THINGS I LEARNED WHILE WAITING AT THE CLINIC

This morning I took my mom's neighbor, a spunky 91 year old woman, to the clinic for her annual physical. She is nearly bent in half and uses a walker, but don't let that fool you! This woman is dynamite! When she came out of the doctor's office I asked her if she was finished. She replied "no. Lab," and took off down the hall like she was running the 100 yard dash. When she finished there I asked if she needed to go anywhere else, like to the grocery store or drug store. She answered "no." As we dropped her off at her apartment she turned to Ernie and said "thank you." Five words in about an hour and a half. Sweetest funniest little old lady I know!

While I sat in the waiting room at the clinic, I paged through two or three magazines, and found some interesting items. For example, one women's fashion magazine showed a necklace that can be purchased for two million dollars! Oh, it comes with matching earrings for only $170,000 or the cushion cut diamond ones for $240,000. And I found a nice simple clutch purse for $3,495 or a larger lovely blue crock bag for $12,000. Are there really people who buy those things?

Then I turned to the next magazine which had a review of the Oscars, with the important information that five women had the exact same color of dress on. They were five dresses of totally different designs, but they were the same color of red. Oh, if you spilled your wine or whatever on your dress, the dry cleaning for one of those fancy Oscar dresses could run you about $700. But more exciting, by Hollywood standards apparently, were the matching "baby bumps" that three other women were sporting. I felt so educated (NOT) when I put that magazine down and decided that people watching would probably make me smarter.

An elderly couple came in, each pushing a walker, and the man was also pulling a small oxygen bottle with the plastic tubing connected to his wife's face. After they checked in at the desk, they walked back down the hall to the restroom where he opened the door and helped her get her walker and oxygen bottle inside, then he sat down on the seat of his walker right outside the door to wait for her.

Soon a middle aged woman dressed in a comfortable sweat suit came and sat across from me. She was bubbly, happy, and talkative, carrying on an animated conversation with the nurse across the aisle. And she was sporting a colorful bandanna on her hairless head.

And down the row from me two women were talking about one of the woman's daughter. She was telling the other woman that her daughter and husband were asked to not return to their childbirth classes. Seems the other five gals in the class were high school girls, and they were feeling weird because this woman's daughter had a husband to attend classes with her and they didn't. Guess they should have thought about that before!