I was at a nearby medical center very early in the morning, to have blood drawn for some tests my doctor ordered. Before I could hand my paperwork to the old male nurse, who looked just a little too satisfied leaned back in his creaky office chair, he informed me that he could not accept me just yet. I was required to backtrack across the medical center commons to another office and "register." My name on my paperwork matched the name on my driver's license – not good enough? It was the rule.
Another man, sitting in the waiting area, yelped "do I have to, too?"
"Did you already," the nurse grunted?
"No," the man said, like a command, his face already purpling.
"Then you hafta."
I and this angry fella walked together back to the registration office that we'd apparently skipped over so nihilistically in our earlier haste. "That guy really burns me up," he sputtered. "This here crap. I sat there a good fifteen minutes and he knew it, before you walked in. I could'a done had this crap overwith."
I responded sheepishly, in an acquiescent attempt not to egg him on. Jeans, boots, plaid workshirt, bulging veins – a loaded shotgun I reasoned was close by, in his parked vehicle just an extra minute's walk farther.
"Yeah," I breathed, with a sufficient pause, then committed myself to a complete statement. "He seems pretty comfy in there." What the hell did THAT mean? I didn't know, but my big mad buddy found a grain of mysterious wisdom in it.
"Cushy-jobbed needle-pokin' ... whatever!" I imagine the word "whatever" was meant as a generic stand-in for the epithetic pronoun of one's choice.
When we arrived at the Registrar's desk, she shuffled us off to another waiting area, larger, more nebulous, easier to become lost and forgotten in. My new pal was just getting warmed up. "I sure don't appreciate this," he fumed lowly. "I sat in that other room for fifteen minutes with that nurse sittin' in there, and he knew all the time he was gonna make me walk over here."
The lady behind the computer terminal nodded, with a bent brow and a sympathetic curl at one corner of her scarlet-painted lips. "We're trying to get a sign made," she said, "so people will know to come here first. We sincerely apologize." She'd undoubtable repeated that a hundred times, it sounded so rehearsed. The building looked brand new, spotless and expensive – with no sense that any signage was intended that would lower its real estate value. Without question a recited apology was cheaper than hiring a sign maker.
"He could'a told me right off, but no, he let me sit there fifteen whole minutes."
Whole minutes, not just any. What could she say? He was right. I'd be a little insulted myself. Slowly he resigned himself to sit across the desk from the kind computer woman, who glanced over his paperwork, asked if the contact information on it was correct, typed it in, and deemed him freed to go resume his place in the bloodwork office with the rude male nurse. Just like that. The look on the man's face was quite obvious now. Words he did not speak were nevertheless roiling off his crooked, reddening brow. He rose like a hungry attack dog who's just realized his collar is off. I sat next.
A minute later I was too retracing my path back to the nurse's way-station, about fifteen steps behind Mr. Congeniality. I slowed my pace a beat or two, so as not to become again a human tampon for his torrential disgust – which I could hear pouring out even at my present distance. Finally he got inside, and I was able to fain blithe disregard, and concentrate on my own need to get past this methodical phase of preliminary medical bureaucracy.
By the time I made it into the office, he had already been ushered into the nurse's realm beyond the front counter. Muffled words were being exchanged. Then a low chuckle bounced through the duct system. And all fell silent. The needle had been brought into play.
A minute later, the nurse returned to his front post. My gawd, how sitting in that deskchair had distracted from his size. He was huge. And dressed in medical greens intended to routinely endure blood spatter.
The guy you don't mess with. And keenly self-aware of it.
Mr. Unfairly Treated eventually waddled out, holding his free hand to the bend of his arm, where a mesh bandage held firm a large swab of cotton. His once fiery countenance had been erased, or perhaps, glazed over. He chuckled at me nervously as he passed. "He's really pretty good," he said, as if auditioning for a radio ad for the medical center.
And with that he was gone. Out the door. In a hurry.
The nurse leaned forward, extending his giant hand for my paperwork. I was registered. And I was next.
I attempted to make my facial expression telegraph my thoughts. "All I said was that you looked comfy."
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RANDOM IS AS RANDOM DOES
Bureaucratic committees sit around creating compelling reasons not to let something happen. Let go of your "inner committee." The ego is a bureaucracy of one, with a thousand voices. How do you know "You" from your ego? That voice listing excuses is your ego, and the one listening to the voice is You. Listen to You for awhile.
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Randy Travis look like some WWII vet had two families – one in Austria, and one in Arkansas.
Overheard on the Safeway Market loudspeaker: "Bakerage, you have a phonecall. Bakerage, you have a phonecall." It must've been on purpose, she said it twice.
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