More than enough material for lots of 'A Story A Week' episodes, indeed! But rather than clog up the main index list with them, let's have another one here, in the comments:

Considering ...

Around a week or so before going to the hospital, but after making all the arrangements, I was getting my hair cut at the place run by one of the ladies in the neighbourhood. Her husband has built a little 'salon' for her attached to their house, and she opens a few days a week to do hairdressing. She's a tad expensive, but the convenience - just three doors down - can't be denied, and I have been getting my hair cut there ever since she opened up a few years ago.

It perhaps goes without saying that she is chatty. This comes with the job, I suppose, and it would feel strange to sit there in silence while she did the work. So of course, no sooner had we got settled and she began clipping away, she started to ask about how things were going.

Now she knows that my business has been changing a lot recently, and in fact she herself provided a couple of introductions to people who subsequently began working for me, so it was easy to bring her up to date on that news. Our conversation wandered around a bit from there, and - given that it was uppermost in my thoughts - I at one point began to mention the upcoming hospital appointment.

But I checked myself. It occurred to me that telling this lady about something - about anything - was tantamount to standing up on my roof and broadcasting it to the entire neighbourhood. Beauty salons and barber shops have always been a place where news goes around and comes around; there are no secrets here!

So although the reason for my hospitalization is nothing worrying, I thought it best to remain discreet, and said nothing about it to her, thinking that in the subsequent rounds of gossip, the reason for the surgery would probably be overlooked, leaving nothing behind but, "Did you hear? Dave had to be hospitalized ..."

As it turned out; this was probably a mistake.

We skip ahead a week, to the actual event itself. I'm standing in line waiting to complete the check-in procedures and a young girl comes up to me. "Dave! What are you doing here ..." It's one of my former English students, who used to come to the classes I held at home more than twenty years ago. She's here with her baby, having something looked at. We chat for a minute, and I explain my situation, and she moves on.

Ten minutes later, I'm waiting in a reception room, and a guy pushing a cart full of stuff pauses, "Dave! What are you doing here ..." It's Tamura-san, who lives across the creek from me. We chat for a minute, and he moves on ... And so it goes again and again over the time that I am in there. And these are only the people who actually spoke to me; there must have been many others who recognized me, but didn't open a conversation.

So clearly, it would have been better right at the beginning to tell the hairdresser - in as much detail as possible! - exactly why I was in the hospital this time. A pre-emptive strike! As it is, probably half the town now 'suspects the worst ...'

Well, there's nothing I can do about it at this point, And in truth, I'm not too concerned what people are thinking about me. And after all, from here on, when they see me zooming around town on my bicycle, surely they'll be thinking, "Wow, he's doing so well, considering ..."

Dave, funniest thing I have read in a while, glad you are okay....I may be going in for a similar operation..have a pain that is making me walk funny and kept me off the basketball court for the past few months...more in the upper/inside of the leg area...not sure yet but its been bothering me all spring/summer !