I popped to my feet in the Veteran's Hospital Outpatient waiting room, delighted that they were ready already for my annual physical. She smiled broadly, clipboard in hand, and directed me out of the room filled with aging veterans onward to the scale.
I set down my briefcase and stepped on the platform, proud of my recent weight loss.
She jotted down a number that was way too much. I was, you should understand, still wearing heavy street shoes with orthotic lifts and carrying a billfold thick with plastic identification cards.
"How tall are you?" I told her. She jotted that down too.
Then she guided me to the warren of examination rooms. We found ours and sat down together, she asked me how I was feeling today and I told her as she peered into her computer monitor.
"Let's me see," she said. "Your birthday is April 4, 1944?"
"You're Stanley Jones, right?"
I retreated to the waiting room after our good laugh, now looking around for the other guy with that distinctive name still associated with a bumbling comedy team.
There he was, a good-looking 69-year-old silver-haired gentleman, whose dear mother had named him Stanley.
We exchanged a brief glance and smile in a golden moment of mutual commiseration.
