot Camp for your feelings...

It was a lot of fun to do the ropes course and to get to know the people that I’m going to be spending 80 hours/week with for the next 7 years of my life. Everything was great except for the leader of the ropes course Dan (picture a young, chubby Mr. Rogers with short shorts on). During one portion of the course Dan asked each one of us to describe “how residency would be like an island for each of us.” The following exchange occurred between Dan and a resident that I’m calling Steve:

• Steve: Residency will be literally be like an island for me because I am going to be alone for a large portion of it. My wife doesn’t finish PA school until December so she’s staying in Texas until she finishes. I know it sounds cheesy but we’ve been married for almost 3 years so it’s going to be hard to live away from her (PS great answer… completely appropriate).
• Dan: (Dramatic Pause… wrinkled brow… pursed lips)… Steve… (another dramatic pause… apparently nothing says ‘I want this exchange to be uncomfortable’ like a good dramatic pause) If it’s real… (dramatic pause... clearly Dan is the Michael Jordan of dramatic pauses) It’s not cheesy…
• Steve: Afraid to answer….
• Awkward silence…
• More Awkward silence…
• Dan: Alright (dramatic pause… really driving his creepiness home)… who’s next?

After this and a few other awkward exchanges, we went to a ropes course that involved walking on a cable that was 30 feet in the air. This particular cable had another cable 10 feet above it in the air (for heaven knows what purpose)… they asked us get into groups of two and help each other across the cable… My partner and I had the ingenious plan of using our belts to make a zip line out of the higher cable (we of course would spring this Tango & Cashesque plan on the group once we got into the tree). As we’re about to ascend to the tree tops, Dan notices our belts hooked together in my partners pockets. Dan realizing what a liability this would be immediately makes belt-zip-lines illegal in this particular activity. As we protested Dan reports to us that it would be too much of a liability.

I responded, “Ummm… (dramatic pause) Dan… it’s ok for us to climb 30 feet in the air? But not use a zip line?... what kind of s@#$ is this?...”
Puzzled by my inquiry Dan responds with, “Shut the heck up and climb....”

OK, he didn’t really say that… but I didn’t ask him that question either… So I guess it's a wash. The good news is that I’m loving residency so far, and the people I work with seem to be amazing and I couldn’t be more excited about them.