Saturday, August 16, 2008

How a Corvette smashed my nail

My patient arrived at his physical with a blackened fingernail. When I asked him how he damaged his finger, he replied "I passed a Corvette on the highway, and that's bad luck." I replied that mostly Corvettes are going too fast to pass, bad luck or not, but what did that have to do with his nail. Here's the scoop.

For reasons unknown, he'd always believed that overtaking these sports cars was an invitation to disaster. Recently, however, he decided to defy his magical thinking and left a 'vette in the dust. Within 15 seconds of completing the deed, he got a flat tire. While changing the tire, 1) his girlfriend's nose got smashed by the car trunk as it swung open, and 2) he smashed his finger with the tire iron.

Never a dull moment at these physicals!

2 comments:

Ruth said...

This superstition will live on and on with this reinforcement. They do fill the need to understand "why?".
He would have had a flat tire, Corvette or not, but whose fault would it have been?

Mauigirl said...

Nope, you won't be able to talk him out of that superstition any time soon!