A Nightmare on Joey Street

Thursday.

Discharge day.

My last scheduled day of Physical Therapy.

I go in for my last session as usual. The therapist congratulates me on the physical progress I have made since the surgery and tells me that I need to clear one last hurdle before finally being discharged.

The hurdles name….is Joey.

They tell me that “Joey” has been brought in from the main Therapy office in a neighboring town in order to oversee a final series of strength and agility tests that my foot and ankle will be put through.

I have never met this fellow, but his name is legendary within the Physical Therapy circles of our rural area. According to legend, Joey’s “final strength and agility tests” have been known to inflict more bodily injury on the patient than the original injury that the person was receiving therapy for.

People run down the street in terror when they hear that they have been set up for a session with Joey.

And now, it was my turn.

I had no choice.

People successfully completing therapy get a huge smiley face sticker and a choice of multiple flavors of lollipops…..and the only way to complete therapy was to go through Joey. (The stickers and candy are actually for young children, the mentally challenged, and adult male idiots like myself)

I got to therapy right on time.

My therapist met me just inside the door. He gently rubbed my shoulders and reassured me that I was ready for Joey, that everything would be fine, and that, if needed, they had a portable defibrillator on standby.

I was led through the open therapy area to a back exam room.

The therapist slowly opened the door and motioned for me to enter.

I shuffled into the room and the door was quickly slammed closed and locked behind me.

I was now in the exam room.

An exam room that I momentarily thought was empty of any other occupants…

Until I saw him, standing in the far corner.

Joey!!

They say my screams were heard at upwards of two miles away. Birds were seen to fly suddenly from trees, dogs began to bark, babies all over town began to cry.

Joey was a hideous beast to behold.

He towered over the therapy table, rising at least 7 feet into the air, with huge muscular legs supporting a massive chest and torso covered in dark hair. The beast of a man was obviously from the Mediterranean area of the planet where copious amounts of visible body hair is still socially acceptable…

This massive upper body was even more pronounced given the tiny little out-of-proportion arms that the beast had protruding from his body. His face was misshapen into almost a snout-like appearance and was topped by two towering ears reminiscent of an adult mouse. Good Lord! This man must have survived some kind of horrific exposure to radiation or toxic chemicals to end up in this mutated state!

Joey leaped through the air, easily hopping over the exam table, letting out a high-pitched scream as he did so. I let out my patented high-pitched girlie scream and took off running towards the other side of the small room. (The surgically repaired foot reacted perfectly….thanks for asking)

I thought I had made it to the safety of the other side of the table when Joey caught up to me. A massive blow to the side of my head, courtesy of his hairy left leg, sent me flying through the air and into the wall on the opposite side of the room. I slumped to floor and let out another hysterical girlie scream.

Joey bounded across the room and launched into a merciless series of body blows from his tiny arms and massive kicks from his hairy legs as I curled up in a ball and begged for both mercy…and my mama.

I crawled away and quickly stumbled back to my feet. With all the adrenaline and fear coursing through my body, my ankle and foot again did a perfect job of supporting my terrified body. (I was acing the test!! Yipee!!)

I ran for the door and started pounding on it, pleading for someone to let me out, offering cash, skittles, my youngest child, unlimited use of my pool, whatever the people wanted….if someone would please let me out….

No one did.

I looked across the room.

Joey was foaming at the mouth.

Two quick bounds across the room and he was all over me again.

The outline of my idiot body was soon pounded into the strong steel door as I again hysterically screamed my lungs out.

The beating lasted for about an hour.

When it was over, the door to the room was slowly opened.

My therapist and an assistant came in and dragged my unconscious body out of the room and laid it sprawled out in the middle of the therapy area for all to see.

The other patients all stared at me in stunned silence.

They knew that they too would soon have to face Joey before they could get discharged.

A few people openly wept.

Then Joey slowly emerged from the room.

Gasps were heard from the patients.

An elderly lady stepped forward and raised a bony finger towards Joey.

“What the Hell is that? Is that a giant Rat…a mutated Muskrat?”

The therapist walked over and gently petted Joey on the head.

“This is Joey…”

“He is a baby Wallaby”.

(A baby Wallaby, in rural Texas, with a major attitude problem.)

The 9 foot tall monster of a man, turned out to actually be a vertically-challenged rodent that was lucky to be pushing all of 2′ tall.

Yes friends, I had just been beaten senseless by an under-aged violent-tempered wannabe Kangaroo on loan from the local petting zoo.

The guy in charge of the Physical Therapy company, after himself being beaten senseless by little Joey during a family outing to the petting zoo, determined that anyone who could physically survive being trapped alone in a small room with the psychotic beast, HAD TO BE sufficiently recovered from their injuries that Physical Therapy was no longer warranted.

I awoke from my coma a few hours later with a huge smiley face sticker on my chest, and a handful of Grape Lollipops clutched in my fist.

I also had Wallaby Foot and Wallaby “hand” bruises all over my body, and enough permanent psychological trauma that I will need years of counseling…

But, I have been officially discharged from therapy.

Yaaaay!

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"I don't care if the man is an Idiot...if he tries to ride that damn bike onto Southfork...Kill him!"

******2012 Crawling my way back to the Pacific Bike Tour ***********

Miles this year: 456
Days on Bike: 18
Avg miles per day: 25.3

Location: The Idiot is now pedaling through the mean streets of Dallas, Texas. Dallas is the ninth-largest city in the United States, but in true Texas fashion, is only the third-largest city in Texas behind Houston and San Antonio. Dallas is part of the sprawling Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, the fourth largest metro area in the country. We are getting closer to where I live, but I live on the opposite side of the Metroplex closer to the Fort Worth area. (I’ll be to my house in a few days) Dallas boasts one of the most impressive skylines in the country. Many people not familiar with the area, that come in from the north, confuse the North Dallas skyline for Downtown. The North Dallas Galleria area is about 10 miles north of Downtown and is larger than the downtown areas of many Midwest cities we have travelled through. Out of the many attractions in the Dallas area, two of the most popular are the 6th Floor Museum at the site of the Texas Schoolbook Depository, which was the site of the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, and Southfork Ranch, setting for the hit TV Drama “Dallas”, which is located in the northern suburbs of the city. Southfork is no longer sitting out in the country as depicted in the series, as it has been all but surrounded by housing developments in the years since the series ended. Other than to visit family, take the kid to the Orthodontist, or to attend a few concerts or sporting events, we tend to avoid Dallas at all costs. The traffic is horrific at most hours of the day.

North Dallas Skyline