Waiting

My doctor's waiting room cracks me up. I can't help it, and even though I know it's perverse to find a place where the sick and miserable congress "funny", it's like the beginning of bad joke. So a guy with an eye patch walks into a doctor's office...

Squeezed in between the medical posters reminding us to wash our hands and get our shots, the drab walls are covered with giant images framed in white oak: rolling hills with fading red barn, flowering meadows with glacial creek, and crisp waterfall crashing on mossy rocks. Below this sits a young girl, black stocking cap pulled tightly over head as she slumps in the chair with her belly hanging over jeans, scratching madly at her forearm. The beautification attempt stops with the hung art, as if the interior decorator froze mid stream, throwing her hands in the air, crying "I cannot vork in dees mizerable conditions!" fleeing in artistic anguish. The nurses would have shook their heads and clucked their tongues at such delicate sensitivities--she didn't even get past the waiting room let alone step near a bed pan.

The second part of the joke is the budding social scene that withers before it blooms. Think! All these people in one room, elbow to elbow, and not one word is said to your neighbor or is one number even exchanged. I've gotten in more conversations while waiting in line with my legs crossed after eating a sausage that didn't agree with me, praying I didn't shit my pants before the second quarter started, than I do here. I can imagine the social hour enfolding as we idly wait for our appointments. Gentleman A leans over to gentle lady B, coughing lightly to rouse her attention, which the undiscerning ear might hear as only an attempt to clear the phlegm. "Excuse me," he starts. "I couldn't help noticing that your eyes, behind the puffy red exterior, are exquisite." She flushes -- perhaps flattered, perhaps feverish -- and after agreeing to connect post lab results, Cupid puffs his chest with pride. Another match made!

Instead of plundering this treasure trove, we as a group unanimously choose not to acknowledge the person wheezing next to us. Though I've never donned camo fatigues and picked ducks from the sky in my life, my nose is buried in "Gun Dog" magazine with unbreakable concentration. The man next to me is studying "Good Housekeeping" with such fascination I'm compelled to do a nut check. Just to make sure. But really it's all luck of the draw in the reading material rotation. There's always the magazine that we all want to read but won't because the guy who put it down as he trudged his way towards the nurse calling his name from a clipboard didn't look too good. So there sits "People Magazine", its cover's promise of a tell-all "Who's sleeping with whom in Hollywood" teasing us as we eye it from afar, seeing if anyone else dare approach it. Then in walks a newbie, fresh from the elevator. She can barely contain her look of triumph -- the Holy Grail of waiting rooms, there for the taking! She has something we don't. Yes, we all concur in silence. Yes, you do. A nice case of hepatitis B with onset Molluscum contagiosum compliments of the leper who just left the room. We smirk into our magazines that we secretly wish we weren't reading, and I snuggle deep into my hard, merciless chair, contentedly flipping the page of my clean copy of "Gun Dog". Any why I do declare! If this wasn't the best damn article on coon hound training tips I ever read, I don't know what is.