[Bonnie J-Lowe]

‘HOW MUCH COLD DO YOU WANT?’
Bonnie Jarvis-Lowe
The air outside the hospital was frigid, the doctors’ coming and going through the large sliding Emergency Room Door let a blast of the ice crystals escape into our Nursing station from time to time until one particularly verbal nurse put a stop to that. They could use another entrance, thank you very much. Yes, that was Barbara,the
one who went around muttering about how she was getting out of this and taking a job as a Walmart Greeter, until someone told her she would have to change her attitude, and she decided she didn’t want to do that either! She was a genuine character who afforded us many a story, some would make you pull your ears over your mouth!We loved her,who wouldn’t?
The ringing telephone got Barb off her story as she swirled her chair around to grab ‘the thing’ as she called it. Two of us listening to her story were called to do something, and then down the hallway comes Madame Barbara, “Do you want to know what that call was?” she asks, hands on hips, not a good sign.
“Not really”, answers June, “but we’re gonna hear it aren’t we?”
Barb ignores this completely, and turns in my direction, mainly because, I discover later, we were two Newfoundlanders working in a Nova Scotia institution and had heard our share of ‘Newfie’ jokes,and neither of us appreciated them,but tolerated them.
“Well, yes you are,” she says to June. To me she says “Umph,and they talk about Newfoundlanders! That woman on the phone said that Dr. Stone told her to wrap her daughters’ ankle in ice this evening to get the swelling down and she didn’t know what to do because she defrosted her fridge today!”
I was a useless lump of laughter,and even moreso when June asked “What’s so funny?”
“See what I mean?”, says Barb, “every idiot in this county knows it’s permafrost out there tonight. Now where would you go to get ice June? Don’t ever tell me another Newfie stupid JOKE!”
And she never did!!!

Bonnie Jarvis-Lowe

Edited repeated post. Karen