This is a photo of me and my younger sister. No, not really. But if it were, I'd be the pediatrician, like our father, and she'd be the patient my dad would have to leave dinner to visit at the hospital to check out her baby. Cough! he'd say. Every night at dinner the phone would ring. We had two lines. If it were the family line we would ignore it. If it were the speical ring, then it meant it was service calling to tell him he had to call a patient. He would call the patient and while we were eating out chicken we would hear, "Did she throw up?". Silence. "Was there any puss in the rash?" Silence. "Was there any blood in the stool?" And my mother would have to shush my sister and I from laughing before my dad's stern eyes would silence us.

submitted by Barry Joseph
New York, New York USA
June 1996