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.