The Question

Doctors' waiting rooms:  a menagerie of different folks forced to cohabitate together until their name is called!

Yesterday I shared the waiting room with three pairs of people.  A young grandmother and her preteen grand daughter were the quiet ones.  They smiled at me.  Across the room sat the middle age woman with her flaming red hair, her laptop, and her senior male companion.  They were recanting his medical history, details and all, as she documented his history.  Pleeze.  They were oblivious to their rudeness:  oblivious to their crudeness.  They ignored me.  I wished I could have done the same.

Then there was the sullen-looking couple who sat right behind me, the backs of our chairs unmercifully rubbing each other.  My mother sat beside me, her wheelchair placed in the only available space.  So, there I sat filling out the medical forms when I heard the woman behind me say, "Would you say I am a person who keeps her word?"  I dared not turn around, but what a strange question to just blurt out to someone.  Surely she wasn't talking to me, but there was no response from the man directly behind me.  So, after a long quiet spell, she asked her question again, just a little bit louder, "Would you say that I am a person who keeps her word?"  Still no response.

The third time she said it with some attitude, "WOULD YOU SAY THAT I AM A PERSON WHO KEEPS HER WORD?"  He finally said, "What did you say?"  Good gosh, she had to say it again, and this time he retorted,  "Huh?".

I felt like I was in a twilight zone, and all the exit doors had been sealed tight.  The ventilation had seemed to stop, and the fluorescent lights were dancing in circles.  There was no way out.  I was forced to experience this human behavior of humans I had never seen before and never wanted to see again.  My gut instinct was to turn around and yell to the man, "She said... 'Would you say that I am a person who keeps her word?'  Well, is she?  Huh, Huh?  The answer is either yes or no!"

But, before I could whip around in my chair and blurt it out, she interrupted my thoughts and yelled, "Is this your good ear or your bad ear?"  "My gosh, if it's his good ear, I am so out of here... I am bustin' a hole in the wall and runnin' like hell.  What on earth is wrong with these people???"

Finally, without any prodding from me, her bellowing  made contact with his brain.  He understand her question, and he barked, "Yea.".  And, thank goodness, that was it.  She did not ask any more questions. It was over.  I didn't hear another word from either of them, and I didn't feel any more chair movements from behind.  And, as protocol dictates, all of us sitting in the room, pretended nothing had just happened.

What a weird, uncomfortable situation.  I don't know who I felt the worst for:  her, him, or me.  But, it was "real life drama", and the effort spent on obtaining that one answer seems such a waste.  If we could have channeled all that hot air in the room, we could have generated enough electricity to cool the entire building, and a burst of fresh air certainly would have been welcomed.  I find it strange that the poor woman had to ask someone else what she should have already known about herself.  Had she not explored herself enough to know the answer?   How sad, truly sad.

It seems that I find myself in some very uncomfortable places lately, you know... places that are not my normal comfort zone.  And I know we're supposed to keep a stiff upper lip, keep forging ahead, make everyday a masterpiece, and learn to dance in the rain.  So, I keep telling myself, that I can do this.  I can go wherever I need to go, deal with whomever I need to deal with, and I can do whatever is required of me.  I can do this.  But, I think what disturbs me most about this "waiting room episode" is the fact that this rude, obnoxious, insensitive woman who invaded "my space", stirred up something inside me, something my conscious mind would rather not hear and would rather not face. 

Her question still echoes in my mind, but instead of directing the question to someone else, it's time to ask myself... ask myself boldly, bellowingly, strongly, softly, quietly, and then gently... "You say you can do this, Cindy, so... would you say that you are a person who keeps her word?" 

"Well, are you?"



@Copyright 2011, Cindy Lou Hodges All Rights Reserved.