It Looked Different on the Model (11 page)

But she made no attempt at all to pull the poncho away as she veered off course and into the intersection and slowly, at two to three miles an hour, headed right toward my car. I could only cover my gaping mouth as I watched her get closer and closer, the hum of her scooter getting gradually louder and louder. I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t go anywhere,
according to Eugene law; I had to stay exactly put until she got onto the sidewalk. Still, she advanced, believing that she would roll up onto the other side at any moment now but instead aiming right into the center of the intersection. So I did the only thing I could do, which was roll down the window and scream, “Hey! Big Banana! You’re going the wrong way!” But she apparently didn’t hear a word over the wind and just kept humming toward me.

All right, I told myself. Brace for it. Accept it. She’s going to hit your car, she’s going to scratch the paint with her stupid basket, and then the rest of Eugene can hate you, too. But when she got within ten feet of my car, another miracle blast of wind came up on the other side and flopped the yellow poncho right back to where it was supposed to be. The Big Banana and I locked eyes, our destinies so close to being intertwined.

“You’re going the wrong way,” I shouted to her again, and pointed to the sidewalk. “You need to be over there.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, she looked at me, said simply, “You shouldn’t hate old people,” then put it in reverse, and, although it took her an additional light to make it back up onto the sidewalk, I finally got to turn left.

So things were starting to look up, I thought. There’s a lot of fun to be had here. It wasn’t as if I hated Eugene; quite the contrary. I really loved it. The landscape was unparalleled, the general citizenry was incredibly nice, people you’ve never seen before always greeted you with a smile or hello when passing on the street, and I had an adventure near every single time I left the house. In Eugene, there was excitement, beauty, and friendly people. You really couldn’t ask for anything more of a town. Maybe things aren’t so bad, I realized; it might just take me awhile to find my spot here, that’s all. I was sure that I could make my peace with Eugene and that Eugene could make its
peace with me. I just needed to be on the lookout for breast-feeding flash mobs and bring nothing but napkins to potlucks. I was positive, after all, that once I had seen a hundred boobs at a barbecue, the horror would eventually erode, like the cliffs of Dover. I realized that everything was going to be all right.

Until I was at Trader Joe’s one day, where I noticed there was a table set up near the coffee station that was giving out free samples of something in little paper cups. But the process of sampling wasn’t working out as well as it could have, mainly because as soon as the sample girl put a cup out, a bearded old-man hippie, who had strategically stationed himself between the dairy section and the coffee counter, would take a step, swipe the sample, and toss it back like it was a tequila shot before anyone else had a chance to get near it.

I couldn’t believe it. I stood down at and watched him as he swiped seven in a row, taking some of them directly from beneath the fingertips of other shoppers trying to get a sample. His stealth was amazing, I will admit, but it was getting out of hand. But this is a thing in parts of this enclave: Free samples are just an open invitation for someone to park themselves and feed for the afternoon. I firmly believe that Eugene was founded when one person with ill-placed intentions left a bowl of spelt crackers out in the middle of the forest with the sign
FREE
on it; the hippies descended upon it like ants and then stayed, waiting around, playing drums, and popping their boobs out until the next free sample bowl was produced. I’ve seen a line of twenty-five people crowd together for the opportunity to eat one free raspberry at the farmers’ market. ONE FREE RASPBERRY. I mean, really. It’s only a free raspberry. For two bucks, you can buy a whole carton, and there’s nobody in
that
line.

Watching the sample swiper, I felt my anger rise quickly, and
as I saw the sample girl getting ready to put another specimen out, I left my cart, marched over to the table, and literally stole the sample right out from underneath him. “That’s what you get for being rude” was the message, and I believe it was successfully parlayed in my evil grin as I walked away with the sample in hand. My success, however, was quickly dampened when I looked down and saw what the sample was: peach salsa and a tortilla chip. No wonder they were giving it away, I thought. It looked disgusting. But just in case the hippie was looking at me, I took the tortilla chip, scooped up the salsa, then threw the cup away in the trash, and on the first bite felt a shot of pain up the left side of my face.

