Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 9, 1991                   TAG: 9103090272
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IF THESE DOCTORS ARE RIGHT, I SHOULD FEEL STUPENDOUS

I dunno. I have been writing about traumatic experiences for years, and I don't feel so good most of the time.

I don't like to brag, but I have made a living of sorts writing about personal trauma, physical as well as mental.

This has not helped me on Monday mornings. I don't want to be dramatic here. Let us just say that if we had gas, I would spend a lot of time on Monday mornings with my head in the oven.

Take, if you're not squeamish, the time I broke my ankle so bad that all this purply-looking flesh swelled down over my sneaker. It looked like the Blob was eating me from south to north.

I wrote so many absolutely hilarious columns about my ankle that the really big guy sent out a memo.

I wasn't supposed to know about it, but my sources intercepted a copy. It said:

"All editors are authorized to rum amok and kill or maim Beagle the next time he writes a column about his damned ankle.

"Although this idiot thinks these columns are absolutely hilarious, our average reader is becoming sick and tired of them to the extent that I am getting death threats at home."

Did that help my ankle any? No. To this day, the swelling has not disappeared completely. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night thinking I am still wearing this cast that, quite frankly, smelled bad after a while.

One of the doctors found that writing about trauma increased this stuff in your blood that fights infection. Let me just say here that my sinuses have hurt for 45 consecutive years.

Let us now deal briefly with mental trauma, about which I also know a thing or two.

I don't know know how many times I have written about my fear of the marketplace - as in the modern supermarket in which you can buy tools to fix your toilet or pave your driveway.

I have told of being helpless and hyperventilating in the express line while a woman who didn't know the meaning of fear got by with plunking down 18 items instead of 12. Paid by check, too.

It has not helped to write of these moments of sheer terror. I still get them.

Doesn't have to be in the express line in the supermarket either.

The other day I hyperventilated in the drive-in lane at the cleaners.

I do have some sense of shame, however, and I probably won't write about that.