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June 11, 2002 cold cuts and hot grief I have several risk factors for coronary heart disease:  male over 45; parent with heart disease;  high cholesterol;  penis like a kielbasa.  Okay, the last one is not a risk factor for coronary heart disease.  And it's untrue.  But I do have those other factors so I went for my annual stress test today. They weighed me first and I was somewhat disappointed to learn I had lost only five pounds while on the Divorce Diet.  This is a special diet consisting almost exclusively of cold cuts and hot grief.  After updating my medical history, the nurse instructed me to take my shirt off.  I fancied she lingered a bit, slowly shaving both of my chest hairs off.  She then connected electrodes to ports on my torso and the test began. "Damn... I'm... really... whipped," I told the nurse in the breathless manner of a man who had just run a marathon.  I was standing on the treadmill, wires sprouting from my bare trunk. "Well, sir," the nurse stammered, "I've only just now attached your halter monitor.  I haven't turned the treadmill on yet." Eventually, I was hooked up and the treadmill moved.  There I was--The Bionic Man played by Wally Cox playing Lee Majors.  The next day, when my heart resumed its "pre-test" rate, the clinic's entire cardiology unit--doctors, nurses, the night janitor, all of them--gathered around the paper scroll of my heart's story.  I was told I have the heart of a 19-year-old.  A 19 year old Australopithecine.

©  2002 by the beastmaster