A week later, I was in the dentist’s chair after I got the X-rays taken, and my dentist was shaking his head.

“You didn’t even want the salsa but you ate it anyway?” he said to me, chuckling.

“He was being rude,” I insisted. “And I decided to teach him a lesson.”

“What was the lesson?” he asked, still laughing.

“Instant karma’s gonna get you,” I replied.

“And, oh, did it,” he replied. “Because I’m afraid I don’t give out free samples.”

S
itting in the waiting room at my doctor’s office, I looked next to me and glared at my husband. When we arrived, he had almost any seat in the house to choose from while I checked in, and when I was done forking over my insurance info I joined him across from the only other lady in the waiting area. Fifteen seconds after I sat down, she burst forth with a rattle that sounded more like a machine gun submerged in Jell-O than the recognizable cough of a mammal.

Before I could even say something like “We need to build a barrier out of magazines and Fisher-Price toys,” a grown man walked by in his pajamas, and the sounds of another violently retching in a nearby bathroom were more than audible.

Before the nurse called my name, a man in the third scooter I had seen in ten minutes shot by with a gallon bag full of urine hanging off his front basket on what appeared to be a pee hook.

“Really?” I asked my husband when I regained the ability to speak and say mean things. “Really? Do you know how long it takes to pee a gallon? At least a couple of days. At least.
Days
. And you can’t tell me Mr. Rascal hasn’t passed a sink since Monday.”

My husband just looked at me.

“That,” I said as I pointed down the hall in the direction he rolled, “was for shock value. One wrong pass by a magazine rack or sudden jolt over a broom handle and that thing will rupture and have no mercy within a ten-foot splash zone. What would you do if you got soaked by week-old pee and you saw the guy it came from?
Fire
. Fire is the only answer. I’m going to have nightmares for three nights about that humming urinal on wheels. This is why I hate coming here. I don’t know why I let you talk me into this.”

“You got stabbed in the foot by a pair of scissors,” my husband replied. “And you’re here because you haven’t had a tetanus shot in twenty years, although I do agree that if lockjaw can also paralyze your tongue into silence, I will take you home right now.”

That is roughly why I was there. The day before, I had been looking for a specific pair of shoes in my closet and was pulling down a shoe box from a shelf when I saw something flash by and hit my foot, then felt a twinge of pain. But honestly, I didn’t think it hurt all that much, until I looked at it and saw blood pumping out of it as if Jed Clampett had been shooting at some food.

I was already standing in a puddle of blood that was spreading quickly, but after I hobbled downstairs and got the bleeding to stop, I realized the wound was deeper than it was wide.

“Oooh, you’re going to need a tetanus shot for that,” my husband said, wincing.

“Shut up,” I replied quickly. “No. I can weather this. Prairie medicine.”

My husband rolled his eyes.

“Break your toe, break your nose, fine, go ahead with the prairie medicine,” he said. “But lockjaw is a different story.
That will make your body flip around like a little girl possessed by the devil doing a spider walk down the stairs of a D.C. townhouse. The kind of behavior that made people in the Middle Ages and modern-day Catholics call a priest to their house. That’s never been a quality I was looking for in a spouse.”

I really didn’t want to go to the doctor. I really, really didn’t. I would very nearly rather stay home and take my chances with major muscle spasms and communicate by typing with a straw in my mouth than go to the doctor. If I had a doctor who would figure out the issue, write me a prescription for whatever ails me, and let me be on my way, that would be one thing. But I don’t have that kind. I have the kind who is one of those “above and beyond” physicians, one who wants you to get a little something extra for your co-pay, whether it be some extra facts to put in your cap, a field trip, or a recipe for bran muffins. I guess it could be considered “going the extra mile,” but I don’t see how that’s a benefit when
I’m
the one who’s running it.

