A bad hair day

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"You should knock before entering a room," I reminded him, "besides, that's a rude thing to say to anyone, not least of all your father." "But it's true," he said critically, "I don't know anyone else with patchy chest hair. What have you been up to?"

I explained that I'd been to hospital for a health check, part of which had included an ECG test for which the doctor had shaved bits of the chest. "Shaved," said my son, "why didn't you have it waxed?" "I wasn't offered a choice," I said dryly, "besides, what's the big deal?"

"Don't you know," queried my son, "that it's trendy not to have chest hair any more, so you can wear transparent shirts, though a stubble on the chin is recommended." "It's the stubble on my chest I'm worried about," I said scratching furiously, "it itches so."

My son wanted to know what the test had included so I gave him a brief rundown of how I'd spent the morning being treated like a guinea pig, changing in and out of clothes as I was put through X-rays (blue striped gown) and stress tests (indigo gown).

Blood was drawn into vials, a consultant wanted to know if I'd had psychological, psychotic or any other mental stress diseases, and the ophthalmologist had a tough time of it checking my eyeball pressure because I kept blinking. "I thought it was blood pressure they were supposed to measure," muttered my son. "It is," I agreed, "and they did it so many times, I lost count."

"Is that because the blood pressure machine wasn't working," asked my son, "or do they take an average of different readings because they aren't sure which one is right?" "That's quite likely," I demurred, "but in this case it was because they were monitoring different levels of stress while I was on the treadmill."

"You mean they made you workout on a treadmill with a shaved chest?" gasped my son. "That's real cool." "Actually," I said, "it wasn't all that nice because they kept increasing the pace, and said for an old guy I wasn't doing so bad."

"But you aren't old," said my son. "That's what I told them," I said, "so they tut-tutted among themselves and said for a middle-aged guy I wasn't doing so well, and should I feel dizzy, I should shout them a warning in advance."

"Well, I'm glad you showed them," said my son, "so what did you do next?" "I asked them to increase the speed of the treadmill some more, and gasped and wheezed, till they evicted me forcibly saying I would black out. "Did you?" asked my son interestedly. "Of course not," I boasted, "though I could see black spots floating, but that was probably on account of the medicine the doctor had put in my eyes."

"So nothing interesting really happened," reported my son, losing interest. "Not unless you count waiting on an empty stomach for your mother to return," I replied, "because she'd got bored escorting me between departments and decided to go shopping instead."

"Didn't anyone offer you a cup of tea after your tests were done?" my son asked. "No," I said ruefully, "but there was a tea/coffee vend, though it seemed the tea-bags and coffee sachets had run out."

"All in all," my son summed up, "you've had a boring day. So now, for some excitement, let's decide whether to shave the rest of your chest, give you a wax job, or better still, take you out swimming looking just the way you are."