Sunday, June 10, 2007

Dead chins and broken needles

As a kid, I didn't have a family doctor. Because my dad was retired from the military, our "family doctor" was the nearby Air Force base. The cost couldn't be beat, but sometimes you ended up with a doctor who was a little green.

My freshman year in high school, my chin was busted open during football practice, so my mom took me to the base to see if I needed stitches. The doctor decided I needed some, so he let the student doctor deaden my chin with some shots. As the student gave me shot after shot after shot, the doctor finally asked him with a little sarcasm, "Do you think his chin is dead yet?"

The student replied, "I'm not sure." The doctor told him, "Well, why don't you ask the patient?"

When the student looked at me, I said "Is my chin dead yet? Are you kidding, I can't even blink."

And sometimes, it's not the doctors who are green. A lot of the student pilots were from other countries, and they hadn't been to the doctor much growing up. So naturally, they were a little uneasy when they had to see the doctor.

One time, when my incredibly handsome twin brother Ron and I were in elementary school, we had to go get booster shots. As we stood in line with our mom, I overheard one of the foreign pilots nervously asking the other pilots about the shots. And as you would expect, the American pilots were making up stories about the doctor breaking needles off in people's arms and needing to pull them out with pliers, which just made the foreign pilot more nervous.

The foreign pilot was behind me in line, so when I was leaving after my shots, he asked me how it went. He probably thought a little kid would give him an honest answer. (He obviously didn't know me.)

With a deadpan expression, I replied, "Well, it was fine until the doctor broke the needle off in my arm."

Even as a kid, I was evil.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

hahaha!! you are EVIL!!! Too funny!

Anonymous said...

As always, you just crack me up! I'm in the computer lounge at MDW airport, laughing out loud...People think I'm crazy at this time of the morning and I blame U! :)
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