Benny Jay: Medical Advice

It’s the day after my miraculous recovery — when the stone made of calcium popped out of my cheek — and the word’s starting to spread.

My wife told my mother, who’s calling to hear about it from me.

“You poked the stone out of your mouth with a Q-tip?” she asks.

“Yes….”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“No….”

“See a doctor….”

“I called the doctor, but there’s really no point cause the stone passed….”

“Has the doctor called you back?”

“Not yet….”

“What kind of doctor doesn’t call you back?”

“Really, I feel fine….”

“Call me when the doctor calls you back….”

An hour passes. My sister calls. She’s at my parents’ house. I can hear them talking in the background.

“Mom wants to know has the doctor called?” she asks.

“No, but….”

“He hasn’t called yet,” she tells my mother.

“He hasn’t called?” says my mother. “That’s some doctor….”

“Benny, listen,” my sister tells me. “You need a new doctor….”

I can hear my father in the background. “He should go to the emergency room….”

“Dad thinks you should go to the emergency room,” my sister tells me.

“No, really — I’m fine….”

“How did you find this doctor?”

“He’s on my health plan….”

“You need a new health plan….”

“I can’t just get a new health plan….”

“Is it an HMO?”

“Yes….”

“Those HMOs suck. Get a different plan….”

I shouldn’t continue. I should change the subject. But after years of conditioning, old patterns are hard to resist. So I try to explain my situation, as though this discussion were ruled by logic.

“The other plan is way more expensive….”

“Stop being so cheap….”

“Cheap! It’s not a matter of being cheap. We’re talking thousands of dollars….”

“You want to be able to pick your own doctor. You’re getting older. You need better doctors….”

“Okay, I’ll get a new health plan,” I say — anything to change the subject.

“You’re just saying okay,” she says. “You don’t really mean it….”

Oh, my God! I try a new tactic. “How `bout those Bears?”

She’s too smart to fall for that old trick. “You need pills,” she says.

“Pills?”

“Yeah, for the uric acid….”

“Uric acid?”

“Yes, all this started cause you had too much uric acid….”

“What are you talking about — it’s not uric acid….”

“Yes, it is. I know cause I have gout….”

My mind says: Change the subject. My mouth says: “How does you having gout have anything to do with me having calcium deposits in my cheek?”

“It’s the same thing….”

“No, it’s not….”

“Yes, it is….”

Why is it that every time I talk to my sister I feel like I’m ten?

I hear my father saying something in the background.

“What’s he saying?” I ask my sister.

“He says you might have infected yourself when you were poking around your mouth with that Q-tip,” she says.

“Tell him the Q-tip was soaked in hydrogen peroxide,” I say.

“It doesn’t matter — you can get germs. He says you should go to the emergency room to get antibiotics….”

“I’m on antibiotics….”

“You’re on antibiotics?”

“Yes….”

“You have to stop taking antibiotics….”

“But you just said to get on the antibiotics?”

“It’s not good to be taking antibiotics for a long time….”

“I only started taking them yesterday….”

“You can build up an immunity….”

“How can I build up an immunity after only one day!”

“You don’t listen….”

“I don’t listen? You don’t listen….”

“No, you don’t listen….”

“I’ll tell you what,” I say. “I’ll take the little stone and put it back in my cheek. Then I’ll go see a doctor and everyone will be happy….”

“Now, you’re just being stupid….”

Well, at least we agree on something….

Big Mike: Saturday Night Fever

Back in the late 70s and early 80s, my pals and I would spend every Friday and Saturday night swinging our shoes at one of the big dance clubs around town. There were, let’s see, Neo, La Mere Vipere, Exit, O’Bannion’s, Dugan’s Bistro and Medusa’s.

Despite being young and flamboyantly rebellious, we’d already found ourselves bound by convention and habit. For instance, we wore nothing but black. To wear any other color would betray our carefully cultivated images as outsiders. We were art students and musicians, book store clerks and, well, a few of us couldn’t be bothered by making a living.

Another of our habits was to go out as late as possible. We often began showering, preening and applying eye liner (yeah, the guys, too — it was part of the New Wave uniform) at eleven o’clock or even midnight. The clubs didn’t really start buzzing until twelve-thirty or one. We’d close down one or two places and then finish up at Medusa’s, which didn’t serve liquor and so could remain open indefinitely. We’d exit the place drenched in sweat, the sun already up.

