Men in Scrubs

The other day I was sitting in morning conference and one of my colleagues walks in wearing scrubs.  I have no idea why he was wearing scrubs because we are not surgeons, but I assume he had been doing some procedure in the OR.  Now this particular man is short in stature, but huge in heart.  Maybe it was an optical illusion, but when he appeared in those royal blue scrubs, he looked about six feet tall. This enchantment with the pajama boys is deeply rooted in my childhood. My father is a surgeon, and since he was the chief of a large training program when I was growing up, his residents were regularly invited to our home.  I was the proverbial kid in the candy shop back then, and I could sit through any number of startlingly graphic slide shows and bloody super 8 movies watching limbs being reattached and faces reconstructed because my 15 year old heart ached for one of his residents, who had to be at least twice my age and who was far too smart to show any interest in the underage daughter of the boss

So what is it about men in scrubs that makes so many females swoon?  As a medical student, I was certainly not immune.  I am quite certain that there were handsome guys who were psychiatry residents, or internal medicine residents, or even pediatrics residents (although the stuffed monkeys hanging off their stethoscopes were just a tiny bit devoid of sex appeal!).  But these men were passed by without a second glance by both nurses and female medical students. It was the boys in the blue and green pajamas we were after.  They were the toughest of the tough—they could stand up all day in the operating room and then take an overnight shift in the emergency room, they drank buckets of coffee without ever having to go to the bathroom, they ordered us around in commanding voices and they threw temper tantrums worthy of the Academy Awards.  This being the era long before more men waxed their chests than women their legs, that little peek of chest hair rising above the V neck of the scrub top would send us girls over the edge.  They hinted that they might cheat on their wives and girlfriends, and we loved them for it.

By the time I was ready to settle down, I had come to my senses about the reality of the surgeon’s life, and personality.  Although times have changed somewhat, and older surgeons urge younger ones to “have a life”, many times their schedules and their dedication to their craft leaves room for little else.  Not to mention the fact that the “captain of the ship” routine carries over right into “civilian” life—as a famous Harvard surgeon once said during a lecture about his own research, “You know what they say about surgeons—seldom right but NEVER in doubt!”   I left the pajama party, got over the scrubs, and married an internist.  The rest, as they say, is history.

These days my tastes lean more towards men in kilts.  But those big burly red heads who hurl logs are a bit hard to find out here in the Southwest. Barring that, a nice fitting pair of Wranglers, chaps and boots will do just fine.  And a good looking horse is the icing on the cake!