Doctor, doctor…

Simon Rich’s ‘guy walks into a bar’ joke is really well done. Because I have little originality and even less shame, I’ve stolen adapted his approach to make my own.

 

A man goes to see his doctor. After sitting in the waiting room for a while, thumbing through old magazines without really noticing what’s on the pages, he gets shown in to see her. He sits down by her desk and says: “Doctor, doctor, I think I’m a pair of curtains!”

Quick as a flash, she shoots back: “Draw yourself!”

The man blinks. “I’m sorry?”

“Draw yourself!” she repeats, smiling hopefully.

The man frowns. “Sorry, I don’t get it.”

The doctor sighs, and a little of the life drops out of her face. “I know, I know, it doesn’t work. But nobody says ‘pull the curtains together’. We say ‘draw the curtains’. So the traditional joke has never really made sense, if you think about it.”

“Oh yeah, I guess you’re right,” the man says. “I never really had thought about it.”

“No,” she says, “I think most people don’t.”

An awkward silence falls.

The man strokes his chin, more because he’s seen people do it on TV than to genuinely aid his thinking, and then says: “What if you were an art therapist?”

The doctor’s eyes widen. “An art therapist… ‘draw’… yes, that’s brilliant! It fits perfectly. Right, I’ll go and retrain immediately. So, can you make an appointment to come back in, say, a year?”

“Um, OK.” The man pushes himself to his feet and takes a couple of steps towards the door, as the doctor starts to look at her wall and wonder where her new diploma might go. Then he stops and turns back.

“But doctor, the thing is… I’m still suffering from this serious curtain delusion,” he says. “I mean, it doesn’t in itself cause me that much distress, but it’s kind of limiting – I’ve become very hard to be around and it’s putting a lot of strain on my marriage.”

“Oh yes, I see your point.” The doctor gestures him back into his seat while she mulls it over. “Well, in the short term I suppose I could refer you to a hypnotherapist.”

“A hypnotherapist?” the man asks. “Would that really cure me?”

“No, but maybe we can make your wife think she’s a window.”