That was so very, very, very long ago. Now, at eleven-thirty or twelve on a weekend night I’ll either be snoring, crying into my pillow over all the opportunities I’ve frittered away in my life, or jostling The Loved One awake to ask her to inspect some alarming lump that has developed somewhere on my body.

Even if I manage to keep my eyes open, my activities won’t be as glamorous and dashing as they once were. Take this past Saturday night. As the young and energetic citizenry of Bloomington, Indiana was just beginning to ponder which bars to hit, I was lugging several hampers of dirty laundry down to the hotel lobby. I approached the front desk and caught the young clerks discussing the exotic mixed drinks they were going to try after their shift. I asked where the 24-hour laundromats were and commented that I once was a late nighter but now, regrettably, am an old man.

“Oh,” scolded the pretty and pert young clerk, “you’re only as old as you feel!”

I nodded and hoisted up my hampers. My right hip ached, my back was stiff, several of my hernias made themselves known, and my feet were swollen. “Smart-assed little shit,” I muttered to myself as I left.

A rainstorm of biblical proportions was drenching south central Indiana as I loaded up the car. I drove to the only Chase Bank ATM location I’m sure of — some five miles away — with the wipers on high and still I could hardly see the white lines on the road. The rain was driving so hard that even under the drive-thru canopy, half of me got drenched punching in my PIN. Damn. The machine was out of cash.

So I phoned The Loved One and asked her to go online and look up other Chase ATM locations. A few minutes later she said, “Okay ready…,” and then launched into a recitation of a half dozen addresses that, to me, were no more familiar than so many locations in Harare, Zimbabwe.

Me: “Whoa! Where the heck are these places?”

She: “In Bloomington!”

Me (after a moment’s pause): “Yes, darling. But where?”

After remarking that after a week in town you’d think I’d know how to get around, The Loved One found an ATM that, surprise, was right near our hotel.

She: “It’s right here on Walnut Street!… I think. Let’s see, am I looking at this thing the right way? It’s a Google map. I’ll try to zoom out. Is that 17th Street? Oh yeah. Go north on Walnut from 17th. No… wait. Go south. No, north. That’s it.”

All the while the heavens were dumping a torrent on my car.

She: “You got that? Oooh! So much lightning! It’s really raining out!”

Me: “I know — I’m in it!”

She: “You don’t have to be so snippy, you know.”

Wisely, I paused again — this time for a few moments. Then she repeated the ATM’s address slowly — 2700 N. Walnut St. — apparently no more than a half mile from the hotel. I drove back toward the hotel and headed north on Walnut. I drove for long minutes, never once seeing a Chase branch sign. Walnut became a dark, two-lane road in farm country. Corn stood like a high wall on either side of me. I wasn’t able to turn back because there were no cross streets. And the rain kept coming. I phoned The Loved One again and told her where I was.

She: “Well, what are you doing that far out? I told you it was only a half mile from the hotel.”

I paused for many moments then explained my plight. She went online again and discovered that the ATM was actually in a Speedway gas station, which I recalled passing a scant quarter of a mile from our hotel. Grrr. I spun a U-turn, retraced my path a few miles, pulled in and dashed through the downpour, becoming soaked in the process.

I whipped out my card and swiped it. Nothing. The tips of my ears felt hot. I swiped it a second time. Again, nothing. Now my face was hot. I tried a third time to no avail. Now my entire head was steaming. I swiped the card almost violently. The Amish-looking clerk eyed me serenely. “Ennythang wrong, sir?”

Me: “NO!”

I thought, The goddamned Amish — can’t even keep their ATMs in working order. I looked at my card. Uh oh. It wasn’t my ATM card. It was my hotel room key card. I peeked out the corner of my eye to see if the Amish-looking clerk was still watching me. There he was, still gazing at me serenely. I quickly got my cash and slinked out of the place.

The laundromat was on another two-lane farm road in the opposite direction. It stood next to a liquor store that even in the deluge was doing a brisk business. The laundromat itself was populated by three lonely-looking men, all middle-aged or better and all looking out the front window as if dreaming of another place and time.

