“Ouch, Mommy, it hurts.”
“Where?”
“Here.”
“Oh, honey. come here; I’ll kiss it and make it better.”
I did and she did and it did. But not any more.
Now if you tell a doctor you have pain somewhere, he doesn’t do anything to make it better. He administers a vocabulary test.
“What kind of pain is it? Is it a throbbing pain? A stabbing pain? A dull pain? Does it sting? burn? twinge? Is it pounding, insulting, or politically incorrect?
“Have you folded, stapled or spindled anything lately?”
Then he tests my knowledge of math.
“On a scale of 1 to 10, what number would you rate the pain you feel? What is the square root of that number? If you divide it by three how does that affect the pain?”
He moves next to Physical Education.
“How does it feel when you bend over and touch your toes?
How is the pain when you twist from left to right? Do you remember the twist? Do you watch Dancing With the Stars?”
Finally he tests my mental status:
“Do hear ringing in your ears, buzzing, chiming, criticism of your housework?
Is there any sign of eye strain, tearing, running mascara?”
By the time I leave the doctor’s office the pain is gone. If the pain hasn’t exactly gone it is wandering around somewhere in a state of total confusion.
MorristownMemos 
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