See How I Did That?

See how I did that? I garnered some comments, and I gave myself an automatic topic for today's post. (Didn't think I'd stick to this posting-once-a-day thing? Oh ye of little faith.)

Seriously though. OK, the costume requires some background, and I want to ask a question about it. Did y'all watch General Hospital back in the 80s? With Luke and Laura and the Cassadines and the Asian Quarter and Blackie and Noah Drake? Well, back then, there was Rick. Rick Weber, I think his name was. And he was married to Lesley, who had long red hair but was not Bobbi. I think Lesley was Luke's sister.

Anyway, we all know the saying, "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV." This had an origin, as everything does -- a commercial for some medical issue or other. Although I wouldn't swear to it, I have a deep-seated belief that commercial starred Dr. Rick Weber as the "doctor." Can anyone corroborate? (I hope Becca is reading.)

Yeah, like this has anything to do with a Halloween costume.

Stay with me.

Cowboy wore a scrub shirt, cut off at the chest, and regular clothes underneath. He carried a scrub cap in the shirt pocket. We cut out a frame from cardboard and made it into a TV set, with channels and antennas. We taped a stethoscope to the bottom of it.

Here's how it was supposed to work:

"Hey, Cowboy, what's your costume?"

"I'm not a doctor" -- up goes the frame, around his face and shoulders, on goes the scrub cap -- "but I play one on TV."

Crickets.

I know. I fully admit it was way out there. But at the time we thought it was really, really clever.