Anecdotal evidence

Because the only thing that’s keeping my mind off the surgical horrors that await me tomorrow is being silly about the whole thing, I’m now going to turn it into a competition. A guess-how-many-bubblegum-balls-are-in-the-jar kind of competition. Except that there aren’t any bubblegum balls. Because it’s a hospital. And they frown upon that sort of frivolity.

What there will be, however, by this time tomorrow, is a fairly long cut on my upper thigh. Of course, in my excitement, I didn’t think to ask the doctor exactly how long it would be. You can see where this is going, right?

The prize:

One photo of your choice from capetowndailyphoto.com, printed on canvas, and posted to you, no matter where you live in the world. Well, there needs to be a postal service in your little village; that’s the only proviso.

The challenge:

Guess how long my cut will be. The closest guess wins the prize.

The rules:

• You’re only allowed one guess, so make it good.
• Guesses should be in metric units. I realise that this will cause some of you a little confusion, but Google is there to help you. Or Wolfram Alpha, if you prefer.
• Make your guess as precise as possible. That said, I’ll disregard any units smaller than millimetres. Because that’s just ridiculous.
• You can answer here on Tumblr, or on Facebook, or on Twitter. If you answer on Twitter, use #robohip as the hashtag.
• The competition ends when I say it does. This is because I have no idea when I’ll get to see the cut, and whether the nurse will even be amenable to measuring it for me. Frivolity, you see. They frown upon it.

So, without further ado, how long do you think my cut will be tomorrow?

Since I’m going to all this effort of getting a new hip, I figure I might as well make it worth my while and have the doctor include a few extra features. So I asked my Twitter friends for some ideas today. Here’s what they came up with:

• a pop-out holster of sorts, to hold a whiskey tumbler (Nathan)
• a Wolverine-style weapon (Randall)
• turbo boost and an airbag (Jo)
• auto-swing for occasions requiring social dancing (Anna) and auto-shimmy for use during belly-dancing class (Jo)
• a 5-terabyte bluetooth drive (Destry)
• a joke tattooed onto the joint, to amuse and/or confound future archaeologists (Sipho)

I’m quite keen on a few of these (the bluetooth drive, most notably), but Discovery says they don’t cover this sort of “experimental medicine”. Luddites.