One of the men had a magnificent salt-and-pepper pompadour. He was dressed in all white with brilliantly shined black shoes, as though he’d felt compelled to dress up for Saturday night even though he was laundering his shorts. The other two men exchanged mumbled comments at long intervals. Their dryers buzzed. They gathered their clothes, folded them and carried them out to the car. Then they came back in and sat back in their same seats. After a long, long silence, one of them said to the other, “Yep,” long and drawn out, making it a two-syllable word.

Saturday night. Medusa’s was a very, very, very long time ago.

Benny Jay: Doctor, There’s A Buick In My Cheek!

In the last few days, this strange organism invades my mouth and takes up residence inside my left cheek.

I’m not making this up. Feels like there’s a pea in there, or maybe a BB pellet. My mouth gets all puffy, like I have the mumps.

It’s not that big of a deal. Fact is — I had the same things almost a year ago. The doctor told me there was a calcium deposit blocking my salivary gland.

“Like a kidney stone?” I asked.

He smiled all benevolent, like he’s dealing with and idiot, and said: “Yes, like a kidney stone….”

A few weeks later, I returned to his office and he sat me in an operating chair and shot me with pain killer and took out a needle and poked around my cheek. After a few minutes he announced — all gone. Probably charged the insurance company a fortune.

Only it’s not gone. He just broke it up into little pieces and then moved them around.  Freaking hack — probably got his medical degree at one of those mail-order schools in Gary, Indiana that Milo’s always writing about.

Anyway, over time those little pieces come back together with a vengeance. And my face is fatter than ever.  Little kids stare at me when I walk down the street.  As we pass, I hear their mothers whisper: “Don’t point at the strange man….”

It’s getting painful. If I poke it, it hurts even more. So I shouldn’t poke. But you try not poking when you got some weird thing living in your cheek.

At night, it’s the worst. Like all the fluid in my cheek is washing up against the blockage. It’s like an ocean in there….

At three in the morning, I wake. Hear my wife sleeping. The wind’s howling outside. Forget this, man — this sucks.

I walk to the bathroom and turn on the light. I look like Dizzie Gillespie.

I open my mouth and start poking at it with a Q-tip soaked in hydrogen peroxide.  The salivary gland is so fat it’s almost touching my teeth. It feels like there’s a little rock inside, clanking against my teeth.

This is exciting. I go through three or four Q-tips, poking and prodding. Some bloody gunk seeps out.  Wow, cool! I haven’t had this much fun at three in the morning in years. It hurts a little, but not enough to make me stop. I poke and prod some more. And, then, all of a sudden — a hard pellet falls out!

That’s right. A calcium pellet falls out of my cheek and onto my tongue. I take it in my hand and look at it. It’s like the size of an orange seed and the  color of a Cheerios oat.

I feel like Louis Pasteur. All scientific and shit. I need a petri dish. Of course, I don’t have a petri dish. Haven’t actually seen a petri dish since I was in high school. For all I know they don’t make them anymore. Probably have kids all over the country reading this and thinking: What the hell is a petri dish?

I go downstairs and get a glass out of the kitchen cabinet. I drop the pellet in the glass and look at it. I can’t believe this little sucker came out of my cheek!

Suddenly, I get this notion — gotta share this moment with my wife. She’ll want to know — right? I mean, it’s moments like this that marriage is all about.

So I go back into the bedroom with the glass in my hand and I stand over her as she lies there sleeping and I reach out to nudge her awake.

Then I stop. It’s 3:30. She might not like getting nudged away at 3:30 in the morning. I know I wouldn’t. Not even if a Buick fell out of her cheek.

So I go back to the bathroom and spend another five minutes poking and prodding my cheek with Q-tips soaked in hydrogen peroxide. Maybe hoping something else falls out. For all I know that’s where the missing TV remote control went.

Nope, nothing new emerges. I look at my face. Still a little puffy, but not as bad.

I go back to bed, lie on my back and think about what I’ve accomplished. Maybe it will loosen me up, like that little pellet was holding back all of these great ideas that will now flow forth, and I’ll write a great book that the whole world will read and I’ll get rich. Okay, not Bill Gates rich. Not even Oprah rich. More like semi-rock star rich. Like I had a few hits in the `60s and I kept the rights and invested the royalties and now I’m sitting on a few million and every now and then I hear them play one of my old songs on the radio as I drive to my summer house on the lake. You know, that kind of rich.

