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Unfortunately, there are no pictures (ahem!), but I’m pretty sure I looked just like this. Only, blonde.

Naturally, as I regained consciousness more and more and a hint of coral appeared once again on my ivory lips, I was a popular patient with the nurses.

Oh, sure, they pretended they couldn’t find my dainty veins, requiring all sorts of thumpings and tappings as they basked in the glow of my somehow still visible glamour. Or that they need to do all this temperature taking or the python-like squeezing of my arm for blood pressure tests for health reasons, but I know.

They liked me. They really liked me, and they wanted to hang out.

So imagine my surprise, having at least ONE less worry as I slept at night in this tidy, modern hospital when I casually asked during one of these hanging out extravaganzas as two of them pretended I needed help to walk the halls, “Have you ever had bats here?”

“Yes,” one of the nurses replied.

“WHAT?!”  I said.

“On this very floor! Several times…I don’t know how they get in.”

“Well,” the other hanger on chimed in, “bats can fit in holes the size of – ”

“A pencil eraser! I know,” I cried out in panic.

“I was going to say a matchbook, but yeah, that too,” she finished.

Later that night I saw one of those nurse culprits peek into my room. “Oh. You’re awake.”

Usually this fact would cause my nurses great pleasure. In fact several times in the middle of the night they would turn on the lights without warning, like a police raid, just to get me up – whilst “pretending” to need to take vitals, but I could see right through them. I know they just needed a dose of Ruth and could not wait ‘til morning!

“What do you need?” I patiently (a pun!) asked.

“Nothing,” the nurse responded. “I was going to get a fake bat and dangle it from the ceiling.”

“What?!”

“At the very least, I was going to come in here and make squeaking noises.”

So. It has come to this. I survive a near death appendix rupture only to die by heart attack.

At least I shall live to see the Greater Rolfe Days Sesquicentennial, which begins tomorrow. Surely you’ve heard of it! Our delightful town of 600 give or take will have Water fights and Scavenger Hunts and Art Shows and a Cemetery Walk and a Tour of Homes and a Bacon Fest, fer’ crying out loud! And the library’s having a Book Sale and there will be dances…it just doesn’t get any better than small town America and for me, it doesn’t get better than Rolfe. I love this place. Bats and all.

Of COURSE there will be parades too! This is from Rolfe’s Centennial – or 100th Anniversary. And now it’s the 150th. Fifty years can fly by like THAT. Or so I’m told.

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