Thursday, February 12, 2009

The Invisible Man in the Waiting Room


Tuesday we went to a doctor (see previous post).

In the waiting room was a TV continuously running the news… it was probably CNN or FOX.

There were clips of Obama having a town hall meeting. A man, who was leaving said something to the effect that he would save a whole lot of money if he stayed at the Whitehouse and not use Air Force One flying all over the place.

To my surprise an old lady with a back-woods accent defending him, shesaid they all did that. They needed to keep in contact with the people. A little later I overheard her tell someone she just lost all her savings to investors and they ended up getting huge bonuses by the millions – “It just an’t right!” Greedy bastards.

One lady, rather quiet, looked to be near sixty had long straight salt and pepper hair. She didn’t have anything to say. Finally she got up and went to the desk and asked if they had a restroom. They told her how to get to it, by going through that door and taking a left and bla bla bla. She left. While she was gone her husband came in from the inner offices and did not see her. He turned around and asked the elderly people sitting closest to where she was sitting did they see a lady wearing a denim blouse leave. One of them said she just went to the restroom.

He jokingly said they been married 37 years and thought maybe she took off running the first time he turned his head. She returned and they both gave each other a big hug – a big embrace, then a big mouth to mouth noisy kiss. It looked like a honeymoon going on for 37 years. Good for them! ….. unless they were just trying to impress us.

Two elderly couples that were in the same Sunday school class ran into each other in the waiting room and sat down and talked to each other.

They discussed an upcoming breakfast their church was having. You could have your choice of white fish or chicken. One wife was concerned about the cost of the breakfast and how much would be wasted. Her main question was what if they didn’t estimate right and there were more than expected that wanted, say the chicken, and you had a lot of fish left over – or visa versa?

That makes sense. I bet people preparing meals for a lot of people have that problem every day.

I was reading a book and also flipping through a locally published slick magazine that were mostly classy local advertisements…. I think it is mostly intended for waiting rooms – a big stack was there to help yourself.

One of the fancy expensive advertisements were a Marietta plastic surgery group. The ad showed all the doctors of that group standing with their arms folded like they knew the score. It looked impressive. I knew a kid in high school that became a plastic surgeon so I looked closer at the faces to see if he was in the group. He wasn’t. But what I did see was strange: All the doctor’s faces look strikingly similar. True! Underneath it had all their names and they were all different people… They were all different sizes but all the faces were nearly the same…. It was as if they all practiced on each other and only had one face pattern.

2 comments:

Susan Tidwell said...

Your observations in the doctor's waiting room are very entertaining! I used to work in a doctor's office and the perspective is a bit different from behind the desk. You are very brave to read the magazines, I won't touch one in a waiting room after seeing all those sick folks coughing on them etc.!

Eddie said...

Susan,
I know it sounds brave, but I forgot to mention I picked the magazine off a stack of new magazine all the same - I don't any patient got their germ-ridden hands on them yet.... but I also brought my own book, which I always do.
Which brings to mind I was at my cardiologist's office on December the 2nd and spent some time in the waiting room (early again) and that night late I became deathly ill and two days later I went to the ER and had found that I pneumonia, which I struggled with about the whole month of December.... I don't know if incubation is that quick or not.