I said I would post three. The first doesn’t count: it just explains the meaning of the word. So here, now, is the missing third one that everyone has been searching for so desperately.

Having a beard

 The month before we graduated from medical school, my classmate and good friend, Hugh Edgar and I worked at a summer camp and we both grew beards. We agreed we would show up at our Meds graduation ceremony with the beards, but when we arrived I still had mine but Hugh had shaved his.  The Dean observed that some graduates who had lost some hair over the four years and others who had grown hair in unusual places. That was me, of course. Bear in mind, this was 1958; beards were far less popular then than they are now.

Earlier, a chemistry teacher advised that mine needed ‘extract of bullstestes‘.  I did not follow his advice.

Years later after my first year of residency I did not receive a letter from the chair of paediatrics confirming my appointment to senior resident. I asked the chief resident, Charles Scriver, for advice. He suggested I shave my beard. A few days later the letter arrived.

Et voila!