While the sitter was with Kate yesterday, I donated platelets. I’ve been donating platelets for about three years following many years of whole blood donations, so I am acquainted with most of the people who work in that section of the department, and they know me. That makes the donation time a bit of a social occasion as well. Yesterday I got a bonus.
About an hour after I had been there, a woman took the chair (lounge?) next to me. Since my last visit two weeks ago, they have added individual TVs at each chair. I decided to pick out a DVD of Seabiscuit to pass the time instead of reading. It turned out the person getting me hooked up couldn’t get the TV working. I put the DVD beside me on the chair. The woman noticed the title and said it’s a good movie.
That led to a very pleasant hour of conversation. Because she had asked about Seabiscuit, I asked if she was “into” horses. She answered affirmatively, and we were “off to the races.” I didn’t mean to imply that I know much about horses and the culture surrounding them. I know next to nothing. I recently read Motherhood: Lost and Found by Ann Campanella. That may seem like an unlikely book for me, but it is her story of being a caregiver to her aging parents at the same time she was trying unsuccessfully to have a baby. So where do horses fit in? Well, it turns out that she has a passion for horses. She weaves stories of her and her horse along with her own story about her mother’s Alzheimer’s. As you can see, and Kate would confirm, I digress. I just wanted to say that was the extent of my knowledge of the horse world.
While I don’t know anything about horses, I do enjoy learning about the variety of things to which people devote themselves. So it turns out this woman, Irene, I believe, has been involved with horses most of her adult life. I had one question after another, and she had one informative answer after another.
It turns out that she is a fox hunter though retired for two years. She opened up a whole new world. I knew nothing about fox hunting clubs, the procedures followed on a hunt, that the people who run the clubs know where the foxes live, and that the foxes become accustomed to being hunted, and especially that some clubs don’t even use foxes at all but the scent of a fox to attract the dogs. I asked some dumb questions like “Do you actually kill the fox?” They don’t. (You probably knew that.) I found the conversation to be fascinating.
Beyond her interest in horses and fox hunting, she has owned her own construction business. Most recently, she has been a subcontractor in the construction of a power plant. I was glad that the TV was not working. This conversation was much more interesting.
As I left, I couldn’t help thinking of my dad. He would have enjoyed this conversation himself. He, too, was fascinated by such things. I might add that my brother, Larry, has similarly broad interests. The Creighton boys are easily entertained.
