The Itch

Over the weekend, we went to the first birthday party of our friends' little boy. The event had quite the age range from newly emerged to someone who was born before the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austria- Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo by a member of the Black Hand! That particular woman lives in a nearby assisted-living center. She was pretty spry, considering she was older than the Panama Canal, but kept refusing offers of beer because of her medications. Which got her on the topic of how she used to just LOVE Jack Daniels, but a few years ago she had some and afterward, lost her balance and fell over, remarking that she had to stop then, as she was falling-down drunk!

As the group's conversation moved on to the fact that our friends' seventh anniversary was coming up, we started talking about the Seven Year Itch. The old lady heard that and said, "Oh, I had that once, in fact my whole family had to get treated for it!" We all shared questioning glances, realizing that she wasn't talking about marital discontent. She continued, "We had a visitor, who was using my room, and after he'd left, I got my room back, and I caught the itch from sleeping in the bed that the man had been sleeping in." Sorry, but that sounds more like an STD than a state of mind. Whatever it was, she told us that the cure was to apply a salve, put on some old clothes, and sit on a stump for a couple of days. Yes... a STUMP?!? What kind of doctor's orders include sitting on a stump? (Unless you're being treated for hemorrhoids and your doctor is particularly sadistic.)