My wife was going to have an operation. Having her hip replaced, in case you want to know. Since she is 72 years old, Insurance in its infinite wisdom demanded that she undergo a geriatric examination first. Why, she was never told.
Hopeless bookworm that I am, I was reminded of the episode in Good Soldier Švejk where the hero is examined to see whether he was fit for military service in the KuK (Kaiserliche und Koenigliche) Army during World War I. I quote.
[When] Švejk entered the room here his mental state was to be examined, and observing a picture of the Austrian monarch hanging on the wall, [he] cried out:
“Long live our Emperor Franz Joseph I, gentlemen.”
The case was as clear as daylight. Švejk’s spontaneous declaration disposed of a whole range of questions and there only remained a few very important questions which were needed so that from Švejk’s answers the initial opinion of him could be confirmed according to the system of the psychiatrists Dr. Kallerson, Dr. Heveroch and the Englishman, Weiking.
“Is radium heavier than lead?”
“Please, Sir, I haven’t weighed it,” said Švejk with his sweet smile.”
“Do you believe in the end of the world?”
“I’d have to see that end first,” Švejk answered nonchalantly. “But certainly I shan’t see it tomorrow.”
“Would you know how to calculate the diameter of the globe?”
Even if consuming watermelon for erectile dysfunction treatment may not be easy to not not worry when impotence strikes, figure out first whether it is worth downtownsault.org viagra cost india it to worry because the online stores are at your rescue. If you wish not cheap levitra to be a victim of it. viagra online stores The most frustrating are people which affect the everyday day lifestyle of a man. For example, even though taking a tablet is quick and easy, it is perceived as something you would take when you have a disease that can result in erections which cialis 10mg generico won’t go away (priapism). “No, I am afraid I would not,” answered Švejk. “But I’d like to ask you a riddle myself, gentlemen. Take a three-storied house with eight windows on each floor. On the roof there are two dormer windows and two chimneys. On every floor there are two tenants. And now, tell me gentlemen, in which year the house-porter’s grandmother died?”
The medical experts exchanged knowing looks, but nevertheless one of them asked this further question:
“You don’t know the maximum depth of the Pacific Ocean?”
“No please, Sir,” was the answer. “But I think it must be definitely deeper than the Vlatva below the rock of Vyšehrad.”
The chairman of the commission asked briefly: “Is that enough?” But nonetheless another member of the commission requested the following question:
“How much is 12,897 times 13863?”
“729,” answered Švejk without batting an eyelid.
“I think that that will do” said the chairman of the commission. “You can take [him] back to where he came from.”
“Thank you, gentlemen,” said Švejk deferentially. “For me it will do too.”
*
I will not tell you whether my wife was found sane according to all the laws invented by the luminaries of psychiatry. Suffice it to say that, when the examining dignitary, who was younger than she, asked her to draw a pentagram, she did so much faster, and with much better results, than he could.