Blog #439                                August 7, 2025

 

My six-month check-up with Dr. Skin.  Naturally, I brought a map of all my skin’s bumps, blisters, bulges, blemishes and protuberances for her to slice and dice.  She ignored a few, froze a couple and decided one spot on my leg was suspicious.  I’m not kidding about the map.  It’s like the chalk outline of a body at a crime scene.

 

Anyway, she sliced off the suspicious spot, painlessly and sent it away for biopsy.  My leg responded by bleeding and she called for a cauterizing device.  Do not fear, I was not watching any of this.  I was reading the signs on the wall and trying to rearrange the letters to make new words.  That’s what I do to take my mind off the blood and guts and gore and misery of anything medical.  The cauterizing device must involve some electrical discharge because she said, “You don’t have a pacemaker or defibrillator, do you?”  Yes, I replied, I have both.  “Well, this shouldn’t set them off,” she said and proceeded cavalierly to zap my skin.  The bleeding stopped and my heart did not, so everything was fine.

 

I have had that defibrillator go off once, due to an electrical discharge in an underwater light while I was swimming.  It was kind of like getting whapped by Moby Dick’s tail.  But that was a long time ago, and my heart is doing fine.  In fact, my doctor just received the report that the pacemaker sends him every month or so, and he sent me the following:

 

We just have to give you some props

Cause your heart diagnostic is tops

Your heart will stay strong

And keep humming along

That is, till your battery stops.

 

Yes, it’s time to change the battery.  If it’s not one thing, it’s another, said Roseanne Roseannadanna, and she was right.  Getting old is not just a physical experience, but a mental one as well.  However, I finally have a solution for this feeling old thing.  As soon as we reach Medicare, we should change our ages to Centigrade.    I’m serious now.  Listen up.  I am 79 years old, but in Centigrade (let’s see, subtract 32 and multiply by five ninths) -- that makes me 26.  Now doesn’t that sound better?  85 would become 29.   I bet you feel younger already.  Once I had a nurse tell me my temperature was 37, so why not my age?  I’m 26! 

 

Hi there and welcome back.  Now don’t you feel better saying your age in centigrade?  I feel so good, I’m going to tell you a joke.  Fritz and Pedro are out walking their dogs.  Fritz has a big, beautiful German Shepherd; Pedro a tiny Chihuahua.  It’s a warm day and Fritz says, “Let’s go into that bar and get a beer.”  Pedro replies, “The sign says NO PETS ALLOWED.”   Fritz says, “Watch this”, puts on dark sunglasses and saunters into the bar with the German Shepherd.  A few minutes later he comes out looking refreshed.  “Well?” asks Pedro.  “No sweat,” says Fritz, “with the dark glasses they thought I was blind and that Buster was my seeing-eye dog.  The beer was great.” 

 

So Pedro borrows the dark glasses and heads into the bar where he is immediately accosted by a burly bouncer.  “No dogs, Mister,” he barks.  Pedro responds with confidence, “Can’t you see I’m blind?  This animal is my seeing-eye dog.”  “No chance, Bozo,” growls the bouncer.  “That’s a Chihuahua.”  “What?” shrieks Pedro.  “They gave me a Chihuahua?”

 

We used to have a dog named Alex.  Somehow his memory came up the other night, and I commented that Alex was a wonderful dog and that I missed him sleeping on my pillow.  Carol said, “That’s alright, you’ll see him in Doggy Heaven.”  Doggy Heaven?  First of all, I’m not even sick.  And second, is that where she thinks I’m going?  Doggy Heaven?  I guess I’m nothing more than an Alta-Cocker Spaniel to her.  Probably on our wedding night she thought to herself, “What! They gave me a Chihuahua?”  Well, alright Alex, wait up for me, Boy.  We can share a pillow for eternity.  Such a good boy!

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat:  To bed, to bed! There’s knocking at the gate (Macbeth.)  What?  Some dog is going to share his pillow?  I thought I was my Pops’ best buddy, and I’m certainly not going to any place named Doggy Heaven.  I need to talk with that crazy old man.  Purr.

 

I just opened the mail, and there was a bill for an echo-cardiogram.  The charge was $7834.  The insurance paid $495.  The “adjustment”, what the hospital wrote off, was $7,309, and I had to pay $30.  The hospital received a total of $525, less than 7% of the original charge.  So, in effect, 93% of the charge was fake.  What is the purpose of this flim-flam shell game?  What blind, third-level Ottoman clerk devised such a bizarre hoax.  “Step right up, ladies and gents, I have a cantaloupe for sale.  Today only, the price is $129, but if you give me $4, I’ll forget the rest.”  I can be stupid sometimes, but not stupid enough to understand that.

 

At the end of each blog, I always encourage you to send your comments.  I love to hear your thoughts, whether they are good or bad.  Recently, I have received two separate comments unmercifully, but lovingly I hope, excoriating me for the misuse of the word “less” when I should have used “fewer”.  I agree.  See, I told you I could be stupid sometimes.  Karl Popper said, wisdom is “realizing more fully the infinity of my ignorance”.  I was wrong and thank my humble readers with due obeisance. I will try to make less mistakes in the future.  Or is it fewer?

 

I like that my readers teach me things, just as I try to teach you.  Like our Weekly Word which today will be obeisance.  It is the acknowledgement of another’s importance or superiority.  I could have made it cavalier or excoriate, both of which appeared above, but those were our weekly words in previous blogs.  You think I don’t keep track of all this?

 

And I also keep track of the time, which is now over.  Stay well, count your blessings, and be back here in a week.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com