You Want an EKG with that Burger?

Do you know what's really frightening?

Like, more frightening than Mickey Rourke's immovable Botox'd forehead?

More frightening than getting stuck in an elevator with Sarah Palin?

Aging body parts.

Not the bits of your body you have control over, like your weight or crinkling skin around your eyes or those lovely blotchy freckles on your hands.

No, I mean the internal bits. The stuff that's wearing out that we can't see.
Basically, the pieces-parts that keep us running.

I'm here to tell you that the most utterly frightening thing about wearing out is not that we are actually slowly wearing out.

No, the super-scary thing is arriving at the the point where you find yourself talking to your doctor about the wearing out bits like you're discussing the weather.

"Think it'll ever rain?"
"Dunno. My colon hurts."
"Yeah? I can order a colonoscopy."
"Okay. I hear we might get hail tomorrow."

I imagine all the moms out there reach this point of being completely blasé about bodily functions the day they give birth.

After you've had a virtual stranger stick his arm up your hoo-ha, and then examine the afterbirth (THAT came out of a human body?!) it must be really hard to work up a good embarrassment over a dysfunctional bladder.

But for people who have never pushed a whole person out through their "in" door, it is mighty easy to get embarrassed about bodily functions.

Until one day.

One day, you realize something isn't working properly and you sit yourself down across from the doctor and spit it all out as methodically as a stock ticker.

Afterward, you sit there and think, "Oh, shit. I'm turning into my mother."

Your mother who, forty years ago, had a stranger's arm in her hoo-ha, yanking out your sorry ass.

And then you get over it...or you blog about it. One or the other.