"Take off your clothes and lie down on the examining table. The doctor will be with you in a moment."

I disrobe slowly, knowing that the word 'moment' is but a figure of speech. I hang up my things on the hook on the door, being careful that the underclothes are underneath. The table is covered with a tiny square of paper. I climb up, lie down and cover my bareness with another sheet of an even smaller size. I've brought something to read while I wait. It's an interesting book but I'm not used to lying on my back on a hard, high, narrow shelf-like table, stark naked, enjoying a novel by Carol Shields.

I know I'm entirely vulnerable. In my state of nudity there is no way I can defend myself from danger. For example, I couldn't just take off should someone come at me with a needle. Also, I don't look good in the altogether. Even Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden had problems never having a thing to wear, thus always having to walk about completely in the buff.

Time passes. By and by I begin to shiver and, what's more, I'm scared. Maybe there's actually something wrong with me. Before I can panic, the doctor saunters in. He's fully dressed which makes me even more exposed. He sits down and I think he wants to visit a bit like other folk. Instead, he asks embarrassing questions which I figure are really none of his business. But the worst is yet to come.

He lifts the flimsy paper and gets an eyeful of the real me. When he is satisfied that he had seen all there is to see on the outside, he gets curious about the interior. He taps my back and listens to my innards with his stethoscope. All of a sudden he says, "Hmm", and then "Aha!"

I wonder to myself, "What has he found? How much longer have I got?"

He's staring at my stomach. I look too. I notice it's fairly large, round, soft and white as it should be for a woman of my older persuasion. So why is he fascinated with this part of my anatomy? Then I recall the doctor is Mennonite, so it probably reminds him of his mother's Zwiebacksdough when it begins to rise. He remembers how he watched her knead it on a Saturday morning. Reminiscing on his early childhood, he does the same to my unprotected middle: Punch! Punch!

I'm not as enthusiastic as he is. I moan a bit to myself.

"Does it hurt here, or here?" he asks as he pokes his fingers into the various parts of my belly.

"It hurts all over," I groan.

"And for how long have you had this pain?" He sounded almost sympathetic.

"I got it just now when you began punching my flesh."

He covered me up quite quickly and said, "There's nothing wrong with you. Come for another checkup in a year."

I can hardly wait.