My mom was a nurse — because her stepmother believed that women should be teachers or nurses, and my aunt was already a teacher.
My mom had some stories about her experiences working in the hospital. One involved an older male patient who kept getting out of bed. Nurses, back in the day, were taught to give directives with a gentle “we”, rather than an accusatory “you”. When she took the gentleman’s arm and said, “Let’s get back in bed,” the man snapped, “I did not come here to be insulted by you or anybody else!”
Another favorite from the nursing realm involved a story from her nurses’ training. The nursing students were preparing to go to a formal dance. One of mom’s friends, who was rather sparsely endowed, was wearing a strapless formal that had a newfangled contraption inside the bra section of the dress that inflated with a little air valve to, say, give the girl’s figure a more enhanced appearance. When her date arrived and attempted to pin her corsage to her dress — boom!! Humor for some, humiliation for someone else.

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