How to have fun during hospital stays. . . .

Evidently because of some highly publicized incidents of medical screw ups, it is now vital to check who you are before giving medications, or drawing blood, or letting you have a test or procedure. As a consequence, you are asked upwards of fifty times a day to tell them your name and birthday.

Everyone's bored out of their skulls doing this. You are. They are.

Day three, someone asked who I was, and I said Susan Sarandon. Made her outright laugh. As for myself, that first time it was totally unplanned. Then I started working on it.

One two a.m. blood draw, the young man asked me whose birthday was on September 18, 1940. I said Catharine the Great. Also, Mary Queen of Scots. And Lauren Bacall. He said, "Well then, it must be a good day to have been born," And we both laughed, and I disclosed my *real* name. And protocol was kept.

In five days, I passed not only as Catharine the Great, Mary Queen of Scots, and Lauren Bacall, but as Monika Lewinsky, Goldie Hawn, Sophia Lauren, Barbara Bush, Jack the Ripper (after a *really* long, painful afternoon), and Hillary Clinton. There were others, but I forget.

Also, there's the "alert and oriented" drill. . . . Do you know what day it is? Who is president? If you say it's 1999, and Clinton is President, you pass. And two people grin. . . .