Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.
-- John Wayne
So, you’re having Irish oatmeal and pistachios for breakfast when your phone rings.
You don’t want to answer because you are deep in thought. One of the pistachios seems to be telling you a story.
Pis Tachio has been trying to pry that shell off for weeks, and he’s finally created an opening almost big enough for his escape. It has been a brutal struggle, the opening growing by only micrometers every day until a ray of sunshine penetrates the interior of the shell.
And then a miracle. Some outside force pries open the shell and sets Pis Tachio free. Hallelujah! Pis Tachio is bathed in light and rising toward the heavens.
Free at last. Free at last, thank God ...
And then Pis Tachio is crushed between your molars.
You glance at your phone, and it’s your doctor’s office.
“Oh Lord, what now?” you mutter.
A nurse tells you your doctor wants to schedule some tests and asks if June 6 will work for you.
“Fine, June 6, then,” you confirm.
Five minutes later, the same nurse calls you back.
The doctor doesn’t want to wait that long for the results. The test is moved up.
So, you immediately reach the conclusion that you’ll be dead in two weeks.
Which doesn’t leave you much time to finish your new book to be entitled “Petulant President, Belligerent Billionaire: The Strange and Terrible Saga of Narcissism in our Nation’s Capitol,” a shoo-in for the Pulitzer.
At least you won’t have to pay for your car insurance again.
You are briefly sad when you realize you won’t have time to learn to speak Polish like you planned. You thought you had plenty of time to record “Corka Gornika” (Coal Miner’s Daughter) using your GarageBand app.
Alas, the piper must be paid.
The tests are scheduled for the day after tomorrow, and when the day arrives, you rise at dawn. Traffic is light at that hour, and you arrive on time, filled with uncertainty.
You wait your turn in a room for those about to be poked, pinched, and punctured.
The fun begins in earnest when a radioactive amber fluid is injected into a vein in your hand.
Then, sticky circular things that had been stored in a freezer are placed on your chest.
“Eeeech!” you scream. Wires are attached to the circular things, and you’re taken to a room filled with machines and shadows.
The nurse bids you lie down on the table, and your gallows humor shows itself.
“Hey, babe, do you come here often?” you say.
The nurse giggles as you are positioned beneath a steel contraption.
The great metal beast then comes to life and rises over your chest.
At length, the beast begins to lower itself toward your helpless torso, clicking periodically as it comes closer and closer like a mechanical monster from the Power Rangers.
You can’t see much from inside the machine, and you wonder if the nurse has forgotten about you. Perhaps she’s having a coffee and wondering if she should cancel Netflix. You can only pray the machine has a fail-safe device that will shut it down before you are squashed.
Having narrowly avoided a horrible death, you are led to a room with a treadmill. More wires are attached, and more amber fluid is injected. You get on the treadmill, and it reminds you of climbing the hill from the LON office to Publix. But you are not accustomed to making that climb a dozen times at a trot.
Then you are returned to the room filled with shadows for more photos.
You ask if 8x10s and wallet-size prints of whatever they took pictures of can be purchased, but you get no answer.
The ordeal ends, and you sit in a room with elderly people who are all staring at their feet.
“What has five toes and is not your foot?” the nurse says.
“What?” you ask.
“My foot,” she replies.
The elderly people laugh. You’re not elderly, yet, are you? Most certainly not. Next year, maybe, but not now.
You still have time. Plenty of time.
Selah.