It used to be I was afraid of the future because of the GOP and the Pandora’s Box of hornets/hate they’ve unleashed. But then I realized that there are, perhaps, other signs that the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. Read on, and try to tell me I’m wrong.
***
Seven intelligent faces looked at me, blankly, their heads all tilted at a quizzical angle as if on strings.
Just because I’m saying “Who?” doesn’t make me an owl, ya know (Google image, natch)
They ranged in age from mid-40s to early and mid-20s.
At least I hoped they were intelligent faces. Because they belonged to a team of seven doctors treating me during my recent (thankfully brief) hospital stay for Crohn’s.
I always draw a crowd.
But it wasn’t long before I questioned the intelligence of this group of gastroenterologists and medical students holding their noses and getting through this rotation. Because they seemed to have missed a major part of their education.
“Michael*” — the leader of the pack, put his stethoscope to my belly and listened.
“Not much noise there, Elyse.” He let the others have a listen.
“You guys haven’t let me eat in days,” I said. And then, as a person with a gut so noisy that it has a name (Ralph), I continued. “I always feel like Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen! You know, the scene where his stomach is gurgling?”
“Humphrey who?” one of them said. The others nodded their heads in agreement.
“Bogart,” I said, with my eyes getting bigger as I realized that all seven of the people around me were tilting their heads at me in confusion. None of them had a clue who Bogie was.
“I think I’ve heard of him,” one of the medical students ventured. She didn’t look terribly certain, though. “Wasn’t he in all of those musicals?”
Something is very wrong in the world.
*And when did doctors start going by their first names?? Did I miss something?
FiftyFourandAHalf 