And the next thing you know, I fall asleep….

Big Mike: A Really Big Show

The other day I wrote that The Loved One and I deserve kudos for not murdering each other during our eight-month ordeal of moving from Louisville to Bloomington, Indiana. In fact, I was talking to my pal Sophia on the telephone and she said, “If you two could get through that, you can get through anything.”

Not so fast, kid.

Until we close on our new home Wednesday, The Loved One and I are living in a cramped hotel room near the Indiana University football stadium. So, for a day shy of two weeks, our 10’-by-15’ castle encloses the two of us, our two cats, the litter box, a half dozen boxes and bags of necessary belongings, a few pairs of odiferous shoes, our dirty laundry, and numerous empty junk food packages strewn here and there. We’ve begun to glance sidelong at each other once again.

If we indeed survive the next few days, Bloomington looks as though it’ll be a fairly livable place. Plenty of restaurants, a ton of wired coffeehouses and bookstores, the excitement of a major college town, and the gorgeous surrounding rolling hills. The town itself is populated by people from every continent who’ve migrated here for the university’s world-renowned music school and the nation’s largest school of public and environmental affairs, among others.

We’ll be surrounded by nuclear physicists, molecular biologists, cellists, point guards and, yeah, researchers for the Kinsey Institute, which sorta titillates me. But none of them is as compelling as a family I encountered Thursday afternoon.

I’d driven out to Ellettsville, a sleepy burgh some five miles west of Bloomington, to drop off a check for our new homeowners insurance. On the way there, on State Route 46, I passed a place called Chicago’s Pizza. It had a lunch buffet, according to the sign, so I decided to give it a try. Suffice it to say its fare was to Chi as French fries are to the Le Deux Magots cafe.

As I finished my last spongy-doughed slice, the aforementioned clan entered. I heard them before I saw them. I thought a Surround-Sound movie about the San Francisco earthquake was starting.

Now, as anybody can tell by peeking at my photo, I do a fairly good job of tipping the scale myself. For this I can thank my affinity for lunch buffets and such. And normally I hate to make light of anyone’s weight, but this family, some ten members in all, was the most massive bunch of people I’ve ever seen in my life. They were farmers, judging by their John Deere baseball caps, their bib overalls and – swear to god – the aroma of cow flop that accompanied them into the dining room. The womenfolk wore colorful, billowing skirts that could have doubled as spinnakers on so many America’s Cup entries.

They were a cheery bunch, laughing and nudging each other playfully. I don’t know if this was their normal mood or if they’d been made giddy by the prospect of the all-you-can-eat buffet. Their effervescence aside, they moved glacially, several of them leaning precariously on canes. Their ages ranged from early 20s to well into the 60s. I could only think that tens of thousands of cattle, pigs and fowl had lost their lives to serve the family’s metabolic needs over the years.

They passed the buffet with longing glances on their way to their table. A couple of them even decided to plant themselves right next to the buffet. One of the women called back to them, “What’s the matter with you? Ain’t we good enough for ya?”

The older of the two laggards tittered embarrassedly. “Aw, you know, I can’t make it that far,” he said. The gang of them laughed at this and then the man began to hack as if the  only thing that had ever kept a forkful of apple pie out of his mouth was a filterless Camel.

“Y’all ought to knock off that smokin’,” said a young guy, a twenty-something who easily could spin the scale dial to 350. For that matter, if any of them weighed less than 300 pounds, he or she would be considered sickly. I figured this young guy was the health-conscious member of the family.

After a few minutes of tortuous trekking to the buffet and creative piling on their plates, the family settled in for some serious knife and fork work. A silence descended over the place as they shoveled it in. I’d been finished with my lunch for long minutes but I couldn’t leave. I was transfixed by the sight before me. The ten of them attacked their plates artfully and with seriousness. I wasn’t afraid of being caught staring because none dared raise their eyes from their plates.

I actually admired them for their dedication to their craft. They were Picassos of the table.

Shockingly, none of them went up for seconds — although when I recalled the teetering towers of food piled on their plates, I realized they’d packed away the equivalent of thirds and even fourths. Satisfied, they sat back and regaled each other with stories all of them already knew. There were yarns about chasing strangers off their property and catching salesmen in lies. Each had an anecdote about getting lost in the busy rush of Ellettsville (population 5078.) After a few minutes, the conversation lagged. There was one yawn, then another and finally a chorus of them. Food coma had set in.

