Minnesota nice

 Garrison Keillor visits the Mayo Clinic.

I’m fine, thank you, and how goes it with you? I spent most of last week at the Mayo Clinic back home in Minnesota, one of the friendliest places I know of, where I peed in a cup, turned my head to the side and coughed, had my eyes dilated and looked at the ophthalmologist’s right ear as she shone brilliant lights into my eyes, stripped to my shorts to be examined by a dermatologist, took a deep breath and held it while a doctor listened to my heart, was X-rayed, had electric shocks transmitted to various leg and arm muscles, and had my arm pierced and several vials of blood drawn by a man from Baghdad who came to this country at age 22 with no English whatsoever and I admired his perfect diction as he told me his story. I am not a hypochondriac so I know very little about medicine; what I love about Mayo is the humanity of it, the cheerfulness of the men and women in blue who call you from the waiting room to the warren of examining rooms. Their gentleness with the halt and the lame. The good humor. I sit in the examining chair and the ophthalmic nurse says, “I want you to follow my finger with your eyes,” and I say, That’s not your finger, it’s your thumb.” And she laughs. \

I am a lucky man. Mayo has kept me alive....

. You sit in an examining room and the doctor always knocks before entering. Your eyes meet. A handshake. Before your file opens on the computer and the test results are studied, here is your chance to recite your troubles to the sympathetic ear of silence. Each one is worthy. God loves each one. Life is good and that’s why we want more of it.