Does Thinking It Make It So?

I've always been one of those people who could read a list of symptoms for a medical or mental illness and instantly diagnose myself with it. If WebMD says the symptoms for Crow Toe Tensilitis are knotted pinky toes, calloused undersoles, high arches, scaly skin, and long nose hairs, well by-golly I've got the worst case of Crow Toe Tensilitis anyone has ever seen. I get myself worked up about what to wear in the picture they're going to take of me to put on the examining room posters doctors put up to warn patients of maladies they never even dreamed existed. There will be my crow-toed foot right next to the weeping testicle poster, grossing people out so much that they watch their thumbs twiddle to keep from looking at it.

As it turns out, my irrationality is genetically contagious.My 5th grader is convinced he has diabetes.

He jumped in the car after school one day, wild-eyed and jabbering about how I needed to drive him directly to the doctor's office. When he told me his trouble, naturally, I asked him what on earth gave him the idea that he has diabetes.

A kid at school gave a poster presentation on diabetes. A poster presentation on diabetes by a 5th grader who researched it and put it together two nights prior is as good as going to WebMD. "I have all of the symptoms," my child claimed. "He said sometimes your vision blacks out and you have to go to the bathroom a lot and you get really thirsty and drink a lot of water."

Although it was certainly evident that the presentation transfixed my son, he still hadn't provided proof of diabetes ailing him personally. "And you think all of this happens to you?" I asked, completely able to possess logic in the face of someone else's break with reality.

"Yes, ma'am," he answered. "You know when we go on a trip and Daddy buys me a coke to drink in the car and then I tell y'all I have to go to the bathroom and y'all get mad at me? It's because I think I have diabetes."

He's upstairs right now picking out the clothes he'll wear when they come to take the picture of him to put on the doctors' office diabetes poster. It'll hang right next to the one of me and my classic case of Crow Toe Tensilitis.