Using the Right Word
Using the Right Word
By Elton Camp
The doctor knew Robert was ill-at-ease.
“Young man, ask me anything you please.”
Robert gulped and looked at the floor.
He actually did want something more.
“It’s a small surgery I want you to do.
I’m a strange age for it, it is very true.”
Then his decision to the doc he related.
“I’ve decided that I should be castrated.”
“Boy, do you realize what that will mean?
To be done at your age I have never seen.”
Robert shut his eyes and his face turned red.
Gathering his nerve, this is what he then said:
“It should have been done when I was small.
Way back then, it wouldn’t have hurt at all.
But I have decided to have it done now.
So to my wishes I demand that you bow.”
The doctor sighed and rolled his eyes.
The decision, he felt, was most unwise.
Since Robert would not be defeated,
Next week, the surgery was completed.
Robert was lying in his hospital room.
Man in the other bed had a wail of doom.
“What wrong that that guy there, nurse?
About all he ever does is moan and curse.”
“His pain seems so awful in his eyes.
Because the doctor had to circumcise.”
Robert’s eyes lit up and with a drawl:
“That’s the very word I couldn’t recall.”
"The difference between the right word and the nearly right word is the difference between
lightning and lightning bug." — Mark Twain
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