Frank’s Sporadic Blog, With Fries

Well, I’m doomed.

I sat in a doctor’s office this morning, surrounded by sick people. Judging from the loud conversations nearly all of them were conducting with the aid of their ever-present cell phones, I gather that each was convinced they had fallen victim to (what else) the insidious Swine Flu.

Personally, I think they were all suffering from chronic bad manners. Why people feel it necessary to regale entire rooms of strangers with the banal and thoroughly uninteresting details of their miserable little lives is beyond me. And since they were all speaking at once, each one felt the need to speak a little louder than his fellows, so the conversations quickly turned into a series of undeclared shouting matches.

I’d come prepared, or so I thought. With me was my trusty iPod, which was loaded with music and podcasts.

Trouble was, in order to be able to hear the nurse call my name, I had to keep the volume down to reasonable levels. That meant I got to hear Ray discuss dinner plans with his wife Kay (burritos were briefly considered but ultimately rejected in favor of fish sticks) while Cathy compared her previous evening with a girl named Renee and a rather shrill woman whose name I never caught berated someone out there for buying the wrong kind of vinegar.

I was almost relieved when an infant took in a great volume of air and expelled it with a howl that would have made the most savage timber wolf proud.

Two hours I sat there while AC/DC was drowned out by Vinegar Fury Woman.

I was tempted to pull out my own cell and pretend to talk on it, too. I was trying to decide what my conversation should be — I was leaning toward ‘Where’s the best place to hide a pair of bodies around here?’ when I was finally called back.

I remember the days when people sat in waiting rooms in nervous silence, reading magazines and avoiding eye contact at all costs. Oh, for the good old days.