Waiting Room Conversations

I was off to another trip to the doctor. A little different this time, I visited my eye doctor, who is an ophthalmologist and a really funny guy. He is Harvard-educated (which is a good thing) and always seems to remember what you were talking about from one visit to the next. Unlike most doctor visits these days, my eye doctor handled the entire visit from beginning to end, by himself. He called me to the back office, placed me in an examining room, dilated my eyes and then sent me back to another waiting room to let my eyes grow wide and my pupils dilate. The whole pupil dilating thing is an amazing, if not peculiar feeling. How can two little drops of whatever make your eyes do that? It's like someone has a balloon in your eye and is trying to blow it up. That's how it feels to me anyway. I was sitting by myself for a few minutes just enjoying the quietness of the back room waiting area. Presently, I was joined by a nice looking elderly lady who had just received the same treatment. The following is the conversation that took place: "Hey, nice weather we're having, where you from?" asked the lady. "Yep, the weather is nice. I'm from the next town up north." I replied. "Me too, where do you live?" she questioned. "I live out Main Street close to Sellers Ave,” I said. She shrugged her shoulders at me and we continued to sit in silence, each seemingly lost in our own thoughts. "You look familiar to me," she said. "That wasn't your property that they found them marijuana plants on, was it? They said it was on Sellers St." "Excuse me?" "They had an article and a picture in the paper about it; you look like that lady in the paper." "I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about," I responded. "I think I still have last week's paper in my bag." She dug around in her bag and proceeded to fish out a copy of last week's paper that had the pot bust on the front page. "See, here it is," and she handed me the paper. At that time, the doctor came back out to get me (I was dilated) and gestured me into another examining room. I glanced down at the paper to see if I could find the article. Sure enough, there was a story and an accompanying photo detailing the whole story. I told my doctor about what had happened; he chuckled and said that she was here to get new glasses. It seems she hadn't had a new pair in about 20 years. I can see somewhat how she came to the conclusion that I was the busted pot grower. The marijuana was grown on East Sellers Street. I live near West Sellers Avenue on the other end of town. I don't know how she came up with the picture though; the picture was of two beefy, burly looking individuals with full beards. When I was finished with my appointment I had to use the ladies room on the way out. I opened the door and could hear the lady telling the doctor about my alleged criminal activities. He replied that it wasn't me, it was a picture of two gruff-looking men, and that I lived on West Sellers Avenue not East Sellers Street. "Oh dear," she said. "I guess I need new glasses after all. But, I still think she looked like that lady in the picture."

Sleeping In The Car

I mentioned awhile back about my late night trip to an Atlanta hospital to be with a sick family member. It took several hours of being transferred from one department to another department and filling out a lot of paperwork before things began to calm down a bit. It was 2:45 in the morning and we were very tired. You really don’t have a lot of options at that time in the morning. We were in the party section of Atlanta and most of the hotels were probably already filled up with drunks, one-night stands or Georgia Tech fans. Even if we would’ve found a hotel we would have had to check out by 11:00 AM. This in itself isn’t a bad thing but when you check in at 4:00 AM, it seems like a waste of money. Unfortunately, my family knows its way around hospitals. There are certain waiting rooms that have reclining chairs and somewhat comfortable couches. You can also get blankets and pillows which can make your visit a little more comfortable. But, there’s a catch. These prime positions in the waiting rooms fill up very fast. You need to have claimed your spot by 6:00 PM at the latest or you can expect to spend the night in a chair with hard wooden sides or a loveseat that has one too many soft drink stains. This was the predicament that my mom and I found ourselves in; try and find a hotel for six hours or sleep in the waiting room on the leftover torture chairs. We didn’t like either option so we decided to sleep in the car. It wasn’t very comfortable; in fact, it was terrible. I have a Mustang and the seats don’t recline very far back. I sat in the driver’s seat and I don’t have a removable steering wheel. I couldn’t cross my legs or even stretch them out. I couldn’t turn to one side because the steering wheel was always in the way. I don’t know how mom did it but the next thing I knew she was snoring over there in the passenger seat. She slept for about three hours. I dozed from 2:47 until 3:18. The parking area was a very noisy place and was very well lit. I had my sunglasses on trying to keep out the lights. I had cracked the windows to let the air flow through but it eventually got hot. I had drunk to many soft drinks, and, of course, I need to use the facilities. I held it as long as I could I didn’t want to wake up mom by getting out of the car. I think it was about 6:00 o’clock when mom opened her eyes and saw me grimacing. I had to go I told her and I hadn’t wanted to wake her up. Wake her up she said, she hadn’t been asleep at all; she was just resting her eyes.