ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, July 17, 1996 TAG: 9607170013
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 7 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Ben Beagle
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
If this life gets any weirder, I'm going to get off the bus and ask for a transfer to somewhere else.
Things were going all right. I hadn't used up my authorized number of ESIs - which stands for epidural steroid injections and entails being skillfully stabbed in the back with a needle the size of a Phillips screwdriver - and then this friend of mine left this clipping in my mailbox.
I always check my mailbox, which is where I keep my genuine, tastefully chipped Sherwin-Williams coffee cup now that I no longer qualify for a desk, being semiretired and all.
Actually, I was always surprised that they let me have a desk when I was full time.
Anyway, the clipping was from The New York Times and it said men are pretty ignorant when it comes to medicine.
It said many of us don't know the location of a certain male gland I'm not mentioning here, although this gland causes old fogies a lot of trouble.
I know where this gland is located, and I will tell any male person where it is if he will write and include a plain, brown, stamped return envelope.
The entire tenor of this article is that men are dumber than women when it comes to medical problems.
It says that men don't talk about physical ailments like women do.
And I say this is garbage.
Listen. I've lost a lot of lifelong friends who came over for a beer on the deck and had to sit through more details about my rotator-cuff surgery than they ever wanted to know.
I get wound up and pretty soon they get every sordid detail of my knee surgery and then I pop on over to the my shoulder-separation surgery.
Some of them faint when I tell them to feel the head of this great big screw in my shoulder.
I slide right on into my cataract surgery and describe the sound a suture makes when it's pulled out of your eyeball.
By the time we get to my last epidural steroid injection, these guys are glassy-eyed and begging for mercy.
I understand one of them went home and told his wife: "If Old Bennie ever has open-heart surgery, we're moving to Wisconsin before he gets out of intensive care."
I just wanted to get some things straight here and kill yet another male stereotype before it gets a hold in our society.
If you're interested, my next deck lecture will be on proper physical therapy after knee surgery.
Bring your own beer.
LENGTH: Medium: 54 linesby CNB