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My friend Terri, the hypochondriac, and I were sitting around the table having our preprandial drinks when she asked me yet again why my three kids never, ever get sick. “Doesn’t that just bother you?” she asked.

Bother me? I thought, as if perhaps I should be bothered, bugged, or otherwise thoroughly irritated by the cursed good health of my children. What was I thinking?

“Not really,” I said. “But, thank God Chase hadn’t sneezed last week, or else I’d be furious now.”

We were sitting in a rented house on the beach in the Outer Banks, a late-June sea breeze coming through the screen door, and I could tell where this was going: it was all her husband Earl’s fault that their kids were chronically ill. She once complained to me that Earl didn’t care about the fact that she had back cancer. I was working at the National Cancer Institute at the time, so I informed her that I was fairly certain that a case of “back cancer,” as such, had been neither diagnosed nor documented. Terri was about to concede as much when Earl walked into the room; she launched a can of tomatoes at him, grazing his forehead.

“I know you think I’m fucked up,” she was saying. “But…”

I was actually thinking that I knew why her kids got sick: both she and my Earl were slobs. If slobbery had a taxonomy or ranking system, they’d be Level 6 black belts or Jedis. I’ve found black, snot-covered bananas under the seats in their cars and fossilized Twinkies in the pantry – and image how old do Twinkies have to get before they fossilize. What I once thought was a new, chocolate-colored rug with intriguing patterns turned out to be the old one with M&Ms ground into it. Their refrigerator was probably a Superfund site; their bedroom was littered with dog hair and grubby clothing, overflowing ashtrays, and takeout boxes from long out-of-business fast food joints. Was it any wonder that she felt compelled to go to the hospital a couple of times a week?

Once, when Earl and I had taken the kids to the park, he asked if I would watch his kids while he picked up Terri and Carrie, their daughter, at the doctor. Having just paid some bills at home, I asked him out of curiosity what his out-of-pocket health insurance costs were.

“Enormous!” he said with a gravity and depth usually reserved for funerals. When he approximated their annual medical expenses, I could think of only a handful of third-world countries that had smaller GDPs.

My drink was empty; as I rose to get myself another, I offered to get Terri a refill too. She thrust her glass at me. I took it to the sink, where I saw dishes from lunch soaking in avocado rinds, squishy bread crusts, a sponge caked with ketchup and mayonnaise. Instinctively, I started cleaning.

“See,” she said, watching. “You’re so…anal.”

She said it with such disgust that you’d think I were a polygamist or an atheist. Yeah, I thought. Well if it’s a mortal sin in your religion to do the dishes, then so be it. Amen. I am anal, goddamit.

The fact of the matter is that I can’t stand seeing dishes in the sink. Sometimes, if I’m at a dinner party and there are empty glasses or dirty dishes, sure, I’ll dive in. According to my wife, compulsiveness – like hypochondria – is hereditary. (The jury is still out on the science supporting this theory.) Terri’s mother apparently took Terri and her brothers to the doctor all the time so it makes sense that Terri would follow suit. And was she also a slob? According to Terri, no, her mother was neat and tidy. Perhaps both suffered some psychological disorder, say, Munchausen-by-proxy syndrome? (Possibly, though I dismissed this due to her abject paranoia of the medical profession, in general, and her selfless love for her children.) One thing was clear to me: my family did not have a single hypochondriac in the brood. Especially, my mother.

If Terri and her mother were the epitome of hypochondria, then my mother was the polar opposite. If Satan was the Antichrist, then my mother was sort of the Anti-Hypochondriac.

Sure, I had had my share of illness growing up – most of these were attributed to gastrointestinal maladies. One night, I threw up about a pound of spaghetti and to this day, while I love pasta, I loathe spaghetti. (My mother claimed it might have been the freezer-burned ice cream I had for dessert: a kid give up on ice cream? Fat chance!) In fifth grade, I drank from a creek that had been contaminated by a sewer-main break a couple of days before. Several of my friends who also drank for it were also sick all week, and their mothers took them to the doctor’s office or the emergency room. Not my mother. I could have gone weeks, lying on my death bed, not eating a morsel of food, and my mother would have thought it odd or peculiar but certainly not something warranting medical attention.

