Tongue-In-Cheek … Foot-In-Mouth

There are some people out there who will NOT go to the doctors under any circumstances, to include if a mongoose is firmly attached to their jugular vein.  These are the kinds of people who, when cutting down a tree in the backyard, will slice off a good solid hunk of their body, say from their torso down, and they will stop chopping, pick up said body part, and attach said body part back in its original factory installed location with the help from chewing tobacco, duct tape, and mud, held tightly in place with their belt…and back to chopping they go.

Then there are other people out there, like me, who require a body cast for a hangnail; people, like me, who will leap into their cars and drive straight to their doctor’s office if they even so much as see a picture of someone with a thermometer in their mouth fearing that THEY, by which I mean ME, will now have become contaminated with whatever horrible terrible life-threatening disease the person with the thermometer sticking out of their mouth has.  Look, in my defense, I’m the kind of preventive maintenance sort of guy who will ask, yes ask, for my doctor to snap on the old rubber glove.  Remember: think preventative maintenance.

Hey, the way I figure I’d rather have my doctor shove his finger into my backside and root around exhibiting the same level of enthusiasm normally associated with a intoxicated vagrant frantically attempting to remove a wedged quarter out of a payphone than to wake up one day only to find that my prostrate has now successfully grown large enough for the Department of the Interior to officially award my prostrate with its own zip code.

Look, suffering the discomfort and embarrassment of having a person in a white smock with a stethoscope around their neck with their finger forever jammed up your normally “exit only orifice” practicing a new violent form of sign language in your column is much better than having to pee 400 times a second with LITTLE to NOTHING coming out.  I know T.M.I.

But, I’ve always been a slight hypochondriac.  Take last week for instance, Wednesday morning; I looked in the mirror ONLY to come face-to-face with a red mark on my face.  Now, if you are categorized by the Institute of Mental Health as “normal,” you’d think nothing of a red mark on your face.  BUT if you have been categorized by the Institute of Mental Health as “an escaped mental patient,” like me, your brain will ONLY give you two choices: 1) you have razor rash which is basically nothing and you will be fine, or D) you have managed to acquire a rare form of Amazonian Jungle Rot and your face will slide off of your skull before you can say “AAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

And I don’t mind talking about my aliments in great nauseating detail to total strangers who pass by me on the street, and who, just being polite, might smile and say “how are you?” But instead of just replying with “okay and you” I corner them and provide them with WAAAAAYYYYY more information than they need or care to be hearing.  This, I realize is NOT normal socially acceptable behavior, but I’m a little bit on the nutty side.

EXAMPLE

Total Stranger:  “Hi, how are you today?”

Me: “I have projectile diarrhea.”

Total Stranger: “What?”

Me:  “Ruined three pairs of underwear on the way to work this morning.  They’re in the glove compartment along with a piece of my small intestine.”

Total stranger looks at his watch

Total Stranger:  “Oh, would you look at the time.  I—”

Me:  “Interestingly, it was red and black, and it was in a plaid pattern.  Funny, I don’t remember eating a kilt.”

Moment of silence

Total Stranger:  “Sorry, about that, but, a, everything else is okay, right?  Okay, see ya.”

Me:  “Scurvy.”

Total Stranger:  “Scurvy?”

Me:  “Yup, and rickets.”

Total Stranger: “Scurvy AND rickets?”

Me:  “Aha, oh, and bubonic plauge.”

Total Stranger:  “I think I better sit down.”

Sadly, because I am somewhat melodramatic when it comes to me being sick; it has put me in a pickle with my wife, as made evidenced by the fact that she didn’t believe me last night when I told her that I was no-kidding-around seriously dying from a bullet wound.  Okay, technically I hadn’t actually located the bullet hole on my body at that point. BUT the rapper gangster on the television news had one in the center of his forehead.  And everyone knows that bullet wounds are highly contagious, which means I definitely had one around here somewhere.  (Pat.  Search.  Pat.  Search.  Pat.)

Anyway, join me again next time when I will jump topics and tell you about the time I made the HUGE mistake of going food shopping when I was hungry and came home with a Keg of Mountain Dew and a 700 pound bag M&Ms.

Copyright © 2009 Bill Drury.  All Rights Reserved.