The Doctor Says I'm Normal

But I don’t want to be normal… in spite of my name. After being bled, scanned and scoped all’s well. And there I was planning my next incarnation. Can’t I be just a little bit Abe Normal? At a certain age one needs to cultivate one’s eccentricities.

I started thinking of all the things I’ve never done; like experiencing severe tire damage or a pie in my face. I shall never play the trombone or sing in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. In fact I can’t carry a tune from here to there. Nor can I draw anything beyond stick figures. 

Normal guys hunt and fish and bowl. Not me. Normal men change their oil, recognize a Chevy from a Ford or DC7 from a DC5. Count me out.

I reject the herd with its Bah for the lone Ah Ha. My preference is to wander away and graze off an interior pasture. I don’t want the picture over the couch to match the throw pillows.

Have your vanilla ice cream; I’ll go with half pumpkin praline and half rum raisin jamoca ripple.

If there’s a Bar Mitzvah going on I’ll wait in the car. I dislike rituals of a prescribed nature where the meaning has long since been replaced by arcane mumbles. I have my own religion and it is necessarily beyond words.

But in the end it’s no use. Compared to a double-agent urban guerilla, I’m normal. Or an influence peddler-power-broker I’m the mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet. And, yes, the report from my doctor really was good news. All clear along my alimentary canal. And so I shall set sail with Peggy at my side, wing to wing, oar to oar.

What's In A Name? Everything

I have a cold. Even worse, it's a common cold. I expect no sympathy for that even though my voice is basso profoundo, my nose a faucet and malaise enough to return me seventy years when the doctor made house calls with his tongue depressor, thermometer (my fever was 102, rectally speaking) and cold hands. He might have declared: sinusitis or pharyngitis or if I really wanted attention: The Grippe. No, not The Grippe but then again I had to hope I was sick enough to have gotten him out in such weather.

Where are the namers of the world? They have overlooked the sufferers of seismic sneezes and the cluster of symptoms north of the neck. Calling it a "nasty" cold has some purchase but it will never rise to the level required for a Telethon.

My father once gave me the gift of describing a milk shake as a frothy, saccharine, lacteal secretion of a graminivorous quadraped. Why say it with two words when you can use six?

Many medical terms seem to have survived only in Dickensian novels. Catarrh, (nasal discharge)is one of my favorites. Others in the scrapheap are chilbains, dropsy and apoplexy. Look them up.

So, I have a cold. Get over it! The cure for the common cold which is common enough without the adjectival diminisher, is in the hands of the lexicographer. It requires a name that confers the gravitas it warrants. Would the dreadful A.L.S. receive any grant funding if it wasn't known as Lou Gehrig Disease? FDR, we are now told, may never have had polio. All those dimes in the collection box and none went to Guillain-Barre, one of the un-sung, under-funded ills waiting for a celebrity to be stricken to get its due.

I can feel myself turning the corner. If my life were a movie the vigil of relations in the room would be breaking up. The squabbling crows outside my window are replaced by a twittering dove and a new bud just popped on the bough.

Health Information May Be Hazardous To Your Health

It's so hard being good and it used to be so easy. I finished my liver so I'd grow up to be strong and prevent famine in China. I wore galoshes and three sweaters because everyone knew disease came from drafts and I swallowed cod liver oil to ensure that I'd grow up at all.

Now, with an alphabet of vitamins playing Scrabble in my bloodstream and trace minerals making noise like a heavy metal band, my life is threatened daily by new findings telling me I'm doing it all wrong. What's a person to do?

My email is full of messages from close friends I've never heard of urging me to take ancient herbs for longevity but my "gevity" is quite long enough, thank you.

I ponder this as I'm pedaling to the Punjab on my stationary bike. I'm staying out of the sun to prevent melanoma only to read that I need more sun to get that essential Vitamin D. I'm drinking water to flush my kidneys but wait. The water is suspicious. No it isn't. Yes it is. O.K., I'll drink bottled water but the plastic is toxic. I'm doomed.

Eat organic. Is there anything in this world that isn't organic? Then it must be other-galactic. I have an herb-garden in my gut. Where did the rumor start that "natural" is necessarily beneficial and harmless? Opium, Digitalis, anyone?

I'm drinking tea as fast as I can. Black? Green? Or was it Oolong that is supposed to oxidize those nasty free radicals? And we all know about free radicals.

The latest bulletin warns against drinking tea straight from the whistling kettle which can scorch the esophagus. Now I am sucking ice trying some tepid extract from the leaping frogs of New Guinea awaiting next week's latest breakthrough. Maybe a new study will prove how hot tea really extends life so I can die on a Thursday instead of a Tuesday.