The health conscious one said, “Well, guess we better get goin’.” The older ones shrugged as if they’d be just as happy to nap here for the rest of the afternoon. The ten struggled to their feet and oozed toward the exit. One of the women smiled at me as she passed. For lack of anything better to say, I nodded toward the buffet and said, “It’s a pretty good one.”

“‘S’okay,” she responded knowledgeably, as if lunch buffets were her field of study at Indiana University. “They’s a better one down by the stadium, a Chinese place. They call it the Great Wall.”

“Oh yeah. I know that one. It’s right next to my hotel.”

“Y’all are lucky!” she said grinning.

I waved goodbye and made a silent promise to lay off the buffets for a while.

Letter From Milo: Getting Out Of Dodge

Oh, the bastards, the rotten sons of bitches. They tracked me down.

If you recall from my last posting, a dentist advised me that I had to have several teeth pulled before my heart surgery. I got a second opinion, of course, but the second dentist agreed with the first. Well, they have their opinions and I have mine. I refused to give up any teeth, no matter the reason. What are dentists anyway? What do they know? Dentists are just a bunch of second rate hacks who don’t have the skills or ambition to become real doctors.

Still, there was a lot of pressure on me to get the teeth pulled. Wife, family, friends, all urged me to get them yanked. “It’s for your own good,” they told me. “You don’t want any complications from the heart surgery. Listen to the doctors. They know what’s best.” Plus, no doctor would perform the surgery unless the teeth were extracted. There was too great of a chance of an infection in the new valve they were going to give me.

Well, fuck ‘em all. I don’t like people telling me what to do. I decided to make a run for it, get out of Dodge while the getting was good. I chose Canada as my destination because, as I understand it, the Canadian government won’t extradite anyone who is wanted by the dental authorities.

As I was driving out of town, I began feeling a bit thirsty, so I stopped in the lounge of the Diplomat Motel on Lincoln Avenue. I was just going to have a couple for the road, and maybe pick up a half pint for later on. As luck would have it, I ran into a group of my favorite kinds of people; bikers, whores, out-of-work carnies, a three-card monty dealer and a man who claimed to be a rabbi but seemed to be too good of a pool player for someone devoted to the spiritual life.

One thing led to another and by closing time I was roaring drunk. Deciding I was in no shape to drive I checked into a room at the Diplomat, figuring I’d sleep it off and get an early start in the morning. Just to be on the safe side, I checked in under an assumed name, Milton Samardzija.

About five in the morning, as I was having a sweet dream about Montreal, a group of jack-booted thugs kicked in my door and pounced on me. They were the dreaded Gold Tooth Gang, which is the militant wing of the American Dental Association. They dragged me, kicking and screaming, out of my room, the same way the cops dragged William H. Macy out of his motel room in the movie Fargo, by the great Coen brothers.

The next thing I knew, I was strapped into a chair in the dentist’s office. Just before the sadistic bastard started yanking my teeth, he asked, “Do you want something to relax you, some novocaine perhaps?”

“Yes, please.”

“Well, too fucking bad. You’re not getting anything. That’s what you get for trying to run out on the ADA.”

Half an hour later, all four of my wisdom teeth were extracted, plus two others, just for spite in my opinion.

I felt terrible when I got home. I was afraid to look in the mirror. So, I gobbled a handful of industrial-grade pain pills and lay down on the couch to rest for a few minutes. I woke up 12 hours later, still in pain, groggy, unsteady on my feet.

Gathering up my courage, I staggered to the bathroom to get a look at myself in the mirror. I expected the worst and was not disappointed. My face was lumpy and swollen. My eyes were slitted and bloodshot. There was a lump on each side of my jaw the size of an avocado. The greenish-blue signs of bruising were spreading along my jawline. My face and goatee were caked with dried and flaking blood. And when I opened my mouth I could see a noticeable gap in my smile.

Despite my deplorable condition, I knew I was still better looking than Tony Patellis or, for that matter, Doug Hoffman. But that was cold comfort.

At that moment, my daughter, Nadia, walked by. “I must look pretty bad,” I said to her.

She replied, “To be honest, Dad, you looked a lot worse when you came home from partying with Bruce Diksas last Saturday night.”

