“Hospital Introduction”
While working as a Navy nurse in a military hospital’s emergency room, I was required to introduce myself by my rank and full name. I usually refer to myself as Ensign Mike Payne, but one busy day I rushed into a patient’s room and blurted, “Hi, I’m Ensign Payne.”
“Hi,” the patient responded. “I’m in some pain too.”
Turbulence
Flying through the Midwest in the summertime means one thing: turbulence. I was working as a flight attendant on one particular flight when we hit a patch of very rough air just after a young teenager, obviously on her first flight, had entered the bathroom. After the bumps had subsided, she exited the bathroom, a look of sheer terror etched on her face.
“Are you all right?” I asked as I helped her to her seat.
“Don’t worry, that turbulence was as bad as it gets.”
“So that’s what it was,” she said. “I thought I’d pushed the wrong button.”
Admission quotes
The Dean of admissions at Bates College in Maine reads through reams of applications from nervous high school seniors, some maybe a little more nervous than others. Here are a few…
“If there is a single word to describe me, that word would be ‘profectionist’.”
“I was abducted into the National Honor Society.”
“I function well as an individual and a group.”
“Mathematics has hung like a stork around my neck.”