When I was in the sixth grade, we played this version of kickball in the school gym where there were only three bases arranged in a triangle. We didn’t understand why we didn’t have four bases – perhaps budget cuts precluded the purchase of a fourth base or maybe the school was engaged in some sort of “new” kickball curriculum – but no matter: this was gym class, after all. The gymnasium also served as the school cafeteria as well as the auditorium with the stage elevated four feet or so above a tile wall. Home plate was always a couple of feet in front of the wall with the other two bases “somewhere over there,” as Mr. Marsico, our gym teacher, would say, working a piece of everlasting teaberry gum to death.

Mr. Marsico resembled a porn star of the era: greasy black hair and thick mustache, furry arms and chest replete with gold chain. On a fateful day in early January, Mr. Marsico, looking like he arrived from an all-night shoot, released a red rubber ball from a white canvas bag and ordered us hastily into teams. As the gym teacher, he would roll the kick balls at varying speeds based solely on his like or dislike of the kid at the plate. Gnawing in rhythmic consistency, like a horny director of some orgiastic scene. “Oh, baby,” you could almost hear as a cute little girl stood at the plate, a kick ball rolling ever so softly towards her. “That’s it, yeah…come on, baby!”

It was hard to tell if Mr. Marsico liked me or not: the ball came in a choppy bounce when it was my turn up, but I managed to strike it solidly with my shin. “Nice,” Mr. Marsico chuckled as the ball flew into the air and hit an unwitting Peggy Garrett in the chest, sending her to the floor. There was confusion then: should the other team tend to Peggy or…I started for second. Denny Gennosco made a pathetic attempt to grab the ball but so did Byran Billings, who checked Denny fiercely to the floor: I made the decision and headed home. “I got it,” I heard behind me, and sensing an impending high throw that might send me careening, the only logical course of action was to slide. And so I did.

I hit the wall and everything seemed to stop for a moment, perhaps a simple glitch in the Matrix. Then, like the jolt of a defibulator, I was back in time, the rush of unholy pain screaming from my left knee.

“He’s out,” I heard a voice say.

“Uh-uh,” a girl’s voice said.

“Is too,” another said.

“No, no!” Mr. Marsico’s voice said, approaching. “He’s safe.” He was over me, the smell of teaberry and last night’s alcohol suddenly pungent. “You alright, kid?” he asked.

I wanted to be tough, tough like I imagined Mr. Marsico to be, the kind who tells you just to suck it up, deal with the pain. But I couldn’t. “No,” I wheezed pathetically.

When I got home, my knee seemed to puzzle my mother who contemplated it fervently, the way one might consider something from the remotest area of the refrigerator, a piece of cheese, perhaps, or a freezer-burned chunk of ground beef. It’s probably fine.

“Well…” she mused, poking at my other knee. “I just don’t know.”

My right knee was a tiny, bony circle; the other one was round and firm, a swollen belly, nine-months pregnant.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m just not sure…” She looked at the clock. “The doctor’s office is closed, anyway,” she said. “Let’s just ice it, and see how you feel tomorrow.”

It was Friday, and even then I knew that there was no way I was seeing anybody until Monday. “Okay,” I muttered.

Icing injuries was my mother’s way of procrastinating, a little prayer for spontaneous healing.

Once I was riding my bike over a wooden jump my friends and I built. The jump was only a foot or two high, situated on the grass near the road. The first problem was that you had to build speed by coming down the Melwood’s steep, twisting driveway – which sometimes, if you didn’t hit the jump dead-on, left you in the road. The second problem was that the Fox Chapel Borough had recently tarred and graveled the road. So when I came flying down the driveway and hit the jump a little cockeyed, I landed head over handlebars, splitting open my elbow in the process.

My friends took off (of course) and I ran home screaming, my bike a mangled heap. My mother, seeing my elbow, doused a paper towel in rubbing alcohol – then, after I screamed bloody murder, one in hydrogen peroxide – applying the towel to my injury. She managed to remove most of the gravel, but when it came to a dressing she seemed stumped. After a minute or two of searching, she returned with a rather large, oblong-shaped bandage that she place carefully on the wound, wrapping it gently with some white tape.

