Prove it

"Yeah ok so what are you really?" Her friend drew in closer to me, to hear me capitulate and confess the truth.

"Excuse me?" I laughed.

"You're way too young to be a doctor at MGH, wasn't that just a line? It's ok we like talking to you, you can tell us the truth now!" They stared at me.

I looked around the bar and the two girls in front of me. My imagination roamed. Had there been other guys coming up to them this evening with that apparently timeless chat up line, "Hi the name's Howser, Doogie Howser."

(That is not what I said btw).

It is a question I get asked a lot out here. Doctors in America usually qualify a few years older than we do.

Tonight though, the Harvard Medical School Cards weren't denting their healthy skeptisism. So we moved onto the girl's quiz!

Oh it was a tough one.

Question 1 - Where is the Clavicle? Question 2 - Where is the hypothalamus? Question 3 - (after more drinks were consumed) Where is the nose? I kid you not.

Fortunately I passed the impromptu exam, my reward I had proved myself to be an MD and now I could buy them drinks, hooray!

Another funny one - one of my best friends here Sami doesn't drink for religious reasons. Fine. So he goes to the supermarket and stocks up on NON-alcoholic beer. At the counter the clerk goes, "Erm you got I.D?" Pointing at the beer.

Sami looks down at the beer with the huge label "Non-alcoholic beer" and then back up to the Clerk, "No look" he says "this beer does not have alcohol."

The clerk nods. "Yeah I know but there's a slight chance that there might be just over 0.1 % alcohol in it, so you still need to be over 21."

Sami smiles, "You are joking right?"

"No sir, if a young child were to drink like a hundred of these, he or she may hypothetically get drunk."

Yeah - you get the picture. But it gets worse!

Sami didn't have I.D. But he did have ID saying he was a qualified doctor. Was that good enough for the clerk? No way!

Doogie Howser after all was a doctor at 16 and so to this American clerk it was hypothetically possible that Sami could be under 21 and a qualified doc right?! Was there any point that explaining Doogie Howser was a fictional character on tv?

Was it hell!

In other news, I took my Mum to see "Finding Neverland" based on my neighbour Meryl's review and she cried all the way back to her hotel! Thanks Meryl!!!!