When I was fourteen I worked at a Sunoco Station. I wore a company shirt with my name on it, a bow tie, and a friendly smile-I lasted a month. I was fired because of incompetence, I fumbled wrenches, had trouble finding the oil gage, couldn't fill tires with air right, would take too long to service a car, I was a disaster, I deserved to be fired. But last week my primary care doctor fired me as a patient, I didn't think I deserved it. We have been a team for nine years, he has been with me through  the continuing crisis that is the aging process. I have had a series of nagging problems, some very real, others that he essentially told me were about age, he would counsel me " don't worry, go home and enjoy the time you have left."  He once told me that if I really wanted to know how healthy I am, he would arrange a autopsy. He is a Jew from Brooklyn, I think he missed his calling, he should be doing stand up at the Comedy Store. I really like him, we have shared some very personal moments, and I'm not talking about the rectal exam, but emotion, conversations about life, mutual struggles. But he doesn't like to be questioned, or second guessed. I challenged him on a couple of points, he responded with, " Let's just end it here, one of us has to be the Doctor." He has me pegged as a worrier, a chronic complainer and as a person who wants more tests than are needed. I told him I wanted a diagnosis, he would typically say when I showed him a problem, " Its nothing, don't worry about it."  I was just interested in what he was thinking, let me in on his thinking process. I wanted to know, " So why isn't it a tumor, how do you know it is nothing?"  He was famous for telling me, " Eventually something is going to kill you, you can't escape it."  That is an odd thing to say to a clergyman, I deal in these matters, that is what I think about. I think he believes I am more like Woody Allen, obsessed with death, in a state of panic about my health. It pains me to think that this is what he thinks of me tonight when he goes to bed. That I am a religious man who doesn't act much like he has faith or is free of anxiety. I think he misread me, but when I go to bed tonight, I must ask the question, what kind of person am I, what are others seeing in me?  Maybe I won't sleep too well.