The joy of waiting rooms

Many people hate going to the doctor for routine visits. You know nothing is wrong with you, so it seems pointless to go, right? While you're there, you have to sit in a waiting room for up to an hour listening to babies cry and neurotic women complain about their seasonal allergies and migrane headaches. All that aside, I'm one of those bizarre people who actually like sitting in waiting rooms; There's always something interesting going on! As a child I was thoroughly amused by playing with the toys and building blocks in the play room as I waited for the doctor to tell me and my mother that I had chicken pox. As an adult, I like trying to figure out what's wrong with everyone and reading all the different magazines that waiting rooms have to offer, especially the ones that I ordinarily would never read on my own free will. It's an excellent opportunity to broaden my horizons and learn something new and interesting.

Yesterday I went to the doctor for my annual check-up and I arrived about 30 minutes before my appointment in the hopes of getting caught up on my reading. While sitting in the waiting room I experienced the usual--resisting the urge to smack a toddler because he was verbally assaulting his own mother, a man coughing so hard that I thought he was going to spit up his soul, and of course I had all the magazines a girl could possibly want. House & Garden says "Renew, Revive and Refresh Your Personal Space!" You magazine says "Bad Love: Why Kate Moss Always Chooses the Wrong Guy" Cosmo magazine says "Make Him Beg for More--Get Down and Dirty the Right Way!" Time magazine says "Shanghai Pooches Get Pampered While Country Dogs Get Slaughtered." All very riveting headlines I must say. There were at least 5 magazines that caught my eye, but I knew I wouldn't have time to read them all. As I was shuffling through the mags trying to figure out which one to start reading first, a man wandered into the waiting room and screamed "I need some help!" Of course everyone stopped and looked at him, wondering what was going on and where he came from.

"He said I was fine, but I'm not! He has to see me again. I demand to see the GP (doctor) again!"

The man kept screaming this over and over again while the receptionists tried unsuccessfully to shut him up and get him out.

"Please, I need to see the GP again! He was wrong!"

Anytime someone is shouting and generally acting a fool, I take them seriously. Most people will just say they're nuts and brush them aside, but it has been my experience that crazies know what's really going on before us normal people get wind of it. I was tempted to pull him to the side and ask him exactly what the GP was wrong about, but one of the nurses directed him to the doctor's office before I worked up the nerve to do it.

"Coco? Coco Stasia? The doctor will see you now."

"Already? B-b-but I didn't even get to see why they kill the country dogs," I thought to myself as I walked back to the examination room. I was kinda upset because the crazy man in the waiting room distracted me from reading the magazines. I felt jipped, like I went to a backyard bbq and they ran out of meat just as I got there. So after my exam I picked up the latest issue of Tatler magazine and stuffed it in my bag on my way out the door. Yeah, I know it's wrong to "steal," but it's also wrong to mis-diagnose crazy people too. Let's just say that taking that magazine was my way of balancing out the universe. I hope the doctor was right when he said I checked out normally. I would hate to find out next week that I have measles, mumps and rubella! But at least then I would get to go back to the waiting room and read more magazines. I've always wondered why Kate Moss dates such losers!