You have to have a strange sense of humor when raising goats, or, maybe it’s raising goats gives you a strange sense of humor. Whatever, people always ask me where I get my sense of humor. You know, that type of laughter where you trip over a goat and fall over the hill sense of humor, and you are snickering all the way down the hill because you did trip over a goat.

But, if I had to blame someone for my sense of humor, it might be my mom. She’s the type that when the fence men came to put up her black vinyl chain link fence around the backyard, she’d sneak out when they weren’t looking and "twang" the fence to see if it was really being drawn as tight as it should. In fact, she did this several times when they weren’t looking. I bet they wondered why things kept vibrating around there.

She’s also the type that when she stayed in a motel room with my sister, waiting for my heart surgery the next morning, she didn’t think the motel room was clean enough. So, she took out her Lysol spray she carries with her and sprayed everything, including the bed and sheets. My sister was handed the spray can and was told to now spray her bed. She looked at it and said, "Mom, this is your hair spray." Talk about stiff sheets.

So, this week found me taking mom and dad to the hospital for some day surgery mom had to have. While we were sitting in her hospital room, a very tired looking nurse came in and introduced herself as she bent over to adjust the hospital bed. In all honesty, I didn’t catch the mumbled name, but mom said sharply, "Chuck? Did you say your name was Chuck? What kind of name is that for a girl?"

The nurse quickly corrected mom and repeated her name. But, it was too late, from then on out it was branded in our minds that this was "Chuck." She was a good sport about it. We couldn’t remember her real name, but we could remember "Chuck" and she had a great laugh over it.

When the IV nurse came in to get mom set up, we asked her what "Chuck‘s" real name was. She told us and got a kick over "Chuck" and the next thing we heard when she left was her calling for "Chuck" to come and help her with another patient.

Now it always seems to take forever before you are taken in for that bit of surgery, so mom, dad, and I had to entertain ourselves someway. Have you noticed anymore that the control for the hospital bed to lower, raise, sit the head up or the feet up, now has the TV control on it too?

For people like ourselves, who think radio is high technology, a control like this is quite mind blowing. Oh, and this one also had the many and varied room lights on it and the call button for the nurse.

Complete puzzlement and fascination over came us with this high tech remote control. Naturally we had to try it out. Between the three of us, somehow we had all the lights in the room flashing, TV on and blaring loudly, the call button dinging loudly, and it’s a true wonder we didn’t have mom’s bed flopping up and down and back and forth. But, fortunately, before we got to that part, Chuck came in and saved us, or saved mom who was in the bed.

Being the efficient nurse she was, she got the TV turned off, the lights back under control so it didn’t look like we had a psychedelic show going, the call button turned off, and calmly handed the control back to us. Which I thought very brave of her.

Two hours later they finally came to get mom and we hadn’t touched that control. We all decided that high tech technology was not for us. We did have some problems with dad who, in being a handyman, was quite sure he could take the hospital bed apart and have it back together again before anyone noticed. Thankfully, a couple of hours later we were all heading home, leaving the big city lights, nurses called Chuck, and their fancy remote controls. A goat farm never looked so good. But, I have to admit, we laughed most of the way home about our escapades in the big city. I am sure Chuck will never forget us.