When my father came home that evening and saw my mother’s handiwork, he immediately ripped it off in one violent, excruciating jerk. My mother came immediately. “What the hell is this?” my father asked, dangling the bloodied wrappings in my mother’s face.

“What?” my mother said, an unmistakable smirk unfurling. “It’s perfect.”

The exasperated look on my father’s face gave way. “No son of mine is wearing a goddam maxi pad on his elbow!”

At my father’s insistence, my mother reluctantly took me to see the doctor on Monday morning. It was a cold day, a dreary gray chill cut to the bone the instant the wind gusted. Though the doctor’s office was in a hospital that contained ample parking, we parked several blocks away and trudged up the mountainous sidewalk to the most distant of entrances. Despite the fact that the modern convenience of elevators existed in this building, we took the stairs – a fact, I believe, my mother somehow thought would cure me of my phantom illness. In the doctor’s office, the receptionist took one look at me and called the nurse, while my mother was informed that, yes, parking was complementary for patients. “I wasn’t sure,” was all my mother could muster.

In the examining room, I eased my pants off, my mother suspiciously eyeing both knees as if, miraculously, my knee would suddenly shrink in size. “I’m still not sure…” she was muttering as the doctor came in. He greeted us quickly but pleasantly, then helped me on to the table. He touched both knees gingerly and without looking up asked what had happened.

“Friday?” the doctor said as my mother informed him of the date of the incident.

“This past Friday,” my mother said. “Before Saturday,” my mother added in case the doctor might be confused.

“Did you think to see someone sooner?” the doctor asked in the manner a social worker might ask crack-addicted mother on welfare about her kin.

“I wasn’t sure,” my mother said, nonplussed.

The doctor picked up the receiver and ordered X-rays. When he finished, he eyed my mother suspiciously.

“I just thought,” my mother said in the face of the doctor’s unremitting gaze. “You know – that it might get more…”

“Swollen?” the doctor said, turning to look at my knee.

“Exactly,” my mother said confidently. “That it would be, you know, bigger.” She sort of mouthed the last word slowly, as if it were a secret I was not privy to – something that all adults knew but kids did not.

“How much bigger?” the doctor said, placing his hands around my knee which had swollen slightly more to the size of a large cantaloupe or honeydew melon. “A watermelon?” he said. “Or like this big,” the doctor said, mockingly, making a giant circle with both hands.

My mother nodded, somewhat embarrassedly. “X-rays,” she mouthed, pointing at the door but not looking up as the nurse wheeled the chair in.

As I was being wheeled out, I couldn’t help feeling like I was betraying her. A strange sense of guilt, maybe, that my leg hadn’t miraculously healed itself over the weekend. This feeling smoldered during the interminable six or so weeks I waddled around like the Penguin from “Batman” with a shattered kneecap. Even then, however, I would sometimes catch my mother looking at me in a peculiar manner – a sort of “I don’t know” head shake – as if the moment the cast was removed, she would be proved right. “See,” I could almost hear her saying, “I told you it wasn’t broken.”

Was my mother secretly a Christian Scientist, a member of some whacky cult that shunned science? I tended to doubt it. Still, I did manage to survive my mother’s faith in spontaneous remediation – hernia, near appendicitis, thyroid cancer – and to love her dearly until the day she died.

“Pedophile?” I said to Earl once as he was about to relate a story about Mr. Marisco.

“No?” he said in a confused manner. “Did you know he was gay?”

I hadn’t, but was thoroughly relieved at the knowledge. Turns out Mr. Marsico was hitting on a friend of ours who had made the mistake of mentioning where he was from. It was innocent enough, I suppose, to find out that your elementary school gym teacher was gay, that he now dressed like Freddie Mercury, and that he hit on much younger men in one of the lobby bars at the Waldorf-Astoria. That was all well and good. What struck me, though – and I don’t know why I thought of it – was whether he was a ‘pitcher’ or a ‘catcher’. But then, of course, it was obvious – the way he rolled those melon-sized red balls down the gym floor, molars locked in mortal combat with a stick of teaberry: catcher. Definitely.