Yesterday I had more fun naked than I’ve had in years. I took a shower. Talk about good, clean fun!

To many of us, pretending to be the recipient of an automatic car wash might not seem to be epitome of carnal satisfaction. But I had just been released from an 8 day stay at one of the cleanest places on Earth, a hospital. And boy did I feel grungy.

I am not at all unfamiliar with America’s health care system. For almost 40 years it provided me my pocket change as I toiled on the provider side and for almost 4 years it provided me a place to hang out and spend said hard-earn pockrt change on the patient side. I am very aware, and very appreciated of the advances it has made. Technically, that is. Humanly, maybe not so much. Consider the following.

With modern imaging they can see tiny slivers of our insides down to the 32nd of an inch in detail almost better than lifelike. They can see with sound. My surgeon worked to delicately open my abdominal cavity, clean and repair the offending parts, and then put me back together using a camera through a couple of holes not much bigger than one made by a flu shot needle. Yet when all of that was done I was left to recover in a room with a TV the quality almost as good as a 1960 portable set with rabbit ears wrapped in aluminum foil. (Ask your granfather. He’ll explain.)

I was attached with the necessary wiring so my pulse, heart beat, breathing, and temperature could be monitored from a station 80 feet away. But the aforementioned television was controlled by a remote that contained only Power, Volume Up/Down, and Channel Up/Down buttons. This in a housing that also held the Nurse Call button and, for some reason, a button to set the room lights to three different brightness levels. All that looked much too alike.

And of course, unlike even the smallest movement towards improvement the silly remote has provided to the patient since I started my career those years ago, the one thing that hasn’t changed at all is the hospital gown. The famous see-through garment with non-sleeves that nobody can get their arms into, a neck fastener reminiscent of a backward bow tie, and all in an indecent package that only makes it 80% of the way around your body. And of course the remaining 20% is not on the side.

Yet given all this, on my return I was not overcome with the urge to finger my high tech remote, triggering the high def TV and the surround sound, grateful for work done to keep me going for another 4 to 40 years. It was to strip off those clothes that completely covered me and bask in joy of hundreds of gallon of hot water pouring over me, drenching every pore, soaking every personal nook and cranny. Thank all that is holy that one imorovement we’ve never had to endure is the restorative power of water.

It was enough to make me want a cigarette.

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?