Sphincter News You Can Use

   Life can be a real adventure for us post-post-post adolescents.  Having passed our prime, we speed along the highway of "reduced potential" at a break-neck speed.  "Look!  There's a sign post ahead.  You have just crossed over into the (anatomical) Twilight Zone".  What I'm referring to is the reality that, at this stage of our development, some of our more fundamental body parts tend to fall down on the job, (and by "fall down", I'm not referring to the consequences of the Earth's gravitational pull on our dangly outer parts). 

   No, I'm talking about our mysterious internal gears, valves, levers and pumps -- especially the ones that are truly essential, but which routinely become less efficient following an ill-advised all-nighter at Taco Bell.

   Not too long ago, I was sipping a Bailey's, (shaken, not stirred), and watching the CBS comedy "The Big Bang Theory", (TBBT, if you will).  Suddenly my ears alerted to something very interesting, and I learned an important anatomy lesson which, during any normal week, I surely would have missed.  This is because we bowl in the Thursday Night Fellowship League, but this was Thanksgiving night, so we took the week off.  (Note:  Bowling is yet another post-adolescent activity involving gravitational forces impacting non-dangly objects).

   Well, the televised football game was rather boring so I channel-surfed for a while -- way up past ESPN and back down again to channel 10.  Not to brag, but we have digital cable at our house, and we get scads of channels -- dozens even -- which means we can watch, "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "The New Adventures of Old Christine" ten or more times every day.

   Back to the anatomy lesson.  The geeky guy on TBBT, (in the interest of clarity, I should specify "the incredibly obnoxious geeky guy" on the show), stated something that caused me to feel much better about the precarious state of my innards.  He said that the human body has fifty sphincters.  That's FIFTY -- five-oh, half a hundred!  (Side Note:  To completely avoid any confusion, I probably should have referred to the TBBT character as the tallest and thinnest of the incredibly obnoxious geeky guys on "... Bang ...").

   Before I heard that most welcome news, I believed that my body was batting one-for-three in terms of fully-operational sphincters -- clearly an unfavorable state of affairs.  In actuality, however; I am relieved to know that I'm forty-eight for fifty -- operating at ninety-six percent of capacity.  Heck, they don't function that efficiently at Three-Mile Island (and never have).  Furthermore, 96% is a borderline  A+  at college -- except at the Harvard School of Business, of course, where raw scores and percentages don't matter.  At the Ding Dong School on the Charles, Sissy, Buffy and Reggie can get an "A Plus Plus" just for attending class.

   So, sphincter-wise, I'm now able to clench with the best of 'em.  And, except for male-pattern-baldness, the trick knee, the lame arm, the paunch, the lazy ear, (and that nuisance rash we don't ever mention), I'm feeling great about the state of my health.  And I owe it all to The Pilgrims, Les Moonves and Jim Parsons -- the tallest, thinnest, (and most talented), of the obnoxious geeky guys on "...Big Bang...".  Thanks, JP.
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There, you have it -- a thirteen hundred word sermon on the subject of "Sphincterdom", and, despite having tiptoed ever so near the line of impropriety, I didn't cross it.  Lots of hints and pseudo-visuals but nothing too graphic.  Aunt Penelope could peruse this narrative before, during or after dinner at the cotillion, and it wouldn't be a problem.

(Note:  Yes, I counted them also.  It's only six hundred and twenty-four -- not 1300).

(Yet one more clarification:  Like your's, my gut instinct says to spell it "innerds" (not innards) because inner is a word meaning "not outer".  But once again, my squiggly red spell-check line rules the day.  I dare not go against Bill Gates and his cohorts).