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A Lifetime Membership To The Cancer Club

7/16/2016

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A Lifetime Membership To The Cancer Club

By JAMES GROB
aka IowaScribe


This week, I joined a club I never wanted to join.

It's not an exclusive club. You don't need to be of a certain race or nationality to take part. You don't need to have any special talents, or rise to a certain level of income, or be at any certain level of intelligence or education. All ages are welcome.

We have long-haired hippies and buzz-cut Marines. We have bleeding-heart liberals and wing-nut conservatives. Sinners and saints and swindlers and saps. Grouchy old grandmas and tiny-toothed toddlers. Christians and Muslims and Jews, atheists and agnostics, Buddhists and Hindus and Sikhs, poets and pipers and prophets for profit, cops and killers, scholars and students and hunters and whores.

Anyone can join. All you have to do is hear one magic word.

Malignant.

And you're in. Malignant. That's all it takes.

I didn't want to join. I wanted to hear another word. Benign.

And I heard that word, too. But one "benign" isn't near enough. In fact, you could listen to "benign" one hundred times, or a thousand or a billion times, and it wouldn't come close to overpowering that one little goddamn "malignant."

Ninety-nine point nine percent of you can be benign, but that one-tenth of one percent of you that's malignant -- that's the whole ball of wax, there, buddy. Slap my ass and call me Suzy, that's some powerful thing to say, malignant.

For me, it's actually malignant times two. But that doesn't really matter, because once you walk into Malignant Reception Hall, you can't leave until you dance naked with every ugly broad around the punch bowl.

All this rhetoric is a failed attempt to find a clever way to avoid writing four words that I don't want to write.

I have colon cancer.

I'll spare all the details of the scope, the procedure, the biopsy, the conversation with my doctor, the tears shed with my wife.

I will tell you that it stunned me. I'm still stunned. And scared -- more scared than I've ever been for myself. Scared like swimming in the ocean, 100 yards from the beach, and I see a shark's fin in the water, and it's huge, and coming my direction. And in my mind, I hear those two brilliant musical notes that John Williams composed. Da-Dum. It's that kind of scared.

And I will tell you that it's been hard, oh so very hard, to tell people about it. My mom, my daughters, my sister, my friends, my co-workers. Every call I've made, every note I've sent -- I feel as though I am spreading fear and anxiety and strife to the people I care the most about. I'm projecting my shock and my fright on to them.

And that's not my job in life -- that's never been my job in life. I hate drama -- I feel it belongs on the stage and screen, not in my own life. My job has always been to make people laugh, to make people think, to get people to look at things from a different -- hopefully positive -- perspective.

It's what I do.

And there is positive here. I'm told my condition is very treatable, and 95 percent curable. It's contained to one area of my body. One friend, a 20-year cancer survivor, reminded me that if you're going to have cancer, there's no better time or place in history to have cancer than right here, right now. And he's right. Short-term, this is a bitch. There will be some kind of surgery. Long-term? This will be good, this will be fine, this shall pass. That's what they tell me.

But I can still see that fin out there, and I can't swim like a shark can swim.

At this point, I really have no idea what I'm in for. I will receive a call from the surgeons and the cancer specialists in a week or two. I will have consultations, serious discussions with serious people. Options will be presented, recommendations will be made, second opinions will be sought. A plan of action will be composed and executed.

I don't know what to expect. This is a foreign country to me, and no one speaks English. I don't even know how long this road is -- will this take a few weeks? Months? A year? Longer? What about after that? How does one live life without a colon? Or with half a colon? Seems to me I use my colon regularly, sometimes irregularly. Won't I be needing that?

I'm not sure I'll completely understand these things even after I've talked about them with all the experts.

I'm only sure I don't want to be a member of this club.

I want out, please.

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DC Players fall production to be "It's a Wonderful Life"

7/13/2016

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DC Players fall production to be "It's a Wonderful Life"

Bloomfield's own Davis County Players will kick off the 2016 Christmas season in style this December with a stage production of the timeless Christmas classic, "It's a Wonderful Life."

The annual fall production will run Thursday through Sunday, December 1-4, at the Iowa Theatre in Bloomfield, serving as a conclusion to a successful 2016 theatre season as well as a commencement of Christmas festivities in Bloomfield and all of Davis County.

The stage production is based on the beloved Frank Capra cinema masterpiece, which first appeared in movie theaters in 1946, and has been a favorite of television audiences for decades. The movie, starring Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed, is one of the most popular films of all time and has become traditional viewing every Christmas season. It is often ranked as one of the greatest movies ever made, and encapsulates the heart of the American ideal.

The Davis County Players hope to capture the soulful spirit and profound essence of the movie with their stage adaptation, presenting the quintessential Christmas tale that includes a heartwarming love story, a portrait of life through the roaring 20s, the Great Depression, and World War II; and the descent of a sincere and earnest man into his darkest hour, trapped by circumstance, and saved by a Christmas prayer.

The show will include angels on high, Christmas Carolers, laughs, tears and a straight-forward look into what the ideas of love, friendship, community and success mean in middle America.

The production will be directed by Michelle and James Grob, and a cast of 20-30 actors will be needed to fill roles of all ages, from children all the way up to seasoned Davis County citizens. Auditions for the show will be August 16th and 18th. Crew and support staff will also be needed. All individuals are welcome to join the cast -- from veteran actors to newcomers. More information about auditions will be available in the coming weeks.
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Come out and help an angel named Clarence convince George Bailey that, indeed, "It's a Wonderful Life."

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