ADVENTURES IN NURSING

OUR CLASSMATES

Our class began with 43 students.  We graduated 29 two years later.  We lost 13 of those during the first quarter.  Nursing school has a way of weeding out the faint of heart early on.  The remaining “drop-out” was encouraged to leave by our instructors.  We all felt bad for her.  

She was a perfectly nice lady.  Her grades were excellent.  She just wasn’t catching on to the whole “ALL patients come first” concept.  She had good clinical skills with her own charges, but when asked to assist another student with care or a procedure, she would finish up her own chores (making beds, emptying bedpans, tidying rooms) first.  That didn’t set well with the Mrs. Bs, and off she went.  The last time I saw her, she was managing a Burger King and seemed perfectly content.

Let’s see what I remember of the others.  There was, of course, the cute, hunky, married guy, K, who became our class president.  Everybody loved him.  He was just that kind of guy.  He was funny as hell, and you could make him blush just by winking at him – another excellent student.  Damn!  This class was full of them.

There was J, a very serious, proper-looking 40-something lady.  I believe she was our vice-president.  I also believe she took more notes than any two people, which probably explains why she was an excellent student.  The competition for good grades was brutal!

We had a brother-sister act, B and D, late 30s.  They were rather an enigma.  They lived with their parents, and neither one had a driver’s license.  Their father provided their transportation every day.  I suspect they had some serious health issue that precluded them from driving.  They were somewhat shy, modest, and just all around a couple of sweet folks.

Then we had K, who was just real people.  She tended to stress out easily over quizzes, tests, and assignments.  One of her favorite things to do was debate her grades with the Mrs. Bs, earnestly trying to convince them that her answer COULD be right if you looked at it from THIS perspective.  It rarely worked, but that didn’t stop her from trying.  She had a wicked wit, too.  I liked that ... a lot.

Who else?  Oh yeah, R, a lady who became a good friend to B and me.  We visited each other’s houses, her daughter cut our hair, and she attended our graduation party.  She was pretty damn smart, too.  She moved to Texas after graduation and we’ve lost touch.  I sometimes wonder how nursing treated her over the years.

There was the tall, blond, beautiful Nordic-type lady, T1, who was a hoot-and-a-half.  She enjoyed muttering outrageous comments under her breath during lectures.  I sat next to her one quarter and she kept me in stitches, and also earned me some curious glares from B-1, who no doubt wondered what I found so amusing about the endocrine system.  If she only knew.

A few of the high-schoolers are worth mentioning here.  Four or five of them made it to graduation, which I considered a real testament to their time-management skills.  There were the two As, best friends, cheerleaders, and quite giggly.  They were both smart as whips, though, which used to piss me off no end.  I was so clueless at their age, my only claim to fame was winning a Latin spelling bee.  One thing I always thought was so unique about A1 was the fact that she still had all her baby teeth.  Isn’t that odd?  They looked like little Chiclets.  She was going to have to undergo major dental work and have them all pulled at some future date if she didn’t lose them naturally.

T was another cheerleader who was cute, funny, smart, and enjoyed a little underage drinking on the weekends.  We sat together another quarter and I began to live vicariously through her, enjoying hearing her stories as much as she enjoyed telling them.  She was a wild one!

J was our only male high-schooler, and he seemed a little embarrassed at the fact.  He tried to remain invisible most of the time, but he was so cute that the Mrs. Bs weren’t having any of that.  They both enjoyed watching these men blush!

There were many more classmates whose names and faces escape me at the moment.  I’m sure my memory will be jogged by future stories in this adventure in nursing.  Suffice it to say, though, that we were a motley crew.  We were tough.  We were tenacious.  We were determined.  We were delusional.  Wait!  No, scratch that last one!  That can’t be right!

NEXT UP:  A LITTLE ABOUT THE MRS. Bs