Good News First

The doctor prescribed two medications.

I paid the Safeway pharmacy $93.36 for the two, took them home, read the patient info sheets and was sufficiently horrified. The list of possible side effects, which went on for pages, included losing your dick and being trapped in a small cell with Ryan Seacrest for the rest of your life.

I went back to the doctor.

He agreed that this treatment was optional.

I went back to the Safeway pharmacy. They agreed that they could take the medications back because I hadn't opened either of the packages and the pills were all secured in blister packs.

Did I have the bill?

Mysteriously, I did not. Where the hell was it? I tore the house apart. No luck.

Meanwhile Louise, the head Pharmacist at Safeway, had already assured me that even if I couldn't find my bill, she would re-imburse me. How kind and generous is that!!!

Yesterday I went into the doctor's office and asked the nurse/receptionist if she had found the bill. She got my file and searched for it. No luck.

I was maybe 20 feet along the street when the nurse came flying out after me.

"Mr. Berner, Mr. Berner. I found it!"

Thus, the story ends well. Money returned, bill on hand for verification.

But much praise and thanks to both the nurse for her diligence and especially to Louise at Safeway for resolving this tiny, human problem so graciously.

Emperor's Clothes

How can we take the new "Green" initiatives seriously when everything in the marketplace denies the need?

Example.

This morning's paper comes with an 8-page, 4-color, high-gloss flyer from Chrysler.

I counted 28 vehicles on display. Not one of these monstrosities is a compact or hybrid or fuel efficient machine. They are all huge, gas-guzzling, polluting muscle trucks, SUVs and the like.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Clearly we don't believe for a moment in the necessity of conservation and sustainability.

The preacher at the pulpit is drinking and fornicating in the back room. Not news, I realize.

The New Mothers

An idiot leaves her baby alone in a parked car in Kits and goes shopping. Ditz in Kits.

Firefighters arrive and the woman is "warned" by the police.

Why not charge her with criminal negligence? Because we don't want to fill up our jails? Because we don't want to deprive the child of such a caring, thoughtful parent?

Last summer, I was in the middle of exactly this situation.

Spotting an infant alone in a van, I called 911.

About 5 minutes later, as I waited for the police, the "mother" stepped out of a tanning salon. When the police arrived, one officer stood with me and one with the lovely mother. Apparently, the officer with the mother thought I was as funny as the mother did. Apparently, I was a busy-body old fool minding other people's business. Apparently, leaving an infant alone in a van is a sit-com. Who knew?

How is this any different from the cardiologist and his G.P. wife who left their 3 children under the age of 4 to go have a quiet romantic dinner while on vacation in Portugal?

Why not just dump your babies face-down in public toilets? That's being done too, so it must be alright.

You're A Perv, But you are OUR Perv.

Professional "Colleges" are a scourge.

I speak of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the College of Nurses and the College of Teachers, each of which has proven time and again to be most interested in maintaining the status quo at all costs. They pull up the drawbridge, fill the moat with more alligators and tell the world to mind its own business.

The only problem is...their business is our business.

And when these self-protecting, secretive cabals keep good doctors, nurse and teachers who have immigrated to Canada from working, they are harming all of us.

And when they fail to discipline or rout the miscreants and dogs in their midst, they again harm all of us.

The case of the nutty sex perv who has been teaching teen-age girls in Abbotsford, Chilliwak and Mission is a prime example.

The fool has been flagged time and again since 1995 for "inappropriate" behaviour, warned by various school boards, slapped on his very long, inquisitive wrists, but the College of teachers has never had the guts to step up to the plate and say, "Sir, what you do is not permitted in our midst. Goodbye, sayonara, auf vederzein, ciao, take a hike."

They claim the fault here was "an administrative error."

These groups always have that kind of claim.

New legislation should - and it does not - include a closer and more open relationship with the Colleges. They might try coming out of the Dark Ages and into the light.