“It’s hell to get old,” said the elderly man sitting next to me in the doctor’s waiting room, “I mean a man still has everything but a lot of it doesn’t work anymore.”

He sure had that right. I’d rather break a dozen broncos before breakfast than go through my annual physical exam.

“Just hop up there and get comfy,” the nurse instructed, pointing to the black plastic examining table so short my feet hung over, and so narrow that one not dare lay on side as I once did and exposed my naked hind-end to the hallway. Two people recognized me without even seeing my face.

“I’d know that ‘xxx xxxx’ anywhere,” one of them said.

Anyhow, once I was settled on the table, the nurse said, “All right, now let’s take off our clothes.”

Whoop-ti-do! That made my blood pressure rise and everything that still could get up.

But I was hesitant. I mean, let her take off her duds first.

“Sir,” she admonished, “We have to take off our clothes before the doctor comes in,” and handed me an abbreviated white gown with ties in the back. “Sir,” she repeated, “Everything has to come off, so let’s start with our shirt.”

There she went again: “Our shirt,” when both of us knew very well she meant my shirt.

It wasn’t until I started peeling off my clothes that I realized how cold an examining table can be, goose bumps popping up all over my body.

“Now remove our pants,” she said.

“Are you absolutely sure all this is necessary?” I asked, considering making a dash for the door. “I mean we can postpone this if the doctor is busy. Actually I’ve been feeling real good lately.”

“We can’t waste the doctor’s time. Our pants have to come off,” she insisted, turning her back while I began the removing which was no small undertaking, trying to do the job with one hand while trying to cover my groin area with the other.

“Now our underwear,” she said.

M’gawd, I was wearing the drawers that I never got the stains out of because of my inexperience as a bachelor and not yet learned the fine points of laundering.

As I let them fall, I was never so embarrassed in my life, quickly reaching for the postage-size wrap she handed me.

Presently the doctor breezed in and put a cold stethoscope to my chest and I all but jumped out of my skin. Then he hit me on the knees with a cold, chrome hammer; kept asking “Does it hurt here? Does it hurt there?” while poking into some pretty sensitive areas before telling me to get on my hands and knees, raise my rear-end and rest the chin on the cold plastic.

Humiliating! Abashing! Shameful! Embarrassing! Dehumanizing!

I was all but terrified about what he was going to do next. And then he did it: shoved a long, ice-cold metal tube with a headlight on it to light up a place where the sun never shines!

“OK,” he said after excruciating poking and then jerking out the tube, “that’s it.”

Unfortunately, the ordeal was not yet ended because I was in such a hurry to bolt the examining room I failed to put myself back in good order. This fact was called to my attention – as well as everyone else’s in the waiting room – by a little boy tugging on his mother’s skirt and blurting: “Mama, look at that old geezer. He’s got his pants on inside out, carrying his dirty underwear in a coat pocket and ain’t even zipped up.”

(Comments may be directed to the writer at vallefox@accessbee.com)