The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. and Death. (2 page)

by Dave Barry

What kind
of person a person is Gene Weingarten?

That is not an easy question to answer.

No, wait, I just realized that it's actually a very easy question to answer. Gene Weingarten is a
weird
kind of person.

For example, there was the incident with the tropical fish. This happened back when Gene was my boss at
The Miami Herald'
s Sunday magazine,
Tropic.
We were working on a project called the Tropic Hunt, which was a reader-participation stunt we had dreamed up, in which thousands of our readers would be driving all over south Florida trying to solve a giant, complex puzzle so they could win Valuable Prizes.

To solve one very small part of the hunt, the readers had to count the number of advertisements in
Tropic
for (why not?) fish cemeteries. We created two ads for competing fish cemeteries, one of which boasted that it offered cremation services. To illustrate this feature—bear in mind that this was a very small, inconsequential part of the overall project—Gene spent a day obtaining a rental tuxedo and a tropical fish, and then getting himself professionally photographed as a fish-cemetery funeral director. He was holding a small tropical fish in one hand and—with
a look of sadness and solemn dignity—setting fire to it with a Bic lighter.

Granted, it was a
dead
fish.

But still.

It was during the planning stages for this same hunt that Gene called me up one night and we had this conversation:

Gene: I ordered fifty thousand candy canes.

Me: Fifty thousand? Candy canes?

(I should note here that, up to this point in the hunt planning, there had never been any discussion of candy canes.)

Gene: Yes! But they're
not regular candy canes!

Me: They're not?

Gene: No! They LOOK like regular candy canes, but
they taste orange!

Me: They taste orange?

Gene: Yes! They have an orange taste!

Me: Huh!

Gene: So, we can use them to make a
really, really clever puzzle!

Me: Huh!

Gene: Yes!

(Here there was a thoughtful pause.)

Me: So, how exactly would this puzzle work?

Gene: I have no idea!

And he didn't, either. But for the next several weeks, he did have fifty thousand red-and-white (but
orange-flavored)
candy canes in his living room, along with several dozen traffic barricades (don't ask). He did, ultimately, find a use for the candy canes.

But still.

Did I mention the time that the group of high-level executives from corporate headquarters came to get a briefing from Gene on his operation? No? OK, here's what happened; A squadron of serious suit-wearing corporate visitors were going around
The
Miami Herald,
getting overviews from the various department heads on the various department operations. When they got to the
Tropic
offices, there was Gene, standing at the conference table, looking the way he usually looks when he is dressed for work, which is the way other men look when they are going to a Halloween party as Harpo Marx.

So Gene, who of course had never read the memo informing him that he was supposed to be giving an overview, started telling the suits about the story he happened to be working on at the moment. This was a cover story
Tropic
was running about a man who tracked hurricanes. To illustrate this story, Gene had a photographer shoot the man hanging from a tree limb, like this:

The gimmick was that the magazine would print the photograph
sideways,
so it would look as though the man's body was being held horizontal by a tremendous wind, like this:

Gene was going to explain this idea to the suits, but it occurred to him that it would be easier just to show them the photograph. So he called over to the art director, Philip Brooker: “Philip, show them the picture of the guy getting blown.”

Now, OK, this was an embarrassing mistake, but totally understandable. The suits were pretty cool about it; some of them even chuckled politely. Then they were ready for Gene to continue with his overview.

The problem was, Gene had decided that “Show them the picture of the guy getting blown” was the funniest single line ever delivered in the history of human comedy. He collapsed, facedown, on the conference table, quaking with laughter. The entire room waited patiently for him to finish; finally he pulled himself together and rose back up to face the suits, only to be once again overcome by the life-threatening humor of the situation. And so, back down onto the table he went.

Again, the room waited; again, Gene came back up; again, he went back down, quivering and weeping. The table was now sporting an expanding puddle of drool. Gene went down and came up several more times, like one of those drinking-bird toys. Finally, he came up, and the suits were … gone. That was their entire management briefing on the operation of
Tropic
magazine.

Why am I telling you these stories? Because when you read this book, at some point—a fairly early point, I am betting—you're going to say, “What kind of lunatic wrote this?”

