LeRoy,

With my recent hospital incursions, I decided to describe my current health pattern.

From Webster, “Invasion….an act or instance of entering as an enemy.”

I have personally been involved in many invasions. Most people think of invasions in light of Alexander the Great, Napoleon, the beaches of Normandy and so forth. But as it turns out, invasions are waaaay more complex than running roughshod through somebody else’s country.

For example, poor, sad faced Lawrence Talbot played by Lon Cheney Jr. in “Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman” gets invaded by some mysterious full moon phenomenon and turns into a beast that wants to rip out your throat. Get bitten by the Dracula and something invades your psyche to make you want to bite necks of good looking babes.

The point is, I want to establish the fact that invasions come in different flavors. Of course there are alien intrusions: disembodied spirits, extraterrestrial demons, breaking and entering, amoebas, various growths, germs and Biblical plagues. My invasions, the ones I wish to disclose herein, are of the human variety, much of them involving implements probably having origins during the Inquisition by Torquemada himself. I’m talking about invasions, inexplicably voluntary on my part, involving large amounts of money actually freely given to the perpetrators, commonly referred to as doctors and dentists, henceforth delineated as Assault Vehicle Operators with Invasive Devices, or “AVOIDs”, for brevity.

Don’t get me wrong. I am grateful to most AVOIDs. They are, in effect, invaders that destroy previous invaders, much like the Allies of World War II. You can’t avoid AVOIDers if you are sick and want to be invasion free.

Let me explain. There are six main apertures leading to the insides of the human body, three having to do with sensation (eyes, ears and nose), one primarily dealing with fuel intake and communication (mouth) and two involving elimination of one sort or another. Within the last year, all of these entry and exit points on my body have been thoroughly AVOIDed. To spare the delicate sensibilities of the reader, I shall be careful how I describe my personal invasions, try to depersonalize the alien strategies and objectives as best I can.

Let’s start with hearing devices called “ears.” It is a common occurrence among human beings to somehow acquire large deposits of wax deep within these sound detectors. If not attended to by an Aural AVOID, one’s hearing can be impaired or lead to some diabolical infection. The devices used to extract the candle-like material are known as “forceps,” an apparatus also used in the birth process and obtaining useful information from spies. I now have been thoroughly de-waxed, my hearing, such that it is at my age, fully restored to its pristine, though admittedly attenuated, condition.

Colds and other common infestations require an AVOID to invade the oral cavity with sticks used for forcing the tongue to remain motionless and small sticks with cotton to swab whole areas with vile concoctions. A Tooth AVOID is required to assault the incisor area with picks, shovels, needles and drills, much like a person repairing a road. Fangs are occasionally ripped from their normal resting places and replaced with man-made equivalents, much like the street repair person who I might now refer to as a Street AVOID. The only major difference between these two is simply the size of the weapons utilized.

Now comes the hard part. The sight mechanisms called “eyes” can sometimes deteriorate with age. Mine have something called Age Related Macular Degeneration. If the little veins behind the retina start to leak, the eye goes into a state referred to as “wet.” This is not good. An Eyeball AVOID is immediately needed. He or she can inject a radioactive material into my body, then whack my eye with a laser to dry up the little vessels. At first, I hoped to be like Spiderman but, alas, no super powers come with this particular invasion.

Finally there are the two elimination orifices. The one involving solids, requires occasional examination with a submarine-like periscope looking up the posterior access, for bad things. This procedure, administered by a Col-AVOID, is not pleasant, but at my age one should not avoid this AVOID for more than two years.

That’s invasive enough, but my other mechanism, specializing in waste depletion and preservation of the human species, is a marvel of design if nothing goes wrong. If, however, there is a malfunction of a serious nature, a Urol-AVOID is needed to inspect the causation of concern. I am here to testify that the Creator did not design this particular masculine device to be invaded by anything, much less a telescopic crank of some sort.

So there you have it. The complete textbook articulation of all possible human body opening invasions has been presented for your amazement and edification. Women seem to know everything about their insides, but men generally don’t know squat. I now know plenty of squat, more squat than I ever wanted to know. It still amazes me that we voluntarily, no, plead with AVOIDs and bribe them with vast sums of our money time and time again to vanquish our interior Darth In-Vader Dark Side.

So, LeRoy….may the AVOID Force be with you.