Breasts, silicon and Stuff!

Okay this one will not go down well with most people but I remember it all well and can't help smiling when I think back to it all.

The Steed of This Valley is Pain

My friend Anna was exhausted and drained when she stepped into my car carefully, protecting her sore side, and finding it difficult to manage her handbag and the door handle at the same time.  She had had her breast removed along with her glands under her arm the weekend before and, although healing well, was still coping with the shock and pain of it all.  It had only been two weeks previously that she had been blissfully unaware of any health problems.  Everything had happened so terrifyingly quickly and coping was the order of the day.  She had decided to only tell close friends and had been hurt by some of the reactions.  One friend had phoned a day later in tears saying she couldn’t afford to lose Anna as she was one of her few friends on the island.  The selfishness of that thought hurt.  As did the endless tales of others who had also had cancer.  One middle-aged lady had told her that they had buried a thirteen-year-old neighbour the week previously who had died of cancer and the family had buried her hair with her.  Confused Anna had asked, "Sorry, her hair?" And the response came, "Yes, you know she lost it all during the chemotherapy and they had kept the hair as it fell out, so they buried it with her, so sad”.  What bewildered Anna was the reason this lady had felt compelled to share this anecdote with someone who had herself been just diagnosed with cancer.  Was it hurtfulness or insensitivity? 

But people respond to situations differently and often they say or do the wrong thing but mean no harm.  Illness and death are somehow taboo and not many of us are trained in how to handle either with grace or wisdom.  One elderly Greek neighbour had fallen from the balcony of their second floor flat onto the cement below and was lying bleeding on the ground while relatives ran screaming around the road and waving their arms in the air.  While the ambulance was on its way one relative got into his car and frantically tried to do a U-turn and instead crashed into a nearby tree leaving a huge dent in his car.  Meanwhile the elderly husband howled in clear Greek something to the effect that his wife was dead and who would look after him now.  At the time I had wanted to hit him on the head with a shovel for his tactlessness but in hindsight the reason the grandson crashed the car was the great desire to do something to help.  The husband only said what he said probably because his wife was the most important thing in his life and the thought of losing her terrifying. 

But it is no conciliation to the poor sufferer who not only has to cope with the pain and loss but also the seeming stupidity of everyone around them.  As Anna leaned back in the car seat she sighed with exhaustion and I asked, ‘where do you want to go?’  ‘Home’, she murmured and we headed off to her house a few miles along the coast. She’d come to town by bus to see her doctor, had become too tired, and so had phoned me to pick her up from the town.  As we travelled she told me about her day.  Her doctor had told her of a chemist in Rhodes which sold false breasts and had phoned them before Anna’s visit to explain what she needed.  When she’d reached the chemist it had been full of people and, in front of everyone, the owner had, in a loud voice, started explaining that Anna was too small.  Her breast size was size one and they only stocked from size four and up.  In tones implying below that size there wasn’t much point.  If she wanted to order a silicon one however it would cost 45,000 drahmas( approx eighty pounds).  All of this was done at the top of his voice. Foreigners are often thought to only understand Greek if you shout, and to her horror Anna burst into tears.  In a chemist full of strangers, she cried and cried, partly from frustration, partly from embarrassment, but mostly from grief and loss.  A part of her had been taken away and only she was really aware of how much that hurt.  I was furious and upset at the insensitivity of the chemist.  What a berk.  Just imagine him being so thoughtless. 

I was mentioning this event to another friend of mine, an English girl, called Lisa.  Lisa is from the north, a real Yorkshire lass, with an accent that feels like a bread and butter marmite sandwich.  Sometimes when I get homesick here in Greece, just listening to her accent can bring a comfort.  She’s also fearless and can curse most wonderfully in fluent Greek.  Once when we were in the supermarket we returned to her car to find some thoughtless driver had blocked it in.  So there we stood with groceries and small children, stuck because some idiot had double-parked.  When the driver eventually returned he spotted two foreign women and gave us a dismissive wave before jumping in his car.  My Greek is non- existent in such circumstances.  But fortunately Lisa’s is not and she let rip.  The poor guy was pole axed.  He actually went pale and I began to feel quite sorry for him.  He learned a valuable lesson that day as he apologised most profusely and grovelled most satisfyingly.  It helps that Lisa is tall and a former policewoman who you feel sure could put an arm lock on you and frog march you across the channel tunnel if she felt inclined.  I made the mistake of mentioning the chemist incident to her and she was outraged.  She was also proactive.  She started a campaign against the chemist. 

She got her many Greek relatives involved and even more foreign women married to Greeks on the island.  She went in and asked to see the largest silicon penis he had.  Not only that but all her accomplices did the same.  Even some relatives who live in a village 8 km from Rhodes got involved.  People that I thought far too respectable to dream of saying penis in public went to the poor chemist and did the deed.  By the time I had worked up courage to do it, he had been polite and yet insistent, ’No we don’t stock penis’s, who told you we did?’  Next week the tourist season began and tourists will do anything for a laugh.  A bunch of Dutch ladies staying at a friend’s hotel thought it a terrific gag and told some others.  A Finnish lady on a week’s holiday waited until her last day before requesting a penis in heavily accented English.  Somehow the thing just snowballed from there. 

Greek friends in Archangelos, a village on Rhodes, heard of the challenge and went to request in their distinctive Greek accents ‘the largest silicon penis you stock’.  It became a symbol of revolution among the youth, who I have to say, were the only group who managed to rope in both boys and girls.  Until they took over it had been a purely female resistance movement.  It was several months later when an unusual sign appeared on the chemist’s counter.  A discrete typewritten sign sellotaped to the till read ‘We do not stock silicon penis’s’.  Anna had just received the all clear from her tests and news of this and the note spread like wildfire.  Lisa was triumphant and the rest of us crowed in contentment.  Such a silly thing.  We who all know the story have a peculiar fondness for that sign and take obscure pleasure from its presence.  A symbol of resistance in difficult days and a moment of shared fun during a tough period.