An Old Gag Survives for Another Telling

 

by Pa Rock

Corn Pone Comedian

A lady I know who ives in Los Angeles visited the Missouri Ozarks several years ago, and to this day her  most discussed memories of that brave adventure center on ticks and chiggers, very tiny insects that march brazenly across one's skin in search of good places to drill holes and suck blood.   Chiggers, especially, also cause an irritating itch that brings about a desire to scratch with something substantial, such ass a good wire brush!  Ticks and chiggers are commonplace in the Ozarks, and everyone suffers from them - regardless of social status

Even with the inconvenience of a broken arm, I somehow managed to drive myself to a small city in northern Arkansas for a doctor's appointment yesterday morning.   It was early and I was tired and very uncomfortable by the time I pulled into the doctor's parking lot more than fifty miles from my home.   

The particular doctor that I visited yesterday, a dermatologist, is a bit glib and unfiltered.    He had me remove my shirt and was busy examining my scalp, neck, and back - and freezing a few unwanted growths along the way - when he suddenly stopped his grand tour of my upper half and loudly proclaimed:   " And here it is, our first tick of the season!"

The doctor runs a very large clinic, so I proudly accepted his proclamation as an honor of sorts,   Of all of the hillbillies in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas who actually use the services of doctors, this particular hillbilly - me - who has been  basically been trapped close to home (or in the Kansas City area) with a broken arm for over a month, had somehow managed to score the first tick of the season!  The prestige was almost overwhelming!

(I would be laughing harder if it weren't for the fact that several years ago I had been hospitalized with a form of tick fever!)

But that was then and this was now, and here I sat in a large clinic as a medical provider pulled a tick off of the unreachable area between my shoulder blades.  (For you urban types, know that ticks always choose unreachable areas to do their business - it's in their nature!)

When the doctor had successfully removed the tick, he brought it around to my frontside for my viewing pleasure.  "Ah, yes," I said, "That is indeed a good one."  He then told his assistant, diplomatically, not to mention the tick in his treatment notes.  Then the doctor dropped the tiny bloodsucker into a rubber glove, tied it tightly, and deposited it into the exam room's waste can.  When his assistant looked at him quizzically, the physician told his that helper that he had dropped one straight into the can a few years prior and and then caught it a day or so later making it's way across the exam room floor.

As the tick tied in the glove landed in the trashcan, the doctor looked up and announced:  "If he gets out of that we'll name him Houdini!"

I didn't have the heart to tell the funny doctor that his gag was older than he was.  The first time I heard it was while I was in college in the 1960's.   The focus then was on a used condom being tightly tied and thrown out of the back window of a car at a drive-in theatre . . . but the punchline was the same!