I’M AS GOOD AS DANNY KAYE

This is a fake profile. The complete fake-profiles series is here.

Danny Kaye watched surgery for a hobby.  He hung around doctors and operating rooms.

My parents admired Danny Kaye; he could dance, sing, and do impersonations, plus the medical stuff.

My parents wanted me to be Danny Kaye — the medical part.

Instead, I majored in history and became a journalist.  I wrote a 4,000-word article on open-heart surgery. I also did a story on polio.  I watched some surgery.

I tried surgery.  My patient –- call her Karen — took two years to recover, and I suffered financial and legal complications.  I never expected to make money from operating on her but I didn’t think I would go broke, which I did.  A lawyer called me a “kidnapper,” as if I had purposefully kept Karen captive for eight hours. (The surgery was only seven hours, schmuck!)

Post-op, I told Karen, “The good news is you’re alive and your aortas — two of them – are 90-percent clear.  I used pipe cleaner.  The bad news is the other aortas are controversial.  Any sudden outburst by you now, and you might die.”

Karen screamed but didn’t die.  She sued me.

Danny Kaye hosted Herman’s Hermits on his TV show in 1965, to encourage  youngsters to watch. Danny’s older viewers preferred Imogene Coca, Nanette Fabrey and Jim Nabors.

Kaye experimented.  He took chances.  So did I.

I have mixed feelings about Kaye, to this day.  My parents liked him more than me. I performed my operation on Karen so I wouldn’t have to endure more snide remarks from my parents, like “Son, you write for a suburban weekly. That’s not a living.”

Walk in my shoes. The cold rejection of my parents.  I took a knife to a young woman’s heart.

I’m good at surgery.  I’m not Cleveland Clinic quality but I’m good.

I’m as good as Danny Kaye.

—

Carlo Wolff wrote an in-depth, real profile of Ralph Solonitz, this blog’s illustrator. Click here to read it. (Cleveland Jewish News, 10/25/13.)  By the way, the drawing above is a pen atop a gurney.
—
Yiddishe Cup is at KlezmerPalooza at The Temple, Beachwood, Ohio, 7:30 p.m. Sat., Nov. 16. $20, or $15 if you buy by Nov. 9. Call 216-831-3233. Free dessert, beer and wine.

share