Just a little pin prick, a drop of blood, and a spendy strip that feeds the blood into the machine. I got trained, I performed fine in the training.
It's not my finger. The poking device elicited the expected "lady bug" size droplet. However, applying it to the strip wasn't working. The strip appeared to suck up the lady bug, but the machine refused to process.
Going back to an earlier archeological level, me at Overseas School of Rome (OSR), I remember losing at ping pong in a tournament setting. In frustration, I threw the racket, pretty hard, and smashed a window.
Dr. Gillespie as was a real MD. He wasn't licensed to practice in Italy however, and I don't think he needed the work. He was happy to teach 8th graders instead, and joined the faculty as a full time biology teacher. He taught it like first year medical school in some ways.
Dr. Gillespie extracted my confession. I was hoping no one one notice, or if they did notice (how could they not?) maybe the didn't need the whole story. However letting me get away with vandalism would've been bad for my character.
What I remember more than dodging blame at first, was how I'd choked in the tournament. I knew that feeling of panic, at a low level, this was ping pong. But I knew what it meant to wipe out. I wasn't that great at ping pong to begin with.
I'm scheduled for a retraining with the device, meaning I'll have to get mom over to the medical office buildings again. We have a date. I left the first training full of confidence this would be a piece of cake.
I don't see myself as unreliable, but nor do I see myself as immune from wiping out, especially when operating technology I'm unsure about. Lots of steps, lots of do this then that. I get riled, I get frustrated. I get this way when I lose stuff, like my car keys, like right before I need to go somewhere, like to teach a class.
I remember going over to assist with that est stuff in the 1980s, taking the PATH train to the New York Area Center in the East Side Port Authority Bus Terminal building. Sometimes I would be late. Since the whole assist gig was about looking at oneself and one's patterns, I would get confronted and asked some questions.
I remember saying how I felt like a caged animal, being late yet unable to go any faster.
Another time I've felt panic is when I'm supposed to go on stage in a cyber environment (on Zoom), not as the host, but as the instructor. A DJ is supposed to show up and get the meeting going, by showing a banner page with my name on it, and playing music.
When the DJ didn't show up that time, I could do nothing except dismiss the students via Slack, in real time, after an appropriate waiting interval. I felt like a fish out of water, a beached whale. I tried contacting my counterparts on another continent.
These glitches happen. I am happy to have a DJ host the channel and still appreciate that setup, even though it has more moving parts.
A sense of goofing up may be multi-level. One my go through it as an individual, but also as a member of a group or cult (subculture).
I remember when Multnomah Quakers got thrown into an international controversy when a couple of its volunteer, temporary leaders, promised the meetinghouse to a Radfems, a controversial group, without running it by Business Meeting for prior approval.
There was a sense of disorientation among the members and attenders, once this news became known. The meeting ended up breaking its promise, from the point of view of the would-be renters of the space.
What I imagine goes on in the District from time to time, is a kind of awakening from groupthink of one kind or another. A collective bubble bursts. A reality crumbles. Trump's not getting a second consecutive chance at bat, as the POTUS, was reality-crumbling experience for some. JFK's abortive presidency was even more jarring.
The goof-up might have been putting too many eggs in one basket. That happens. But do the groupthinkers eventually come to see it that way?
Maybe we have other eggs in other baskets outside the District?
