So it was that a doctor in an unnamed hospital at an unnamed state was rounding one quiet spring afternoon. This doctor, who I will affectionately call the Doctor, being nearly human as he was, felt the need to evacuate the contents of his bowel prior to beginning his rounds. Some would say the products of this effort were marbles or rubies, some would say ice cream, others some lesser organic product; nonetheless, suffice it to say that the event occurred in a staff restroom deep in the innards of this institution.
To attend to the demands of said evacuation, the Doctor had to remove his white coat, and his stethoscope from around his neck. He hung them upon a small hook on the door of his cubicle. Then he began his ritual.
Unfortunately, as the procedure was coming to an end and before the paperwork could be commenced, the stethoscope slipped off the hook and fell to the floor. The Doctor, unable to budge from his busy labor, looked with disgust as his trusty stethoscope lay on a thin film of bilge that glazed the tiled floor. He thought about the patients he must use it on. And yes, he had to put the earpieces in his own auricles! This would not do. His device would need a thorough washing.
The Doctor finished his business and gingerly picked up his scope. He took it over to the sink, and began to scrub it vigorously with copious amounts of soap and water. As he did so, he conjured vague images of Indian women cleansing their dusty saris in the sacred currents of the Ganges. In this way, he thought, I am like everyone else.
When he finished, he discovered a problem. The tubing in his stethoscope had, during prolonged immersion, filled up with water. He could see the water through the opaque diaphragm of the device. He had to get it out.
First he thought of blotting the diaphragm with a soft cloth, but it would take all day for the water to seep out. Then, his higher intelligence kicked in. He recalled his physics lectures way back in college, when he was in pre-med. The force exerted upon the end of a stethoscope as it accelerates in a circle is directly proportional to the square of the velocity times the radius, n’est-ce pas? So, the Doctor thought, if I swing this sucker around a little bit, I can apply meaningful force to the column of water in the scope tubing and force it out.
Proud of his fine recall of the niceties of Newtonian physics, the Doctor grasped the stethoscope near the ear piece and began slinging it around. Small sprays of water began to radiate around the room. Not fast enough, the Doctor mused, and he raised his arm above his head, rotating the soggy device like a cowboy trying to lasso a stallion. Now the water came sailing out, splattering the walls in every direction. As he spun it faster and faster, he could hear the stethoscope whistle. “Hot dog!” he said out loud. “A lesser mind would never have come up with such an ingenious solution.”
Then, suddenly, the Doctor felt a tug in his wrist, and the whistling sound stopped. The metal head of the stethoscope, in enduring the vast Newtonian forces the Doctor counted on to dry his device, separated from the tubing and flew away.
The Doctor had remembered Professor Newton’s second law. He had, however, forgotten the implications of Sir Isaac’s first law: When an object that is held in orbit by a force is suddenly released from that force, that object travels in a straight line as defined by a tangent ray to the orbit that originates at the point where the force is terminated. Call it King David’s Law of Stone Slinging.
At any rate, the stethoscope head separated from the tubing and made a straight line for the restroom mirror. Upon impact, that estimable centripetal force was transferred to the mirror in the form of kinetic energy, and the mirror shattered.
The Doctor looked around. He cracked the door of the restroom and saw that no one was approaching. It was a slow afternoon in that unnamed hospital, and apparently no one had heard the frightful noise. He went back over to his cubicle and took his elegant white coat off the hook and slipped it on. Then he tiptoed through the mirror shards and plucked his stethoscope head from the glass in the basin of the sink. Gently he ran a little water over it to get the fine pieces of glass off. He blotted the head with a paper towel, and connected it back to the tubing. Good as new.
Perhaps I should call a janitor, he thought, but then again, I am a busy man and my patients are waiting. Anyway, I cannot compromise my good standing here with a story that might not be interpreted in my favor.
So he quietly closed the restroom door and went about his work.
Sometime the next day the mess was discovered, and a maintenance man summoned to replace the mirror. The good Doctor was miles away in his clinic, safely caring for his patients, King of his own Domain.
Note: The Author wishes all his readers a blessed Easter, and prays that they too will find a place of refuge from all of their acts of Rank Stupidity.