Bettering the Big Man.

I went to the doctor’s today to have my little seborrheic keratosis squirted with freezy stuff so it will drop off and never darken my cheekbone again. I felt guilty about having it done actually, because a seborrheic keratosis is a benign skin tumour, and I think of tumours as being sort of living things, and so having it squirted with freezy stuff to do it in is a bit like conniving in the murder of a fellow being. Culpable homicide, no less. And so I apologised to it before I went in and hoped that my karma wouldn’t be too badly compromised.

I was hoping I’d come out with a dressing on it, so that I could go into the coffee shop and they would ask ‘What happened to your face?’ and I could say ‘I was protecting this poor woman from an axe-wielding maniac and I didn’t duck soon enough.’ And they would look at me with undisguised suspicion and say ‘You mean you had a mole removed?’ and I would say ‘Something like that.’ No luck. No dressing. Just a red mark around the poor little guy now sitting on death row.

But I did discover a way to avoid the tedium of sitting around in reception before seeing my name on the big screen. I realised that if I sat at the front close to the computer check-in thing, I could work out the astrological signs of all the patients. The idea occurred to me when I saw a young girl go up to the screen and press the letter B. That’s the first question: What is the first letter of your surname? And then she pressed December. That’s the second question: What is the month of your birth? ‘Ah,’ I thought. ‘Another Sagittarian like me.’ And then she pressed 29. What is the date of your birth? Ah no, a Capricorn. Never mind.

I told the doctor of my new game and he was impressed. ‘How do you know these things?’ he asked. ‘I was born curious,’ I answered, realising in the process that doctors might be great at testing urine samples for evidence of infection, but hopeless when it comes to the weighty matter of astrology.

‘And would you mind if I started a petition in your reception?’ I continued, buoyed by the new level of respect now being afforded me. ‘I want to have all that silly stuff on your big screen removed and replaced with Marx Brothers films.’

‘Good idea,’ he replied with a smile that was borderline genuine. ‘I’d approve of that.’

‘And we could mix in some Laurel and Hardy films, too.’

A discussion ensued, during which I discovered that my doctor and I have one thing in common: we both watch Laurel and Hardy shorts on YouTube. And that gave me the impetus to explain why all that stuff on his big screen is both trite and utterly unrealistic. He didn’t answer that one, but went straight into squirting keratosiscide onto my face. ‘This might sting a bit,’ he said. And thus revenge was swift.

And then it occurred to me how times have changed. When I was a kid the doctor was a demigod. When he was examining you it was considered proper to lick his shoes clean, only being afforded a brief respite when he wanted to stick a thermometer under your tongue. The doctor was He Who Must Be Obeyed (since most doctors were still men in those days.) Doctors were not to be toyed with, and here I was discussing Laurel and Hardy films and demonstrating my superior knowledge to boot. So that’s two things I’m better at. My mother would disown me if she knew.