The Exam

Thor: I'm at the age now that requires a guy to visit his doctor every couple years and receive what they innocently call a "physical". Frankly, I'd rather go to the dentist. It'd been about three years, so today I went in and got probed. And when I say "probed", I mean it in the most uncomfortable sense. Dad and Grandpa both had prostate cancer, so Dad is always on my case to "get scoped" regularly. So I go in. They try to lull you into complacency with the first part of the routine: "Grip my fingers, pull against my hand, now push. Deep breath. Again. Lie back. Any tenderness here? Here? Here? Sleeping ok. Open. Say 'Ahh'." Then they turn up the heat a bit: "Drop 'em and face me. Turn you head and cough. Again." Finally we get to the dreaded "Now turn around and place your hands on the table." This is the "physical" part of the physical.

Mind you, I really like my M.D. He's bright, doesn't chat a lot, and knows almost everything. And what impresses me even more is that occasionally I stump him and he very openly excuses himself so he can go look something up. You gotta' trust a guy like that. BUT! He's got the fattest damn fingers I've ever seen on an earthling. It takes him a full 5 minutes to get a latex glove stretched over his giant ham hands.

It's almost a dissapointment that "everything seems fine". If a guy puts himself through an ordeal like that, he'd at least like the comfort that we caught something in time, so the agony was somehow "worth it". Great. I'm healthy as a horse. A horse that drinks beer, smokes cigars and occasionally gets in a fight. I just paid a guy to stick his finger up my butt for no reason. The salt in the wound is my wife's parting comment this morning, "Don't let him start anything he can't finish."

Tyr: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha (HEEEEP!) ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha (snorrrrkk!)

I wondered why you were walking so funny this morning. A couple months ago I found myself in a group of very old men (miminum age: 70.) Old men talk about weird stuff, but these guys set some sort of record:

Zeke: I vent ta' haf my exam yesterday and dey gave me a voman doctor. She sure vas purdy, but deh best part vas her tiny fingers. Dat vas deh best exam I efer hat.

Zeb: That blonde at the VA? Oh yeah, she's nice. Slips right in and out, ya' hardly know she's been there.

Straight out of the Twilight Zone. But I suppose their morbid self-interest in bodily functions is what got these guys to 70 or 85 years old.

In summary: Don't eat giant black been burritoes the day before.