then I urged her to take good notes in gross anatomy...

as we ascertained in my last post, i'm fortunate to have an assortment of friends, all of whom bring wonderfully different things to my life. it's their quirkiness i admire almost as much as i love the fact that when i need to laugh, one of them is good for a go.

one of my best friends recently had me in giggles (and in the spirit of confession, i'm not a big giggler) as, in an instant, she transported me back to the girl i must have been in fifth grade.

see, this friend of mine (and again, because i have an apparent love affair for parentheses, let me add that when i say "friend" it's not really code for "me." prefacing that will become obvious in a moment) is embarking on the admirable path of becoming a nurse. married. camped out at the tender age of 30. mother of three all under the age of five. lots on her plate now, but she wants to do more. "do it!" i cheered, living vicariously through her as she pursues a passion and i'm still trying to figure mine out.

unfortunately, she's in a bit of a quandry now as she begins a three-month rotation working in a nursing home. we were on the phone during some afternoon power hour call when she confessed her apparent shame - in all seriousness - and provoked my giggles.

"um...so...well...," she stumbled along. "i'm not really so sure what i'm going to do when i have to do a work-up on a male patient."

"what do you mean? don't you just take their vitals, ask how they are, present some type of an assessment?" i asked, sounding as medically astute as a person who watches 'grey's anatomy' can.

"yeah. ok. but what if i have to see his wiener?" she blurted.

seriously? seriously. (props to the 'grey's anatomy' thing again....oh, and i suppose to parentheses, too).

giggling like i no doubt did in fifth grade the first (and I'm guessing, the last) time i heard a penis referred to as such, i asked, "is that what all the hot doctors are calling it now? when you review a chart, will you note 'patient's wiener exhibits lifelike tendencies?"

"maybe!" she nearly squealed at me. "my lab partner tells me that it can...you know...if you have to put a catheter in."

desperate for her - this girl who is going into a medical field and can't even say the word 'penis' - to tell me exactly what she meant by 'you know,' i naturally encouraged her embarrassment. we're friends, afterall.

would now be the best time to toss in the fact that my friend is also married to a pastor? personally, i think it adds to her charm in this case.

she went on in her angst to tell me that she's never seen any other than her husband's.

"seriously?" i asked. "seriously." she said.

"well, except for when i went online to consider the pros and cons of circumcision when the baby (her only son...proud owner of only the second penis my friend has seen) was born."

"when you logged onto google, did you actually type 'wiener' in as the search topic?" i wondered.

"well, of course not, but do you know what all comes up when you type in a word like 'penis'?" she replied.

oh, if she only knew what i know.

"i quite imagine you got a good eyeful," i consoled, the giggly schoolgirl side of me exposing herself once more.

pages and pages of interesting things, she told me as i nodded my head in a knowing way from my end of the telephone line. technically, she doesn't count these among the penises she's seen because of their two dimensional qualities. in retrospect, that makes me giggle a bit, too.

and interestingly enough, despite my giggles, she never did ask what i refer to the appendage as. lucky for me, i suppose, since my passion certainly doesn't lie in nursing, i'll not have to share that with her.

she is the wife of a pastor, afterall.