Wednesday, November 13, 2002

Go To An Emergency Room Waiting Area And Pace Day!

You like strangers to wonder about you but you don't like them to talk to you and you adore Spanish language soap operas, yes? Then you need to head on down to your nearest hospital's emergency room waiting area and pace like you're just a newlywed on a honeymoon whose beautiful new wife "started complaining about feeling a little light-headed and then one of the salesgirls found her on the floor of the dressing room and we couldn't wake her up. This has never happened before."

You should wear brown penny loafers and a docile-patterned plaid shirt tucked into your Dockers. Don't bring a jacket so that when you first walk in it looks like you were probably there the whole time but just stepped out for a smoke or a lotto ticket. All other parties present will be near-entire families waiting to find out their 11 year old daughter/sister did not survive the hit and run. Only you will be alone. No enormous father still wearing his phone company hard-hat to hold you in his gargantuan arms. No haggard mother to recoil from your brother's touch (she'll blame him until she is dead). Just you pacing back and forth, your hand stroking the top of your head, sipping from cold cup of coffee after cold cup of coffee (bring a lot of change for the coffee machine because you have to get change from the desk otherwise and you don't wanna have to draw too much attention from the girls back there if you wanna stay for the whole afternoon). Those families won't take their eyes off you. They'll be glad to see someone suffering and they'll hope that whoever you are waiting to find out about dies so that they can find out how you break down at the news.

Just for fun, but this can be risky, whenever a surgeon steps through the swinging doors into the waiting area, get up and look in his or her eyes anxiously. The surgeon will register you then quickly look away and shout out a last name to avoid having to tell you they don't know anything about your loved one. After a while, on maybe the sixth time you've jumped out of your chair hoping for good news, they'll just get kind of fed up and you can be sure that while they're operating on the next patient, they'll start asking around the table, "Hey, anyone know who that one guy is out there? He's bumming me out." You should split before they ask you to leave though.

If you wanna make a scene before you go, keep it contained. Just pick up an empty chair and slam it to the ground a few times shouting "Why?! Why?! Why?! Why?!!" Then head out for some hot dogs and go home and go to bed. Oh, and uh, Heston? How's about you lay off shaking your fist up at God this time, okay baby?

Happy Go To An Emergency Room Waiting Area And Pace Day!