The answer, as I hope I've shown, is: A
genuine
lunatic. An
honest
lunatic. Ask the many people who know and love Gene Weingarten if they think he is sane, and they will say, laughingly: “No!” And then, after reflecting for a moment, they will say, seriously: “No.”

That's why Gene is the perfect person to write this book. He is not some Johnny-come-lately who is just now adopting hypochondria as a way to sell books. Gene is the most sincere, most dedicated, hardest-working hypochondriac it has ever been my privilege to know. When he tells you all the really awful things that can happen to your body—
that could be happening to your body right now!—
he's not just spewing empty words. He's
spewing words about problems that he has spent countless hours convincing himself that he, personally, is suffering from. In the more than fifteen years that I've known him, he, personally, has had more fatal diseases than the entire Indian subcontinent.

I have, on several occasions, turned to Gene for medical advice, and he has never failed to come up with the most depressing possible diagnosis. For example, two years ago I suffered a head injury while playing Lazer Tag with my son. For the next few days, all I wanted to do was sleep. This was starting to make me nervous, so finally I called Gene, who, unlike the so-called “medical profession.” is instantly accessible and always willing to take on a new case, no matter how complex, over the phone. I described my symptoms to him, and he said: “I'll get back to you.”

He spent several hours doing research—Gene has an extensive medical library—then called me back to let me know that I should get a CAT scan, because I was probably going to die. I'm sure that he suspected this from the first, but he is far too responsible to venture an opinion without knowing the whole story.

As it happened, I did not die. In fact, after talking to Gene, I felt better; I always do. In a way, it's good to know the worst thing that can happen. That's why this book is useful, maybe even therapeutic. Reading it is like going on the Space Mountain ride at Disney World: You experience terror, yes, but when it's over, you're thrilled to still be alive.

Not that you necessarily
will
be.

Are You a Hypochondriac?

We must begin
by abandoning antiquated, stigmatizing notions about the hypochondriac, a person who imagines himself afflicted by disease. Like alcoholism, hypochondria is not the hypochondriac's “fault,” or a moral weakness, but a disease.

Hmm.

To hypochondriacs, I offer reassurance: We are no longer living in an era when every little symptom signaled the onset of some dreadful condition with a goofy name, like “consumption” or “whooping cough” or “St. Vitus's dance,” disorders that meant you would spend the remainder of your tragically truncated life drooling out your viscera into slop buckets. Today illnesses have really hip names like “astroblastoma,” and you drool out your viscera into state-of-the-art, hypoallergenic, FDA-approved polypropylene “viscera receptacles.”

Just kidding, hypochondriacs! Good Lord, get a grip. Lookout the window. Do you see tumbrels in the streets? Nowadays, nearly everything is curable. Magazines are filled with ads for cancer support groups and “empowerment seminars,” with pictures of survivors who are reassuring you that one can go on to
have a normal, disease-free life. Typically, these people are wearing wigs that fit like yarmulkes.

Do you suffer from hypochondria? We are all susceptible to it—it is part of our survival instinct, imprinted in our brains from infancy. We are in our crib and our diaper is wet, so we howl and thrash and whimper, and pretty soon someone comes to help us. It is our mom. She coos to us sympathetically and slathers our behind with products that make us smell like the sitting room of a nineteenth-century San Francisco bordello. An important behavioral arc has been established: Complaint brings attention; attention brings relief.

(The more loving and attentive your mom is, the more likely you are to become a hypochondriac. This is simple anthropology. Remember Binti the gorilla, the ape whose maternal instincts were so strong she rescued an injured child? It is a little-known fact that Binti's children are sniveling pantywaists. While the other young zoo gorillas are engaged in ordinary gorilla activities such as pleasuring themselves in front of kindergarten classes and consuming one another's lice, Binti's kids are off in a corner, fretfully examining their armpits for lumps.)

As he leaves infancy, of course, the developing hypochondriac must refine the nature of his tantrums. Adults cannot continue to demand attention by fussing and mewling and smearing their excreta everywhere, unless they are professional athletes. And so the hypochondriac learns the art of suffering in silence—courageous silence, deafening silence, valiant, stolid, stoic, selfless, resolute, gloomy, lip-trembling silence, until you have to strangle him to death with the drawstring of his bathrobe.