Randolph Street: Hitchhiking Highway 61

Hitchhikers–Grandview, Iowa

Walker–Burdette, Arkansas

Three Boys–Keokuk, Iowa

Sale–New Orleans, Louisiana

Bench–Thunder Bay, Ontario

Power Plant–Mississippi

This is a personal look at mid-America that I shot between 1976 and 1985.  These were taken along the approximately 1700 miles of US Highway 61 that roughly follows the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Minneapolis, then juts northeast to Duluth and along the western edge of Lake Superior to Thunder Bay, Ontario.  All photographs © Jon Randolph.

Benny Jay: Barack Obama Is Not My Fault!

It’s early in the morning when the call comes in.

“Those goddamn Democrats!”

“Hi, mom….”

And she’s off, ripping the Democrats for being cowards, castigating the Wall Street crowd — bankers, brokers, hedge fund operators — for robbing us blind, blasting the insurance company for jacking up health costs, and reminding me once again that Barack Obama’s no FDR.

Sigh. I reach for my coffee….

“Did you read that article in the New York Times about FDR?”

“I was the one who told you about it — remember?”

“They all stink….”

“I told you, mom, Obama’s no radical…..”

“Maybe that one guy — I forgot his name…..”

Now, I have to figure out who she’s talking about.

“Which one?”

“Koo?”

“Kucinich?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I think he’s very ugly….”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“Nothing. But America won’t vote for a guy who looks ugly like that….”

Hmm, I think she may be on to something. I try to think if America’s ever elected an ugly president.

“Johnson wasn’t so good looking,” I say. “And neither was Nixon….”

She ignores me, moving on to Afghanistan. “He’s giving them billions to put in their Swiss bank accounts….”

The thing is that my oldest daughter worked for Obama in the presidential campaign and ever since then all the lefties I know — and I know a whole lot of lefties — have been blaming me cause Obama’s a wishy-washy, middle-of-the-road wimp.

To which I say: 1.) If you’re going to blame someone, blame my daughter, not me; 2.) I told you he was a wimp;  3.) If you didn’t want a wimp, you should have voted for Kucinch; and 4.) At least he’s better than Palin.

I don’t think we can have this conversation too many times. I must have it at least two or three times a week.

Anyway, my mom hangs up and I realize I’ve got to walk the dog. So I head out the door. Got my cell phone in hand, all set to call Norm to talk about the Bulls, when from across the street: “Hey, Benny!”

I look up. Oh, no — it’s Frank!

Don’t get me wrong, I love Frank. I love his passion, his humor, his intelligence and his foul mouth. But he’s another lefty — even leftier than my mom — and I know what’s coming.

“That mother fu….”

Oh, brother — he can’t wait to rip into me about Obama. He’s not even across the street and he’s already howling.

Turns out Frank read a story about Obama supporting an initiative to give seeds to poor African countries, where people are starving. Only “they have no water. What the fuck good are seeds if you have no water?”

It’s a question I can’t answer. It’s a question which has no answer. The best spin artists in Obama’s White House could not concoct an adequate answer. It’s like we do all this bullshit — hold Olympics, root for the Bulls, send our kids to school — and people are dying of starvation.

“The world,” I tell Frank, “is ruled by madness.”

Not good enough. He starts in on health care — what’s Obama doing about health care. Nothing. The wimp! The coward! And so on and so forth….

It’s a repeat of the conversation I had with my mother.

“It’s not my fault,” I say.

“Your daughter worked for Obama,” says Frank’s wife.

Oh, brother….

I change the subject and we move to a far more fascinating discussion about Frank’s son’s born-again-girlfriend. Did I tell you that Frank’s a militant agnostic? Well, he is. And the notion that his son would date a born-again girl is something for Dr. Freud.

Actually, the girl’s not a born-again. Her parents are. Or at least the mother is. The father’s just an old-fashioned Republican. Which is pretty bad in and of itself — I’m trying to imagine Frank and the Republican at the wedding. Anyway, it’s a great story — he’s having a blast telling it and I’m having a blast listening to it. But he realizes he’s late for wherever he’s got to go and so he’s off.

I’m halfway up the street, dialing up Norm to talk about the Bulls, when I hear Frank call my name. One more thing about Obama.

Too late. I’m around the corner and officially out of range.

Ah, peace at last….