Teeing off the Doctor - a humorous very short golf story from Rob Hopcott's collection of humor stories

"Doctor, Doctor I want a new body on the National Health!"

My Doctor looked at me, as he prepared his golf swing on our local golf course.

"What's this crazy idea you've got?" He's a bit dour and Scottish - but keeps funny hours of work and so is ideal for an itinerant author who keeps no working hours of any consequence.

I waited a bit until he was almost ready to swing his golf club and surgically sky the ball, usually far into the distance beyond mine. As a Doctor, I always maintain he should take a caring attitude and let me win. He doesn't agree and likes to rub it in at the bar that his record against me is still 100%.

"Doctor, Doctor, I want a new body on the National Health. This one's worn out, been to too many parties and, if you don't mind, I thought I'd skip the spare party surgery such as new, kidney, new heart or whatever and go for the whole works. So please may I have a new body as soon as possible or, preferably, sooner."

Doctor Fred doesn't like to be reminded of his work when he's off duty and playing a round of golf, so he lowered his club to the ground, leaned on it and fired a quick Scottish salvo.

"Will yer let me hit this ball or will I go and find someone else in the club who can keep 'is mouth shut?"

His view of my creative ideas is usually disdainful and this one was obviously no different, although I did think it had some merit.

So I was undeterred. Many times before, he'd rejected my ideas. I treat his rejections in the same way as I treat rejections from agents, publishers and magazine editors. They can't help their lack of taste and it is my job to educate them.

He rejected prescribing my humorous short stories on the National Health for depressive patients to cheer them up.

He even rejected putting extracts of my horror stories on the waiting room walls to scare away patients who weren't seriously ill.

On a day when I was hitting optimistic lows, he even rejected using my short stories as table mats in the waiting room of his surgery.

"There's no coffee machine in my surgery," he said, "and I'm not gonna start ta make 'em coffee just to satisfy idiots like you!"

But this latest idea had special merit so I pressed my point, just as he was in mid-swing. At the last microsecond, before he hit the ball, I blurted out.

"The only reason why you won't prescribe me a new body on the National Health is because you are afraid that, with my new body, I would be able to beat you at a round of golf."

He almost fell over trying not to half hit the ball and the look he gave me would have curdled the blood of a thousand virgin student nurses at ten thousand paces (assuming you could find any). So I dropped the subject.

With his record of unbroken wins intact, Doctor Fred shot me a parting comment through the window of his new silver sports coupe in the club car park, before he roared off.

"With reference to your earlier thoughts about changing yer body, we've a few bodies at the local mortuary you could swap with - it might improve yer game. Goodbye!"

I reckoned he should keep to doctoring and leave humor to those with some talent!

The End

Rob Hopcott

(On-line author - fiction - news)

Copyright Rob Hopcott 2007. All characters in this humorous golf short story and other free on-line short stories, flash fictions, micro-fictions, sudden fictions or very short stories on this site are fictitious and no reference is intended to any person living or otherwise.