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The proverb about doctors' and shoemakers' wives do not apply to the spouses of life insurance agents. This, no doubt, is due to premium credit. Anyway, I've been through the interview process more than once, and the past couple of weeks had to do it again.

If you never have experienced this (have you not? Call DOB today!), in addition to figuring out all the financial questions and how much money your grieving family will need to still put dinner on the table (a lot to replace me), they also must figure out if you are strong and healthy, since if you're about to keel over they'll have to charge you more.

The medical part is called a paramed, and is done by a nice lady or gentleman who comes to your house at a time when it's convenient to you to have not eaten for twelve hours, and they take your blood and weigh you and squeeze your arm and all that stuff. That does not bother me. I have been through two pregnancies, and I can be bled with the best of them.

It's the questionnaire that throws me. No, I haven't smoked or chewed tobacco in the past ten years and I don't plan to take up sky-diving. But at a time like that, little details like dates and names of doctors flee from my mind. I see a chiropractor every week. It's just for maintenance. I'm not going to die from anything. But I can never remember his full name. He's Doctor Matt! Matt! (Chiropractors are the social butterflies of medical professionals and always go by their first names and greet you like their long-lost cousins.)

And then there's trying to explain the details of medical personnel in a way that fits into the nice little boxes. My primary care physician would be Dr. X, but I haven't actually seen her in three years because I only go for babies and she stopped doing obstetrics and just does family practice now, so I went to her partner Dr. Y but I don't go there now because we moved but Dr. X moved her practice too so if I did need to go to a doctor for anything BUT babies, she's the one I'd go to even though I've never actually been to see her at her new office and does that answer your question? And no, I don't know the address. And I don't know WHAT tests were done the last time I saw a doctor, I had a newborn baby and a toddler with me, I could hardly remember my own name!

Once this agony is over with the nice lady, sometimes for quality control you have to call someone at Home Office so they can check all your answers, presumably to cross-check them. I tremble. I am sure my answers do not match at all, although I still haven't taken any illegal drugs or broken any laws on purpose. And although as soon as the first lady left I could remember the chiropractor's name, once again it escapes me as soon as someone picks up the phone. For me a phone is a instantaneous brain wiping device. Anything I might have known or remembered is gone at the word, "Hello."

So I muddle through the interview, confusing the poor soul on the other end even worse than I am confused. Of course I should write things down. If I did, I would lose the paper the instant I answered the phone. I gave up ordering things over the phone because the instant someone connected, my credit card would vanish until I hung up again. This is disconcerting.

At last the interviewer was satisfied, or exhausted, thanked me and hung up. I went downstairs to change the laundry. Unbidden, it floated into my head: Hakes! It's Doctor Hakes!

I'm glad the lady on the phone can't measure my blood pressure now.