Hermaphrodite Healthcare

As we often do, last night I received a call from dear old nana calling on behalf of her cherished loin-fruit, who in turn is calling on behalf of the darling cherubim of a grandson. I forget the name, but as these calls are often near-identical, I would place good money that he is either a Cain/Kane, Kaden/Zaden, a Tyler or a Taylor. I also once had a Christofa. No lie. Of course, the reason for the gran intermediary is, as is always the case, that mum is cruelly sundered from our welcoming arms by a pay as you go mobile, our local call-rate and the amount left of this month's giro. So it goes.

So, nana tells me in the vaguest of terms of the child's general illness: his fever, a bit of a headache, all in the last day or so (sadly, in our society of instantaneous wish-fulfillment and bloated sense of entitlement, we refuse to admit that anything so hideous as a high temperature might afflict our children for so much as a night without the doctor racing out to cure it for us as Britain's Got Talent drones in the background), that he's 'not right well', and 'like an oven'. Since her daughter and grandchild are, however, on yonder side of Bradford I decide just to ring her myself and get the hopefully more accurate down-low. So I take mum's phone number, her name, and, as per protocol, tell her to alert mum to the call before I get in touch with her.

I try the mobile number and... it's a dud. I try again - no dice. Thus I call dear old Nana back to clarify the number, but, of course, it's engaged. I try again five minutes later... still engaged. Obviously someone must've mentioned this week's Coronation Street in passing. So, as an adjunct to merely sitting there cupping my balls in contemplation, I search our previous records for any record pertaining to the child (of whom I have only a name, a vague location and an age but no specific DOB) and find a record that might, might just be the one. So I opens it up, and it's the wrong one. I can tell straight away - wrong side of the city, wrong age. But, something catches my eye in the previous call reason. And here I stand and tentatively clear my throat in anticipation as I read it:

'swollen penis, painful pussy 2 days'.

Now, I will admit that my colleagues' spelling is about on par with an adolescent gibbon at the best of times. But the surety of it, the lack of any kind of punctuation between 'painful' and 'pussy', well... it just makes me proud that we're here for those moments when even hermaphrodites lose their good judgement and don't use a condom with themselves.

This was possibly the most needlessly complex penis gag I've ever told.