I got a distressing message the other day about an associate from my days in Houston. He’s now working in Tyler and was in the hospital.

He’ll be okay and is already back to work, but his illness led to lengthy string of emails among his former co-workers. A string of emails he did not care for. When I got in touch with Mark, I got a text about the colleague who started the chain of emails: “Glad I told him NOT to make a big deal out of this.”

You may know Mark. He appears in the “bio video” KTRH had me produce back in the day. He’s the one at the end, hanging up on the governor. That video has since been edited slightly. Youtube had an issue with the original version that featured the credits from WKRP in Cincinnati at the end.

An aside: I like how he really hits the word, “again,” in that video. “The governor’s on the phone for you again.” I say that because I’m pretty sure he wasn’t there during the first scene with the governor calling.

Naturally, I stopped at a liquor store to bring some whiskey. I’m not a licensed physician, but I’m pretty sure whiskey is a nourishing antibiotic. Or anti-septic. It’s anti-something, and Mark needed a bottle.

​I had done that once before. A co-worker here in Dallas was in the hospital last year. I showed up with a flask, and he said a mutual friend had already stopped by and pointed at a cabinet.

I looked inside and saw a bottle of whiskey. A nurse was in the room at the time and cheerfully declared, “I don’t see anything. Just don’t open it, okay?”

That’s how I learned when you have a friend in the hospital, the right thing is to show up with a bottle of whiskey, not a flask. I was making a fool of myself!

One of the things I realized after my own spell in the hospital is we’re all running on borrowed time. At least until Science comes up with some sort of immortality pill. I do not know why Einstein was so caught up on mythical theories of “relativity” instead of immortality.

​Since science doesn’t have the guts to figure out an immortality pill, my only other option was to show up with liquor. In defense of the hospital in Longview, buying whiskey for patients there was incredibly convenient. There’s a liquor store right next to the hospital! I didn’t even have to move my truck!

I would have preferred, though, to see more liquor in Ball brand mason jars. Our medical professionals deserve better than these knock-offs.

For the immortality pill, I suspect Aloe will be involved. There you go, Science, I already got you halfway there.