I suppose putting out even a bit of extra effort these days is all very nice, but when I came down with an intestinal malady that I knew I needed medical attention for, I just needed a quick visit, a prescription for Cipro, and to go back to bed. And, in fact, he didn’t write me one prescription, he wrote me two, and told me I needed to go down to the first-floor library to fill them. And then he gave me a recipe for bran muffins, copies of which he keeps in an organizer on his wall, something he had given me on each previous trip for a flu shot, a swollen knee, and eczema.

“Make some muffins! Your bowel movements should have the consistency of a—” he started.

“Ri—” I joined in.

“—iiiipe banana!” he finished.

So, being the rube that I am, I actually found the library, which was oddly not even in the medical facility but off to the left in an outbuilding. I opened the door to flickering fluorescent lights and an otherwise empty storefront filled with bookshelves and tables; it looked more like a used bookstore than a library. I heard some noises from the back, and out from the shadows came a hunched-over figure shuffling toward me. I almost whispered, “Pop Pop?” except that he didn’t have any coupons in his hand.

An elderly, very tall man emerged from the darkness. I handed him my prescription and he nodded his head, smiled, and seemed to get very excited. I still had no idea how a library was going to give me pills, but it all seemed to make sense to him, so I rolled with it, and when he told me to follow him, off I went to a corner.

He offered me a seat at a table and I took it. Then he started bringing me books, putting them on the table, and going back and getting more. Finally, he took the seat next to me, dragged a heavy book off the top of the stack, and opened it, with the words, “So this is what diseased intestines look like!”

For the next hour, I looked at picture after picture—some illustrations with transparent layers, some photographs of diseased, cancerous, and pouchy intestines—and the old man, who turned out to be a retired doctor who most likely hadn’t seen anybody in the “library” in a number of years, was very happy to see me. It was like he was poring over a yearbook and showing me evidence of his glory days. To be honest, he was having such a good time I couldn’t bear to stop him and responded with fictitious amounts of glee when I saw a big, punchy tumor in a colon and pockets of diverticuli dotting some poor guy’s bowel.

I guess you could say we bonded a little as I looked through
all of the old books with him, trying to think of interesting questions like “So can a tapeworm really poke its head out of your butt?” and “Is it possible to stick a can of hairspray up there, or was my best friend’s doctor ex-husband lying about that, too?” and “Do you remember seeing anything at Harvard that looked like a Fart Chart? Officially?”

Now, I wouldn’t say that it was the worst hour I ever spent in my life, but being a polite hostage to a lonely old man exploring the mysteries of the poop chute is not at the top of the list of things I’d like to repeat. In addition, the only “prescription” he could fill was disturbing images found in crusty old books, and I still had to go to Safeway and stand in line behind contagious people anyway. And this was in the forefront of my mind the next time I needed medical treatment, when my tongue turned green and I was convinced it was rotting from gangrene, or most likely from simple overtime. I was panicked and took the first available appointment the following day.

And that took a lot of will. Not just because the last time I visited my doctor I was sent as a sacrificial lamb to the medical library, which I would say somewhat shattered my trust in prescriptions—I mean, this time I got an old doctor when I was expecting a nice, easy painkiller; next time I might think I’m getting my high-blood-pressure pills but get a life coach wearing tie-dye instead—but because I had already suffered mouth indignities and I wasn’t eager to repeat them. I had been to the dentist twice the previous week concerning a new crown I had installed (since they cost as much as appliances and I am going to start referring to them in the same manner) after the tortilla chip incident. My dentist also thought it would be a great idea to cast a mold of my mouth for a teeth-whitening tray, a procedure that took five of the most paralyzing minutes of my life and caused me to apologize aloud for my Mach 4 gag reflexes.
I was so tired of people sticking their hands in my piehole that when a basket of bread sticks was placed on our table one night when we went out to dinner, my hand immediately flew up to cover my mouth and my shoulders began rolling.