So There's This Parrot with a Doctor on its Butt...

Every twenty four months I am required by the FAA to have a physical performed on my person by an FAA certified medical examiner. This assures that my eyes see, my ears hear, that my heart won’t explode between point A and point B, and that my prostate is not enlarged.

I’m not sure what the prostate has to do with it, but my doctor likes to check mine. I am working on a convenient, inexpensive KY jelly heating device that every doctor will be required to have once I become king.

My doctor only does flight medicals anymore. He’s pissed at the FAA, pissed at the AMA, and pissed with a lot of the world generally. He makes enough ($70 per exam, cash or check only) that he does this two weeks a month, and takes two weeks off in which he flies and sails and probably spends a lot of time alone.

His office is now located over Barnecutt’s Texaco station here in West Seattle. He doesn’t have a secretary or a nurse. Just him. Halfway through whatever part of your body he may be looking at he’ll answer the phone to book another appointment. He has two phones in his office, each with different ringers, both turned up very high. The effect is blood pressure elevating, anus-clenching, pupil dilating.

On this trip, the doctor spent most of the time with a parrot on his shoulder. He has had this parrot 22 years, but I didn’t know that. He’s only been bringing the parrot in for the last year or so he says.

He spent an inordinate amount of time making parrot noises. Not the parrot – the doctor. “Couldn’t teach this fucker to make human words. Set up a tape recorder for two days with HELLO repeating over and over. Came home one day and the machine was in pieces. She’d torn it apart. From then on I started learning parrot language. I understood.” He demonstrated some of the parrot noises he could do, and I said he was pretty good at it. He turned to the bird on his shoulder and kissed it. "See? Uncle Craig gives me good grades on my parrot talk."

He kissed the parrot a LOT. And kept talking to the parrot, referring to me as Uncle Craig. When he mumbled something about a prostate, I only knew to answer because I understood the parrot to be a female…so he must be talking to me.

My medical was renewed. My eyes are still 20/20. That’s the good news. The rest I’ll save for myself. Or I’ll go whisper it to the Red Dog.