(5) Lesson 2: Waiting Rooms

Everybody take a seat.
This class has no teaching schedules, credits or programs.

A few months ago Mario and I were sitting in my doctor's waiting room. With my petty health problems recently I took quite a few classes in doctors' waiting rooms, and I must say that they are a pretty nice environment, if we talk about effectiveness. Some notions just hit the spot in a better and faster way.

You just have to get there a bit early, and waiting rooms are wonderfully half-empty. I took a seat, pulled out a book (Rule #3 of the Manual: never get anywhere without a book in your pocket, not even if you going to take a piss), and I started reading.

Break.

When you hold a book, often your timepiece slips within the pages, with a good book and also with a not-that-much-good book if it still holds the strings of some witfully-written action. You get lost in time. When I finally pull up my head, the room is quite full. Half of the present population is beyond retirement age, the other half is still a bit ahead of that.

As we already considered in another lesson, nobody wrote a rule by which I must, or must not, get up from a seat as a direct consequence of my biological age. That is an oblique common use which everybody enforce just because you do not dare to do the opposite. What you do does not matter, it is why you do it that does: if you stand up and yield your seat 'cause you have to, remain seated and save some dignity. If you get up 'cause you feel better when you extend a courtesy to a person that (supposedly) is having a harder time standing than you, well then you are quite okay. Four butts out of five statistically leave the seat for the former reason, so that is not good. Usually I do it for the latter reason, of course.

I can sense Mario reacting on my shoulder, I hear his teeth clenching, and he shows a protrusion of red thorns all over his back, like a porcupine. I lift my eyes from my book, and there I see a lady (well, genetically a woman, the whole rest is not so much lady-ish) gazing at me with the same frown the judge must have had, while reading Jeffrey Dahmer's sentence.

There's an older lady too there - okay, we both are on the same side of Dante's "Middle of our life's path" (see Lesson 1 of this Manual), nonetheless she seems to be quite ahead of me down that path - and if she came to see a doctor, I must presume she ain't doing that good after all. I get up, smile, still can't prevent myself from shooting a quick look at a couple of empty seats, since the last free seat is like the last candy, everybody leaves it to anybody else and no one picks it. Anyhow there are two empty chairs in one corner, behind the desk filled with magazines, not easy to reach and seat in, okay that does not matter: sorry lady, I was caught up in my reading, please have my seat. In the meanwhile, Mario is not loosing track of the other woman, the one still gazing, and when I stand up she steams out a pressurized, «Eh!...»

Okay, here we go with Rule #2 of the Manual - between talking and letting it be, break the schemes, and talk. Other than that, you can just look somewhere else and drop the issue, thus satisfying not only the older lady (which, for lack of a better word, is good), but also giving satisfaction to the steam-woman.

Rule #4 of the Manual: check people's shoes. They will tell ya stories that not even their closest friends do know. Hell, sometimes not even the people you are looking at know about themselves the things that their shoes are inconveniently shouting out loud to the world.

I scan the steam-woman. She is wearing a pair of flat ballerina shoes that some day in a not-so-recent past could have been black, an old train wagon may not look that much worn. Stockings are milk-white.

Seems that life is not giving her much satisfaction.

Oh God, woman, the world is filled with new coats, or even decent coats.
A coat from a discount: 20 bucks with Mastercard.
A coat from any shop: 80 bucks with Mastercard.
That Red-Army-retired-sergeant look you have: priceless.

Seems that shopping ain't much satisfying to you, too.

Nor is your husband, probably (okay, I must confess I got this one out of an intuition, just telling it from that highly repulsive beam she is emitting).

Now: is there any good reason in this world, or the other, for which it must be me, here and now, to give a little, miserable satisfaction to your acid existence?

Rule #5 of the Manual: I do not hand out free donations.

«Ma'am, if there's anything you want to say, just say it». Mario pulls the spines back in and chuckles, that little bastard already got how it is gonna end, and I got that too. *Marael, be quiet* I whisper to him. The woman frowns so much that she now looks like a Klingon. We can all think, "That guy is a total jerk". Many can make this thought non-verbally evident, with expressions, or just whisper it to the next guy (who was by the way minding his own business, but will of course be a conformist and comfort them in their convintions). A few, a very few people are able to say it. As a matter of fact the steam-woman thinks that about me (and she is wrong, let me specify this), but she ain't venting it. Nor can she say anything else, she's stuck there, and I still haven't done or said almost anything. There, I decide I'll be merciful and help her hang herself, it's gonna be my turn with the doc shortly and I don't like to leave a massacre undone.

Oh, I almost forgot the Rule #6 of the Manual: always talk normally, and smile. Even if that is on the verge of breaking your jaw. If you shout, you'll line up every present person against yourself, even if you are revealing the Third Secret of Fatima. If you whisper, many will try to listen but a few will succeed - expecially in a waiting room where the average age is 70 and hearing devices are cheap as ice-creams in August. Talk normally and calmly, so that everyone else can stick their nose into your business. If you are smiling, you can't be the bad guy after all. And when you smile, it just hurts your opponent more.

The steam-woman is pressurizing. She is flicking her eyes as fast as a Ferrari's piston. If a human being can get eyelid cramps, I'm gonna see it happening. A chair moves inside the doctor's studio, I'm next, let's cut this thing short.

«You see, I simply got distracted reading and I didn't get up immediately», I tell her plainly and easily, «You saw this old lady before me, you could you have called me, why did you choose to let her stand just for the sake of frowning at me? That seems to me so stupid».

She almost says something, and I must concede, she is fast enough to stop before doing so: my question has no possible answers, whatever she says now, she's the jerk. I have an instant epiphany, I'd bet 50 bucks here and now on her being a retired teacher, literature and geography for certain. She's as much distastefully edgy as Nepal's flag.

Rule #7 of the Manual: nothing, and no one, goes unpunished.

«Anyway, were you too much involved in judging me to remember this is the waiting room of an orthopedic medician?». Issue sealed. I pick up my crutches, which I had left leaning on the wall. Doc looks at me in that "... Again?" way. I walk in and whisper for his ears only, «You know I canì't stand a jerk». Mario chuckles again, happy ending, credits.

Right when the door is closing, there is still time for me to hear the old lady I did yield my seat to reproaching the steam-woman, 'cause she would have happily remained standing since I had crutches. Sometimes things, like cakes and meatloaf, come out better than you imagined.