The One Cent Check

I have always wanted this to happen some day, and today it happened. I got a check in the mail for one cent. Yes, one cent. Pay the Sum of -0- dollars and 1/100.

It was sent to me by my mail order pharmacy, OptumRx, thus tempting me to descend into a rant about the inefficiency of health care in the U.S. After all, it cost them 39 cents in postage to mail me the check in response to some alleged overpayment on my part. But, I resolve to take a dignified approach toward their heartfelt desire to make sure they were not conning me out of a penny.

I now have to decide between a number of mature responses to such silliness on their part:

• Wait in line at my bank and cash it. Somehow I think it might be appropriate to wear something dignified for the occasion. Perhaps my blue wig.
• Endorse the back and forward it to a favorite charity, or perhaps an unfavorite one. ASPM (American Society for the Protection of Mosquitoes) comes to mind.
• In a similar vein, endorse the back and forward it as a donation to the Donald Trump presidential campaign. I just love that fellow's comb over, don't you?
• Wait until the "deposit by" date passes, and then send it back to OptumRx asking them to please reissue it.

As I say, I have always wanted this to happen some day.

Maturity and Visiting the Doctor

I will be 65 this July, and because of this I am trying very hard to be mature, but I must confess that I suspect I am failing because, as far as I am concerned, there is just too much silly fun to be had in life.  For example . . . this week I found a wonderful way to take twenty pounds off my weight at the doctor's office.

All you need is a cane.  I have a back and hip problem and so often will use a cane when out and about.  My cane is called Eileen, because I lean on her.  This week I was leaning on her when the nurse took my weight.

I decided to steady myself on the scales using Eileen.  Not only was I steady but I was much lighter as well.  I chuckled as the nurse told me my wonderfully new and lighter weight.  I am assuming that she was having a bad day, because she never noticed my cane pushing down on the floor, talking a load of the weight off the scales. Perhaps, though, she assumed that a patient in his senior years would not purposely distort a clinical measurement.

Then I felt sort of bad and I confessed.  I did not fully confess.  I did not admit that I put the cane on the floor as a joke.  All I said was that I noticed my cane was pressing against the floor and was probably messing up the reading.  She re-weighed me and my miraculous weight loss disappeared instantly.

For next time I am thinking of holding my breath when she measures my oxygen level. . .  but I will try to resist doing that.  After all, I am working on being mature.  Sort of like an aged cheese, I suppose.

Betty the Bird Brain

Once upon a time there was a Canada goose.  She was a magnificent fowl, as fowls generally are.  She was covered with feathers and had a beak.  Her name was Betty.

Betty looked like a typical magnificent Canada goose.  Deep down inside her birdish soul, though, she had a yearning, a yearning to reach out beyond the limited social realm of bird-dom.  Even though she was not merely a bird, but a goose, she was growing tired of the soul-destroying shallowness of a life spend flying around making honking noises, landing on ponds, and generally fouling their banks.  Betty wanted more.
One day, purely by chance, as she was flying from one pond to another -- alone, because she happened to be in a grumpy solitary mood that day-- she looked down at the front lawn of a house she was passing over.  There in the middle of the lawn was a bright shiny red something.   Whatever it was, it looked powerful.  It looked strong.  It looked so ... mmmmmmm masculine.  Betty's heart started to go plippety plop -- the palpitations of love.

She adjusted her wing feathers -- the bird equivalent of flaps -- and slowed her airspeed.  She banked.  She banked some more.  She was dizzy with love.  And even though she was a bird, she was about to make herself airsick.

Finally she plopped down, clumsily, on the bright green lawn, in front of the bright red shiny masculine machine.

How does a bird that is bored of bird-dom but is nevertheless still cursed with a bird brain, reach out romantically to a machine?  Inevitably, she did so in a stupid way; and it was beyond stupid, for the only word to describe the consequences is "tragic."

Those of the human ilk find much of nature to be savage.  Hence the use of the word "savage" to describe animals, I suppose.  And indeed it can be savage.  Think of the poor male spider who gives it his all, and then is eaten by his mate.  Think of cats -- tom cats -- who get all torn and scratched fighting for the right to mate with that cute little sweetie with wide brown eyes and with whiskers to die for.  Think of germs, which reproduce by splitting in half!!   'Tis a very brutal world.

 No ending was so tragic, though, no love so destructive, no affection so misplaced, as the attraction which Betty had for this machine.

Perhaps Betty imagined, in her bird brain, that the machine had feelings, and perhaps even a name.  She might well have honked, in the language of Canada geese, the words, "I adore you, my love, my love whom I have lovingly named Larry."  Perhaps she did think of him as Larry.  We have no way of knowing, of course.  What we do know, though, is that -- and this is not simply tragic but also horrifying -- "Larry" was not a being with feelings, but was, rather, a machine with blades, big and very fast blades.  "Larry" was a lawn mower.  He was one of those wonderful new remote-controlled lawn mowers.

In his living room, a human called Bud had just replaced the batteries in the remote control for his bright red new remote-controlled lawn mower.  He pushed a button, at the very moment that Betty the shameless was trying to place a kiss on Larry's shining metallic surface.

It would not be appropriate to describe all the heart-rending details of Betty's demise.  Phrases such as "blood mixed with feathers," and "severed webbed feet" come to mind, but will not be elaborated upon here, in this public forum.

Bud is still cleaning up his new lawn mower.  Poor Bud.

And poor Betty.

First Published Oct. 10, 2009.

Sinuses and Foreign Heads of State

Last week I went to an ENT for a problem with a sinus infection  As I walked into the office of this new doctor, I was blithely unaware of the potentially international significance of my two innocent-looking nostrils.  Soon, though, I was asked to sign the Notice of Privacy Practices of this Ear, Nose & Throat Clinic.  Listed were the many circumstances in which they would be permitted to release my Individually Identifiable Health Information ((IIHI).  Yes, you may have guessed it!  They are allowed to release information about my nostrils "in order to protect . . . foreign heads of state."

Nostrils may be small seemingly insignificant orifices.  They may produce unpleasant discharge (sinuses not overly terrific, or S.N.O.T).  But who would have guessed that they have their own small place to play in international affairs?

Originally published Nov. 25, 2008.