Here's my 3rd freakin attempt to tell this story, because for reasons entirely unknown to me, my computer keeps deleting the work as I'm typing it. It makes me not want to write, which is incredibly frustrating.
Kim and I had taken the kids to the movies on Saturday afternoon, and afterwards she was complaining a little about her ear bothering her. She had the same type of problem a few years ago and I took her to the emergency room at about 11pm.
I told her that since I was offering to take her then--at 6:45pm, that I wasn't going to be especially perky if she wanted me to take her again at 11pm. She decided to go.
So Kim is being processed without much wait, and I'm thinking that our stay in the emergency room is going to be a short one. (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!)
She gets taken in to see the doctor and I go outside to catch a breath of fresh air.
There was a police officer there on a security detail, and he's talking on his cellphone when I see two groups of women on the other side of the exit door from me begin to get into what I can best describe as......hmmm....a heated discussion. I'm looking around trying to find the cop and I make eye contact with him and begin motioning in the direction of what looks like a huge chickfight. He gets off the phone, goes over and breaks up the situation and walks over to me.
"Good lord.....one girl recognizes the other one as the girl who stole her boyfriend in high school and starts talking a bunch of shit to her through the window of the emergency room.....where am I? Ghetto General Hospital? Can't I make a lousy phone call here?"
It was hilarious. Meanwhile, I was STILL waiting for my wife, who from what I understood was there for an EARACHE. A few minutes later a woman in a wheelchair was being pushed out by a nurse and an orderly. Let's just say.....the woman was old. She had a very nasty looking gash above her left eye and was talking to the two hospital employees while her husband, who amazingly was even older, went to get their car. So the three of them are having a nice conversation, and sort of in the background I see this car backing up, making its way to where the woman in the wheelchair was. Well, except he wasn't quite getting to where he was wanting to go too. All of a sudden I see the police officer come running past us yelling...."WHOA!!".....and we realize that the wheelchair woman's husband, the one that went to get her, is backing his car up.......over the curb and into a bush. It was totally surreal. The guy puts the car in drive, pulls up over the curb and parks the car like nothing ever happened. The nurse, the orderly and myself are all looking at each other trying to not to laugh. They load the woman into her car and as they walk past me, I look at the nurse.
"Ya know, I have to start hanging out here more on Saturday nights. This place is a goldmine of great stories." I told her.
"Honey, I've worked here for over 10 years...." she told me. "I could tell you some things that you wouldn't believe."
After she went back inside, I followed her and asked her if the hospital had kidnapped my wife, since it was now about 9:15pm and my wife had gone in to see the doctor....oh, I don't know.....like TWO HOURS BEFORE. And....did I mention that it wasn't for....ya know.....typhoid. It was for an EARACHE.
So she leads me into the area where my wife was---at least I think it was her, because it had been so long---and she told me that she was just about ready to leave. She had been scolded by the doctor for using OUTDATED EAR MEDICINE. Shame!
She had been diagnosed with an outer AND inner ear infection, and had gotten a prescription to be filled. Keep in mind that its now around 9:30pm, and I'm getting the every-10-minute-phone-call from Kellie Poe-Bowdren, who in her true tradition, was nagging us about when we were going to get home. Grandpa Hank of course, was in full panic mode and was calling on the quarter hour trying desperately to find out where his daughter and grandchildren were. Me.....I love my parents more than anyone on earth. But I don't need to talk to them every single night. Maybe that's just me, I dunno. Anyway, we're off to the pharmacy for a late night prescription filling. We drop it off, and head across the street to Mickey D's for a late dinner.
Nothing like McDonald's at almost 10pm to make you reach for the Prilosec.
And, luckily for us....that night at McDonald's?
"Dress Like a Whore Night"
Every young....ahem....woman in the joint that night was totally doing the hoochie mama look. So naturally, Kim and I felt like we needed have a private fashion review.
"Okay," I said...."the blonde girl is about one Big Mac away from being too fat for that outfit."
"Forget that," Kim said, "she's too big for it now. You can see her rolls through the mesh around her mid-section."
"And how about the girl with the ponytail? Think that skirt is a tad short?"
"Oh puh-leeze. You are totally looking at her boots! You didn't notice anything else."
I hate it when your wife knows your particular fetish. You can't get away with anything. So back we go to CVS to pick up Kim's prescription. We go in, pick it up, we're out...and we're back home. Uh....no. Kim goes over to the pharmacy, and then finds me perusing the magazine section.
"I feel so bad for the pharmacist," Kim says.
"Why come?"
"Because some woman who's getting her prescription filled has an entire cart full of merchandise and its going to take forever to ring up her stuff. And other people are waiting for their prescription."
Well, never one to want to miss an opportunity to miss a potential journal entry, I decide to mosey on over for the show. I was glad I did. Right as I walk up......here's what happens. A man is standing next to the woman, who is STILL being checked out.
"WHY," the man is saying, "can't this woman be checked out up front? There are people here that need their prescriptions. This is ridiculous!"
"Who do you think you are?" the woman asks. "You've got a lot of nerve, PUNK!
I have every right to be here."
"My brother is waiting for his medication and I have to wait for this woman to make purchases that she could be making up at the front! My brother is in pain!!"
"If you keep raising your voice," the woman replies, "I am going to make a citizen's arrest!"
"For what?"
"I'll find something to tell the police. Now get out of my face!"
"I am not moving! I am staying on this piece of carpet until I get my prescription!"
I look at Kim.
"Are we in the fucking Twilight Zone? The fight at the hospital, the guy driving over the curb....the hoochies....and now this? Wow!"
"You've got a lot of nerve talking to me that way mister!" the woman is blathering on. "Let me tell you something...."
She pokes him in the chest.
"AHA!" the man says. "Now I can have YOU arrested!"
"For what?"
"You struck me!"
It went on and on for a couple more minutes. It was an amazing spectacle. Kim finally got her prescription. We got home and Kellie was happy to see her mom.
(Maybe me too--who knows?) Grandpa had called NINE TIMES. You'd have thought that....oh, I dunno....the FIFTH OR SIXTH time he would've got the message. Not our Hank. Of course, maybe he was just Rod Serling, calling in.
Later,
Jeff
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