Though it happened over 70 years ago, I still remember it vividly.

My mother had taken my brother and me to the Pontiac theater to see Disney’s latest release — “Alice in Wonderland.” I knew the story well, having had it read to me since I was hatched. Still, I was completely unprepared for the movie. To sum it up in one sentence: It scared the crap out of me.

The flick started out fine, but once Alice went down the rabbit hole, I found myself in a world gone mad. The Cheshire Cat said it directly, but even if he hadn’t, I still would’ve figured it out all by my lonesome.

I understood nothing, and was threatened by everything. Of course, the worst was the Red Queen and her “off with everyone’s heads.” That evil babe meant business!

I was especially vulnerable because I was a quarter way through first grade. No longer was I in the kind and loving care of Mrs. Eldrett’s Broadway School Kindergarten. Uh-uh, I was now in The Big Time, under Miss Starr’s last at the Petrova School. Everything in the school was as incomprehensibly weird to me as Wonderland had been to Alice. But I had it even worse since there wasn’t only one Red Queen, but a whole damned building full of them.

I’ve had that feeling of psychic displacement a bunch of times since. As the only country kid working in a mob of Bronxites for the New York City Department of Parks; boot camp; travelling around India on my own; and others. The older I’ve gotten, the better I cope with strange settings — with one exception: The American health care system, which I’ve fondly dubbed The Medical Gulag.

I dislike being in doctors’ offices, and I positively loathe being in hospitals. Part of it is why I’m usually there, which is to find out the results of some tests or another. The other part is My Brother The Doctor’s First Rule of Medicine, which is: Anything can go wrong with anyone at any time. So even if the tests are routine, I know all too well the results might not be.

–

Getting a leg up … and down

–

My latest foray into the Gulag kicked off, literally, in December, when one day I suddenly realized I was limping. It happened without warning. One day I was diddy-boppin’ my bad self up and down the streets of My Home Town, smooth as satin … and the next day I was hobbling like Granpappy Amos. Even weirder, I had no pain, just a limp.

I waited a week to see if it’d go away. It didn’t. Then, not only did the limp get more pronounced, but it started to hurt too. The pain was eerily similar to my other leg’s, when it gave up the ghost and I had to have a hip replacement. So I did the smart thing and made an appointment with Young Doctor Bartos.

I had a several weeks’ wait and in the interim, the pain stayed and was joined by tingling and numbness — a multi-sensory experience … and a rather unsettling one at that.

Both the time and I limped on, then I had my appointment with YDB. She sent me for X-rays and referred me to my favorite sawbones, Young Doctor Bullock. He studied my X-rays, ran me through some tests and said, Nope, it wasn’t my hip — it was probably my back.

So back to YDB, who then sent me for more X-rays and referred me to The Pasha of Pain Management, Young Doctor Dixon.

–

The last word

–

At that point, I knew what wasn’t wrong with me, but had no idea what WAS, and decided to call MBTD. I told him all the latest and he said what I really needed was an MRI. Then he said he’d mull over my situation and get back to me. A few days later, his mulling apparently at end, he called.

“Well,” he said, “I figured out why you’re limping.”

Now, here’s the thing: My bro wasn’t about to give me the benefit of his vast experience in The Wonderful World of Medicine. He’d already done that when he said the only way to find out what was wrong was with an MRI. Nope, what he was doing was setting me up to be the butt of a joke. I knew that, so I started trying to figure out how I’d ruin it for him.

It was a classic case of male sibling one-upmanship, where the winner would be the one to get in the last word. Which I vowed would not be me.

I played along with him.

“You know why I’m limping?” I said. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Last night, Diane and I went to a concert.”

Now you need to understand something. While my bro and I have the same last name, that’s about the only thing we’ve got in common. I always attributed it to the randomness of genetics; he always claimed I was a changeling. The point, in this case, is if I went to a concert, you bet it’d be mega-asskick rock-n-roll. For my brother, it’d be the polar opposite, however that’d shake out — a point I was gonna pursue in my repartee.

“You and Diane at a concert?” I said. “I didn’t even know they’d exhumed Lawrence Welk, much less put him on tour.”

Then I followed up on my initial salvo.

“And lemme guess,” I said. “You waited around afterward so you could get your program signed by Lawrence, the Lennon Sisters and Larry Hooper.”

He paused, obviously working on his reply. Finally he spoke.

“Uh, do you wanna tell the rest of this?” he said, “Or should I?”

“Sorry,” I said, not meaning it. “Go on.”

“Well, there were a lot of people our age there,” he said, “and I noticed something about them.”

“That they all looked like hell?” I said.

“That’s a given,” he said. “But that wasn’t how I figured out what your problem is.”

“OK,” I said, “so how did you figure it out?”

At that point, I was actually paying attention.

“Well,” he said. “Almost none of them were walking right.”

“So what’s your diagnosis?” I said.

“You ready for it?” he said.

“Go ahead,” I said, my curiosity piqued, for real.

“Simple,” he said. “You’re old.”

Then, having set me up, he sealed the deal and hung up before I could think of a comeback.

I shook my head and cursed: He not only won the round — he won the whole bout.

So did I feel bad about coming out on the losing end of that exchange?

At first I did. But after I thought about it, I realized all our years of back and forth banter had finally paid off for him.

And truth be told, I even felt a twinge of pride, knowing the old boy had learned from the best.