Bad Medicine

My friend Javier never does what he’s told.

A doctor once warned him about a heart murmur and said that he should slow down a bit. Javier started taking two steps at a time on the way up to his fifth floor apartment on Walton Avenue.

The doctor also told him to cut down on the five-cheese omelets and cheeseburgers from the Crown Diner. And he told him to layoff chocolate donuts and coffee and cigars, too.

“Why don’t you just kill me now?” Javier snapped.

The doctor said that Javier would die for sure if he didn’t have a certain operation. He also said that Javier would need to avoid excitement during his recovery.

“What do you get excited about?” the doctor asked.

“My Yankees,” Javier said.

“Then you won’t be able to watch baseball for awhile,” the doctor said.

“What a quack,” Javier said as he was leaving.

That was more than five years ago.

“I’d probably be dead if I had that operation,” Javier was saying just the other day. “Now I eat what I want and do what I want and yell for the Yankees as loud as I want. But I do have less aggravation because I don’t have to deal with that doctor.”