irrelevant joke

 Saw my GP yesterday. I hadn’t seen him for some time, he being unusually busy, and I, after spending some time in our (excellent) local hospital, having been referred to a number of specialists.
Our brief conversation went something like:
“So how are you doing?”
“Just fine, but I suspect I’m being propped up by the handful of pills I take every morning. I’ve become a good example of ‘Better living through chemistry’!
He could tell I had just made a small joke; I could tell it probably didn’t register.
Time is short when you’re talking to your GP. We went on to the business at hand.

Today while walking in the Beaver Lodge Lands as I do most days, I thought back to that conversation.
That little joke, a favourite of Simpson J, my colleague at the Island Centre for Child Development and a whole generation of other serious hippies, is probably out of reach for my own kids, now in their 40’s, never mind a person who had grown up in South Africa!
Not to even mention that the passage of time has rendered it entirely irrelevant.

I’m glad I didn’t try to explain it.

Radioactive

Here’s an anecdote that’s almost certainly apocryphal. But it’s not entirely impossible either, and was passed on by a reliable source. 

Anyway, I like it:

On Monday I presented myself to the Comox Valley hospital, Medical Imaging Nuclear Medicine, to be injected with a small dose of pyrophosphate, a radioactive substance. I was advised not to travel out of the country for two weeks.

Why? you may well ask, as I did.

By way of answer we arrive at the driver of a 16-wheel truck, who was crossing into the USA with a load that was urgently required.

He’d been given the same advice, but he needed to deliver his load. so he thought he’d give crossing a shot.

Everything was like normal. Until the last set of wheels.

Which showed up as a large black area on the border scan.

He was instantly pulled over, and swarmed by people in hazmat suits.

The explanation? 

There was no radioactivity found in those tires and wheels. But he had needed to relieve himself earlier in the day, so he had briefly pulled over, gotten out of the cab and urinated on the truck’s rear wheel.

That’s some sensitive equipment! of which the people who do the PR at the Pacific Northwest National Lab are, I would say, justifiably proud.

(And no, PNNL is not my source.)