Ozzy Osbourne - Crazy Train
All Aboard
My last morning at the Cedar Hills Rehabilitation Hospital in Portland, Oregon is one forever burned into my prefrontal cortex. The hospital houses severely ill mental health patients, men and women of mild and recoverable illness, and military folks. Facilities like this separate the military patients from the others because we're geared somewhat differently, which is to say, some folks are recovering from PTSD stemming from childhood abuse, while others are recovering from PTSD because they accidentally killed an Iraqi family of four with a hand grenade. That's not to say one is better or worse, but that different treatment options are necessary.
Because there are four groups of people the eating arrangements require some time management skills. The cafeteria opens at six, and because the military is accustomed to waking up at pre-dawn hours, we get to eat first. Right after us comes the severely mentally ill. These poor souls aren't leaving the hospital anytime soon. This sometimes leads to moments of profound gallows' pole comedy. For example, during one traffic jam of a morning, the cafeteria opened ten minutes late. Normally not such a bad thing, but the orderlies in charge of the long-term inpatient ward didn't get the memo. Cut to me and my friend Mitch, an Army Ranger from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, finishing up our breakfast as the severely disturbed came in for a little eggs and bacon. Mitch got up to refresh his coffee cup and he left a banana on his tray. A young man sat down across from me, next to where Mitch's tray was. He looked at the banana, looked at Mitch, looked at me, picked up the banana, broke it in half, and jammed both ends into his mouth. Mitch returned with a full coffee cup and immediately noticed something was awry. One need not be Sherlock Holmes to deduce what happened. The guy was still chewing and had pieces of banana in his straggly beard.
"Dude, did you just eat my banana?"
Upon hearing Mitch's question, the young mentally ill patient stood up, fashioned the banana peel onto his head as if it were a hat, and shouted to no one in particular, "I ain't afraid of SHIT."
To which Mitch said, "I uh... yeah, I believe you."
"Time to go, fellas," said our orderly.
Mental wounds still screaming, driving me insane
-Ozzy, Crazy Train
It's moments like that I will always remember with great reverence. This leads me to my last day inside the ward, one more morning to escape without incident, one more morning to savor the genuine hilarity stemming from the combined effects of the worst days of our lives. Our greatest invention to quell the melancholy low tide of human existence is humor.
I've listened to preachers, I've listened to fools
I've watched all the dropouts, who make their own rules-Ozzy, Crazy Train
So, I was sitting at the morning breakfast table, and it was a ghostly mid-winter morning when no one was talking. We were all just admiring the fresh Oregon snow and quietly eating. The only loudness was coming from the cafeteria workers' radio, which was pulsing with the local FM classic rock station morning show. The cafeteria workers themselves are the kind of guys you'd expect to work in a mental health ward cafeteria starting at 4 in the morning each day - questionable facial hair choices, swap-meet tattoos, and hair nets. You get the idea.
One of my favorite orderlies, an Army vet named Danny, showed up to deliver me some news.
"Jason, the van is all set to take you to the airport. Whenever you're finished."
"Thanks, bro. I appreciate it."
I'd already said my goodbyes to the lunatics with whom I was eating my breakfast. Anyone who's served knows definitively that a tremendous bond can be formed in a truly short amount of time, and I was going to miss these nut jobs. We had created understanding beyond the uniform, beyond the bullshit facades we all raise to protect our fragile egos, and headlong into the real human characters inside. I looked down the row of PTSD sufferers, recovering drug abusers, and alcoholics, these thoroughly run-through human beings, and noticed they were all nodding their heads in unison to the music blasting out of the radio. Military training must have kicked in as they were all in step. Just bopping along. I looked at Danny and he looked back at me. I couldn't help but roar in laughter. The song? Ozzy Osbourne's Crazy Train.