It was a gorgeous Tuesday morning,  which I guess made an ideal day for my dad’s annual checkup. I was with the usual road-dog gang; mom (69), dad (82) and moi’ (age is just a #). We arrived after fifteen minutes and waited in the lunch room, just kidding the WAITING room for my dad’s appointment time. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, just the regular gaggle of senior citizens coughing, sneezing and walkering (my word) in. Nothing makes a middle-age person feel young quite like a doctors waiting room, they had at least forty years on me. My dad was called back soon after arrival, as this doctor never makes you wait too long. I patiently waited in the lunch room, (Gotcha again) WAITING room for my parents.

About twenty minutes later my parents strolled out of the exam room with their usual swagger, I usually have a heads up they’re coming because my dad is hard of hearing and my mom tends to yell rather loudly “Thank you” to every office employee they came in contact whilst being there. I later found out,  all the fun was not with me and the nursing home bunch (just kidding, calm down) it was with my parents and their doctor. While in the examining room, my dad explained to his primary care physician that his knee had been sore lately, naturally his doctor wanted a look-see. So my dad acquiesced, but in doing so noticed something puffy in his pants around the very same knee. At this point my mom began to imagine all sorts of things that it could be and started an internal freak-out.

The vision of sugarplums did NOT dance in her head, more like her bra, panties or worse my dads tighty whities. It was as if my dad had pulled his pant leg up in slow motion, the anticipation almost made her combust. Finally the moment had arrived, my dad looked curious as did his doctor and my mom, well let’s just say- she was hopeful but her stance was one of a baseball catcher, ready to catch whatever came out of daddy’s pants. The prospect seemed bleak but sometimes dark clouds have silver linings as in this case. The hidden object that caused such an internal implosion in my poor mothers head and heart was just a clean handkerchief of my dads that had static cling. How my dad didn’t know it was there is unknown to us, but he never falls short of surprising us.

P.S. Thankfully his knee ended up being perfectly fine per X-ray results!