Relax, It’s Not Like You Cured Cancer: Celebrating Everyday Achievements Like Professional Athletes

The patient’s heart-rate monitor shows no pattern. The machine’s beeps carry no rhythm.

“He’s in V-Fib. Get me the panels,” senior trauma doctor Rog Bronkowski orders.

The beeping gives way to a continuous tone. The monitor shows a flat line.

“Charging, 200. CLEAR!”

Sha-shunk.

Luther’s lifeless body jumps from the hospital bed.

…

A nurse stares at the monitor and shakes her head. Nothing.

“Come on, Luther. Don’t you die on me you old bastard! Charging, 250. CLEAR!”

Sha-shunk.

…

Beep beep. Beep beep. The monitor spikes and the beeps march on in perfect cadence.

“We got a rhythm. Let’s get him up to the O.R.”

Dr. Bronkowski backs away as Luther is rushed up to surgery. He rips off his gloves and spikes them to the floor with such fury that the devil would be scared to take Luther tonight. From across the room, another doctor sprints wildly toward him. The two meet in mid air, their sides colliding. Two nurses throw their arms wide and violently chest bump.

As Bronkowski leaves the trauma room, the hospital’s chief of emergency medicine greets him with a handshake and a pat on the ass.¹

“Nice work in there, Rog.”

Chalk one up for the good guys.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I was at home this past week, watching some college hoops with my dad. Oklahoma State’s Markel Brown hit an 18-footer in his team’s 12-point loss to in-state rival Oklahoma. While backpedaling to the other end, Brown pounded his chest and barked at Sooner freshman guard Jordan Woodard.²

Disgusted, my dad muttered, “Relax, it’s not like you cured cancer or anything.”

This led to a couple minutes of the two of us joking around about how funny it would be if a doctor talked smack after discovering a cancer cure.

As Richard Sherman would put it, “I’m the best molecular biologist in the game. When you try me with a sorry disease like cancer, that’s the results you’re gon’ get!”

So what if people in our everyday lives (not that finding a cure for cancer is an everyday occurrence) celebrated their achievements like athletes do? Imagine this is the world we live in:

1. Construction workers finish nailing down the shingles on a newly erected house. The foreman raises the roof.

2. A librarian finishes checking out a patron’s book. She holds her finger up to her mouth to silence the crowd.

3. An audiologist gives an elderly man a clean bill of auditory health. He asks the crowd for more noise, cupping a hand over his ear as if to say, “I can’t hear you!”

4. An optometrist fits a child with a new pair of glasses. As the newly spectacled child perfectly recites the smallest line of letters on the eye chart, the doctor holds up his three goggles over his eyes.

5. A teacher erases today’s math lesson from the blackboard. She claps the erasers together in a cloud of chalk.

6. A priest delivers a powerful sermon, drops to a knee, performs the sign of the cross, and points to the sky as he stands.³

7. In the same church, a matchmaker sits in the audience holding her hands in the shape of a heart, as two of her clients are being wed.⁴

8. An undertaker finishes his next job, drops his shovel and does the Gilbert Brown Gravedigger.

9. A landscaper trims the hedges in a backyard. He drops his shears and Lambeau Leaps to the top of the fence. The overweight neighbors in cheeseheads shower him with beer.

10. A birdwatcher does the Dirty Bird after photographing the elusive Brown Booby.

11. A farmer points at one of his chickens and yells, “I wanna' eat your children!”

12. An ostrich pulls its head out of the sand and does the Merton Hanks chicken dance.

13. An entomologist discovers a new species of insect. During his press conference he Ali Shuffles and claims that it “floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.”

14. A blackjack dealer reveals a five after showing 16. The players are disappointed with his Icky Shuffle.

15. An electrician wires a house and the room lights up when he flips the switch. Ernest Givens and Haywood Jeffires would appreciate his electric slide.

16. A toddler finishes potty training and takes a bow while performing Randy Moss’s “disgusting act.”

17. A tailor perfectly fits a man for a suit and busts out Aaron Rodgers’s championship belt.

18. A weatherman correctly predicted tonight’s thunderstorm. He signs off the 10:00 news with a Usain Bolt pose.

19. A photographer calls the shoot a wrap. He poses while people pretend to take pictures of him while his model strikes the Heisman.

20. A mailman high-steps his way to the next mailbox before delivering a couple bills, a dozen pre-approved credit card applications, and 17 Dominos flyers.

21. A mason lays a level foundation. When it dries, he kneels down and kisses the bricks.

22. A coal miner discovers a massive lode. He takes off running up the tunnel like Bo Jackson.

23. The judge passes down his ruling, hammers his gavel and flips it like a baseball bat.

24. An intern at a newspaper has an article published on his last day of his internship after the staff writers shred their articles in the editor’s office one-by-one and the readers chant his name until the editor agrees to run his article. He's hoisted onto the shoulders of the staff and carried out of the office like a hero.

25. After finishing a home-cooked meal, some dude who lives in his parents’ basement looks into the family camcorder, waves, and mouths, “Hi, mom!”

26. A dad gets a “Father of the Year” card on Father’s Day. His wife asks him what he’s going to do next and he answers, “We’re going to Disneyworld.” His kids, ages 15 and 17, boo and do not vote him “Father of the Year” the following year.

27. A checkout girl at the grocery store finishes scanning your items, spins a can of creamed corn like a top, and signals first down.

28. A businessman finishes an important sales pitch that the client bites on. He firmly shakes the hand of every member on his sales team.

29. A Tough Actin' Tinactin spokesperson by day, and fire walker by night, waves his hands at his feet in an attempt to cool them down.

30. Carrot Top is fined $20,000 by the President of Comedy Central for using a prop in his celebration.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I wrote the majority of this list on my flight back to Chicago. Almost immediately after we touched down the pilot got on the horn and welcomed us to the Windy City. “Welcome to Chicago, ladies and gentlemen. How ‘bout that landing? That’s about as smooth as it gets folks.” I thought it was funny, but  appropriate, to hear a pilot talk a little smack after doing what he gets paid to do.

I was the last person to exit the plane and the pilot was waiting for me to disembark. As I approached the front, I sarcastically mimicked his “How ‘bout that landing?” rhetorical question. We both nodded in approval and he lifted his hand to deliver a fist bump. What would he have thought if I did the explode thing after our knuckles collided?

______________________________________________________

¹Of course the doctor is then fired, sued, does 2-10 for sexual assault, and never practices medicine again. But a win’s a win.

²Oklahoma was up by nearly 20 at the time, making Brown’s gestures look pretty silly.

³I refuse to refer to this as “Tebowing.”

⁴Somehow Gareth Bale actually trademarked that?