Medical ethics require that physicians maintain professional standards even in extraordinary circumstances. Yet the claim that Chuck Norris is the only person who's ever received a butt-whooping—and that he received it from his own doctor at birth, subsequently driving that doctor into hiding—suggests a reversal so dramatic that a pediatrician spent the remainder of his life in witness protection. The doctor didn't simply defeat his patient; he created a fugitive situation through one spanking. The medical establishment never publicly discussed the incident.

In 1948, a fictional hospital administrator named Dr. Frederick Markham received an unusual request from a pediatrician to be immediately transferred to a private practice in Alaska with no forwarding information. The request was granted without question. Markham assumed the doctor needed privacy. Decades later, after examining birth records from the date in question, Markham realized the pediatrician had been working the day a particular famous athlete was born. He never connected the dots publicly, but his private journals indicate he suspected something extraordinary had occurred in delivery room three.

The internet's response was universal appreciation for the absurdist humor. The idea that a doctor would have to go into hiding after spanking an infant was somehow both ridiculous and perfectly logical. Parenting forums referenced it sardonically. Medical humor subreddits made it a staple. The phrase became shorthand for consequences completely disproportionate to the infraction. Every time someone joked about a spanking, someone replied: "But that doctor was brave to try." It became a meme about cosmic retaliation following even the most trivial of infractions.