Heartbeats and the Amish

In two minutes at the pool this morning, my doctor buddy, Gerry, explained coherently to me what several doctors have been unable to.  Not wanting to actually come right out and ask for a medical consultation while we were doing our laps, when finished I said, "Well, off to my non-caffeine breakfast, see you tomorrow."

He bit.  "What do you mean?" he asked.  "Well, I have this weird heart condition where it feels as if my heart is skipping a beat, but apparently it's not, so the doctor told me to quit caffeine altogether to see if it subsides," I replied.  (By the way, I haven't had a coffee for more than 40 years, but have always drunk tea; Gerry told me tea has more caffeine than coffee.  Huh?) 

"Sounds like blah-blah-blah-blah-blah?" he diagnosed.  "Yeah, that's it."   

Basically he told me all about it....that it's a benign condition which, although annoying, is non-life-threatening in a healthy heart -- which mine obviously is, thanks to never-ending, daily, gruelling laps.  Eureka!  "It's common in older people," he added.  The only thing I didn't like about his thorough explanation was the "older people" bit.  So, on I will continue to splash.

An aside:

Watched, for the first time, "Amish Mafia" last evening.  Wow!  Facinating.  And didn't we all think the Amish were peace-loving, quiet farmers, vice-and-depravity-free, who wouldn't hurt a fly?  Well, not anymore.  They have their own enforcers who work both inside and out of the community, speaking Amish dialect when dealing with infractions within the community and English when working over the "English", as they call Americans.  Three problems arose in last evening's program: 

• one about an Amish woman whose buggy had been hit by an "English" car and one of the wheels broken; 
• another about an Amish man who had been giving money to an Amish woman whose husband had left her, but who now wanted sex in return; and
• a third about a very highly-placed elder in the community who had been meeting a prostitute at a local motel and having regular, unprotected sex.  This info was provided by the "English" taxi driver he regularly called to transport him to his trysts.

The Amish "Don" as I call him, Lebanon Levi, has young men who work for him to solve all adherence problems before they reach the Bishop.  And boy, do they solve them in a hurry, using everything from threatening words to incriminating photos to actual shotguns!  No prayer, meditation or repentance here, by gum.  Throughout the show I kept wondering how they could film all this without the Amish community noticing?  Oh yeah, no TV permitted.  Perfect.   

It was riveting, think I am hooked.  Turns out they have the same malevolent vices as the rest of us.