Thin Blue Mind / Smokey Heroes
Almost ‘Chopped Liver’
by Gary A. Aumiller, PH.D. ABPP
This story is told with the permission and review of my patient, John.
John is a retired cop, one year younger than I am. He is pale white sometimes and other times he looks remarkably normal. Sometimes he looks weak, sometimes like the man that plays golf a couple of times a week in retirement. He is well-liked by most everyone that comes in contact with him.
“So why are you here? I assume you didn’t come in for a golf lesson.” I am not the greatest golfer. I had known this man from police golf tournaments.
“I need a liver doc. My brother and sister are both willing to give me part of their livers but the hospital in the city won’t do the operation because I failed a blood test.” (A quarter of a liver from someone else will regenerate and handle the functionality of natural liver. Live donors are the way to go in liver transplants these days). (more…)
nights of drinking, camaraderie and debauchery. They would get drunk, be obnoxious to regular citizens and have sex with a variety of barmaids, hookers and naïve young girls wanting to have a good time. During the day, they would shoot gays in the park and bond together so nobody could get the real story and no cop could get charged. Their pranks on each other are so appalling and dangerous that Joseph Wambaugh actually had his name taken off the film. Superiors are all jerks, judges are listed as “black-robed pussies.” It was called a “film about brutes for brutes.” But the book and movie actually started something that is quoted frequently today, and perhaps is part of the way the public views cops.
The mere presence of the phone made the conversation less personal and less complete. Further studies show that if there are seven college kids at a table, only three will be involved in a conversation at any one time. Maybe four. The rest will be on their phones. And finally, studies at Kent State University show for 500 cell phone using kids, at different levels of use, the high frequency cell phone users tended to have a lower GPA, higher anxiety, and lower satisfaction with life (happiness) relative to their peers. Let me TEXT that to you while it sinks in.
without a spouse living with you. What do you do now?
before disco died in the charts). It spoke to every woman “thinking how he did me wrong” and she “grew strong” and learned she had to survive. It was excitement, passion, and most of all, something a large part of the record buying population could relate to. And it was for men too. Not too shabby for the “B” side of a small record by a Newark “New Joisy” girl.