Awards are like …. (Sooner or later every A**hole gets one)

Waiting in the emergency room for around two hours before seeing a doctor
is a pain in the butt. Apart from the pain in the butt I originally came with.
The nurse offers me a seat:
“Have a seat”
“I cannot. It hurts. It also hurts to stand up as well. Can you please inquire
where the resident is?”
“Which resident?”
“The one who was just here. Wearing a white coat above the blue operation
room outfit.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t come here often, we’re not on first name basis yet.”
“Is it Alexandre?”
“I don’t know. I think he was calling someone to see me. But that was forty-
five minutes ago.”
“Hang on. I will check.”
I cannot sit, I cannot stand up, and it hurts. Please, please, let it not be a
sneeze. No, please, not a sneeze.
“Atchoooooooom”
A sneeze. My butt hurts so bad. I cannot sit, stand up, sneeze and naturally I
cannot laugh either. The good news is that there is nothing laughable in this
risible situation. I keep looking at the emergency door to see if any doctor I
have not spotted before is coming in. It may be the one handling my situa-
tion.
“Please take off your pants.”
It is a good thing I am wearing my new Gap underwear. One for $9,99, four
for $19,99 purchased from a factory outlet somewhere in Maryland. The doc-
tor got to see my red striped one.
“How old are you?”
“31”
“Do you have any substantial medical history?”
“No.”
“Can you please bend the knees in a fetal position?”
“This way?”
“Acute hemorrhoids. They are very painful.”
“I know. I am the one having them.”
“We can poke them, but I’d rather not.

It will be bloody and messy for several days. We can use other remedies
which work on 80 to 90% of the situations. But you must lie down for 2-3
days.”
“Impossible, doctor. Just tomorrow I have a make-up session for my students
at university. They lost a lot of time with the war and all. And doctor, these
remedies… Are they hard to administer? I mean, I live alone. So I have to do
it by myself.”
“Yes, you can administer them on your own. You will need a crushed ice bath
every couple of hours because cold prevents them from swelling. Let me fill
you the prescription. Are you a doctor?”
“No.”
“I mean “doctor” as in a Ph.D holder because you teach at university?”
“No… Nothing like that.”
“I don’t want to deprive you from any title…”
“Don’t worry, I have had more titles than I can count in my life. Just put
mister. Oh wait, mister in Arabic is “sayyed”, which means I am a descend-
ant from the prophet Mohammed. I am not. I don’t want to bug anyone with
such a connotation!”
“Yes, it is a sensitive territory… OK. Here it is. My private number is written
on the backside of the prescription. If things go worse, God forbids, do call
me. And I am expecting you next Monday to have a follow-up.”
Now, I have only one pain in the butt, the one I came with in the emergency
room. The one they gave me there was taken away by the chubby doctor with
the Hilfiger watch.
“Hemorrhoids? How lovely. At least now you know what it is to have a “pain
in the butt” friend like you.”
“I hope you are joking. You know I can get ticklish about such things.”
“Well, why don’t you tell Tony Blair to come and anoint for you. Not that
he’s doing anything important in Beirut today. It would be an ideal job for
him, he knows a lot about butts considering he speaks with one and he is on
intimate basis with George W. Bush’s.”
“You’re hopeless. I am hurting and I cannot laugh.”