In Which A Doofus Makes Himself Known In The Colonoscopy Waiting Area

June 21, 2016June 21, 2016 / Ally Bean / 76 Comments

AS IF MY LIFE is not exciting enough, I had the pleasure of escorting Zen-Den, at 6:00 a.m., to the hospital for a routine colonoscopy.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been the Colonoscopy Escort, but your duties are simple:

Get the [snarly and grouchy] patient to hospital at assigned time.
Wait by yourself in the Colonoscopy Waiting Area while patient is checked-in.
When receptionist tells you it’s okay, go sit with the patient in Pre-Op Area until patient is rolled away for procedure.
Go back out to Colonoscopy Waiting Area and wait.
After procedure go sit with patient in Post-Op Area until he or she is released back into the wild.
Take [ravenously hungry] patient home and feed + water him or her.

# # #

AS PER DUTY #4 I was sitting in the Colonoscopy Waiting Area, playing games on my iPad, waiting, when the receptionist called out the name of someone’s Colonoscopy Escort.

No one in the waiting area responded.

She said the name again.

*crickets*

The receptionist got up from her desk and walked around the Colonoscopy Waiting Area, quietly asking each of us if we were this someone’s Colonoscopy Escort, until she eventually got to a 40-something man with his face buried in his laptop computer.

Standing directly in front of him she said his name again, loudly, and he finally looked up at her.

By now everyone in the Colonoscopy Waiting Area was staring at him, because human beings are nosy, and because waiting is boring so anything out of the ordinary is entertainment.

She told him he could go back and wait with the patient, DUTY #3, to which he said: “WHY THE HELL WOULD I WANT TO DO THAT?”

And immediately went back to looking at his laptop.

# # #

THE RECEPTIONIST WAS IRRITATED, but shrugged and went back to her desk.

However, the rest of us, the cooperative Colonoscopy Escorts, started sending hate glances toward this guy. While an adorable 80-something lady with silver white hair went a step further by looking over the top of her bejeweled reading glasses, and loudly *tsking-tsking* in his general direction.

Somehow that particular sound got this guy’s attention and he looked up to see all of us glaring at him, shaking our heads at his obvious Colonoscopy Escort faux pas.

So with a noisy *sigh* he snapped his laptop shut and trudged over to the receptionist’s desk, ready to be taken to sit with someone who had the misfortune of knowing this man well enough to ask him to be his or her Colonoscopy Escort.

Can you even imagine? 0.o

{ Images |1| |2| |3| from Pixabay }

In Which I Lie, But Cannot Decide If It Matters

May 25, 2016May 25, 2016 / Ally Bean / 63 Comments

A conundrum.

You know how conventional wisdom says that what you do says more about who you are than what you say?

So here’s the story. An acquaintance who I’ve known for well over a decade says to me something like:

“You always wear eyeglasses with plastic frames, don’t you?”

This is while I’m standing in front of her wearing my rimless eyeglasses that I’ve worn forever.

Like before Sarah Palin made them popular.

Like all the time. Every day. On my face.

And I say back to her:

“Yes.”

She continues talking while I wonder which one of just revealed the most about ourselves.

That is, she is obviously clueless about what I look like if she hasn’t noticed that my eyewear has been the same in all the time I’ve known her.

But what does it say about me that I lied when I didn’t correct her? And that I went right along with her pretend attentiveness, intended to make me think she cares about me?

I don’t have an answer to the questions raised during this less-than-delightful little social interaction, but the conversation caused me to wonder: who’s scamming who here?

Shopping For Tile: A Tale Of Snobbery & Comeuppance

March 11, 2016January 9, 2017 / Ally Bean / 51 Comments

In and of itself what happened when I went shopping at the fancy tile store, where we bought all of our tile for this house when we had it built years ago, was no big deal.

I’m not unfamiliar with snobby sales clerks in the big city.

But this particular indifferent, snobby sales clerk, who I shall call Gumdrop, was sixty years old, if a day, and she went out of her way to ignore me. She said “hello” when I walked into the store, then before I could reply she went back to looking at her smart phone.

I did not exist.

# # #

I started walking around the lovely, well-organized, upscale tile store, hoping that when Gumdrop finished not helping me, she’d help me.

I dream. What can I say?

Eventually, after I’d explored the drawers, shelves, and wall displays of tiles on my own, I went over to Gumdrop and forced her to listen to me. I told her we were going to replace the tile around our fireplace in the family room, a room that is open into the kitchen.

Did she have some suggestions?

# # #

Without a single word, and this is where it gets interesting, Gumdrop took me to one small display of khaki/tan ceramic tiles, and said “this.”

She didn’t ask about our color scheme, the size of the room, the scale of the fireplace. She didn’t ask about our style preferences.

She just told me to buy what she was pointing at.

# # #

In what I can only describe as a delightful irony of ironies, the inexpensive ho-hum tile that Gumdrop pointed to is what we have on the floor in the laundry room.

The floor, people. THAT’S THE TYPE OF TILE SHE ASSUMED WAS APPROPRIATE FOR ME TO HAVE AROUND THE FIREPLACE IN MY HOME.

I mentioned that I was familiar with the tile she was pointing at because I walk on it every day. Then I asked her to show me something else.

She did this while grumbling that I could easily pull out any of the tile displays from the wall. And I agreed that I could, but I wasn’t going to. That was her job.

So do it, Gumdrop.

# # #

I believe it is at this point that it began to dawn on Gumdrop, who works on commission, that she might have screwed the pooch with me. Suddenly she was inquiring about the details of our project, but I was no longer interested in dealing with her.

So, mentioning that money was no object but obviously there was nothing in this store for me, I politely left the store, discouraged that I’d bothered to drive to a fancy tile store in the middle of an industrial district on a snowy afternoon, to be snubbed.

Humph.

# # #

But ultimately the joke is on Gumdrop and the fancy tile store because my small little fireplace project was just the beginning. Yep, we’re going to be redoing our 14′ x 12′ master bathroom sometime in the next few years and there’ll be lots of tile involved.

Oodles of it, which up until this incident I would have purchased at the fancy tile store. But now? Not going to happen.

Big mistake, Gumdrop. Big mistake.

We’re Both Polite, But There’s Some Nuttiness Going On

February 18, 2016January 9, 2017 / Ally Bean / 57 Comments

I’m the first to admit that I can be slightly nutty. So when I realized a pleasant casual acquaintance behaved in way that struck me as nutty, I started wondering: who’s the nutty one here? Naturally I turned to a friend for her take on this.

Here’s what Acquaintance does that Friend and I think is odd.

Whenever Acquaintance sees you she starts the conversation by stating what you’re wearing. She’ll say things like: you have on a red t-shirt… you’re carrying a brown purse… your jeans are faded.

Then she’ll just stare at you, saying nothing more. There’s no comment, pro or con, about your clothes, your accessories.

Only her looking at you.

This makes Friend and I feel awkward, like we’ve done something wrong, but we’re not sure what it is.

I’ve taken to parroting back what Acquaintance says to me.

That is, I’ll repeat exactly what she has said back to her in a declarative sentence: yes, I have on a red t-shirt… am carrying a brown purse… my jeans are faded.

Friend thinks my approach to Acquaintance is brilliant because it allows me to seem to be chatting. Of course, in reality I’m feeling unnerved about how this peculiar conversation is starting.

Again.

Friend and I have our theories about why Acquaintance behaves like she does, but we are curious to know what you, gentle readers, think is going on with Acquaintance.

Is Acquaintance’s behavior normal or nutty? Do you know anyone who starts conversations like this? Are Friend and I being overly weirded out by this? And if so, why?