As I was mixing a drink after mowing the lawn this morning, I was reminded of my Ex. How you may ask – well, it’s like this. When I was a kid my Dad spent a lot of time in the hospital. and I remember, as I sat there, listening to the pages “Dr. XX, 211 – Dr. XX, 211). Every time you wanted to reach a doctor, they were paged to 211.

Now back to the story. As I was mixing my drink (orange, pineapple coconut colada) I was repeating the the count to myself – 2 colada, 1 orange, 1 pineapple – 211. And this made me think of the Ex, as I used to call her “Dr Mary* 211” (*not her real name). And the reason for this was because, once the kids came along, she went out and bought a medical book – nothing would get by her – and was always quick to the diagnosis and cure for anything the family got based on her findings.

Of course, not having a medical degree (or any training for that matter) made most of her diagnosis sketchy at best. And once the Internet came into play, it became downright funny. Had she actually practiced medicine, it would have had to have been for the VA, because they were the ONLY folks that could cover the malpractice (I won’t get into the VA here, except to say “shame on you”). Much like today’s patients would cower with fear if a witch doctor was sent to cure them, so did my kids whenever she would diagnose an illness and a cure.

Now, you can call me cruel, but I took great enjoyment in poking holes in her diagnoses. It would usually start with the kid in question coming to me, scared, to see if what they were told was true, then me going back to her, looking at where she found her diagnosis and asking questions like “Do you realize that this is specific to (enter race, continent or country here) and that the last diagnosis was more than 50 years ago?”. And would end with “If they have it tomorrow we’ll take them to the doctor.”

But sometimes she’d become adamant that her diagnosis was correct. And that’s when I made MY diagnosis – “Arrogance blessed with ignorance is a danger to all.” And I would assure her that I would apologize profusely should I be wrong (I believe I could count on less than one hand the number of times that happened).

Ah yes, 211, some memories never die…