10 April 2000

I had to lie to get into the Marines. I had (and have) terrible hay

fever and a few other allergies. As a child, I had asthma and lots of

other stuff, fifteen years of shots and medications . . . all in all, a

legitimate IV-F medical exemption from military service.

Lying wasn't hard, since everybody took the same rush-'em-through

entrance physical down at the draft board and if you checked "no" on the

questionnaire, nobody challenged it. Especially if you were carrying

around a 5x8 note card that had "USMC volunteer" scrawled on it in Magic

Marker.

So I lied. A few days later, I talked with a classmate who was also

lying like crazy, to beat the draft. I told him about my own falsehoods.

He looked at me with an expression of total disgust and said, "I'd trade

my nuts for your nose."

I thought about it for a moment, then rejected the transfer. Even

if a suitable procedure could be devised, even if women might find the

new arrangement attractive or learn to derive new forms of gratification

from male sneezing fits, I wasn't sure the Corps would approve.

One liquor-sodden evening fifteen years later, I was talking with

Mac Owens. He mentioned that he'd played football in college, had very

bad knees, and had to get a medical waiver to join the Corps. As the

doctor signed the form, he'd looked at Mac with an expression of total

disgust and said, "You know, there are 10,000 guys on this campus who'd

trade their nuts for your knees."

And there we had it -- a new medical speciality, Nuts, Noses &

Knees. We spent the rest of the evening working out the details, none of

which I remember, and certifying each other as practitioners.

But, to date, the AMA has never objected a bit.