Michael D. Davis.

I was at the doctor’s office today. Don’t worry, I’m still alive… for now. But It got me thinking about that thing that you do more than anything at a doctor’s office: wait in the waiting room.

I have been to hospitals, emergency rooms, urgent cares, cardiologists, neurologists, gastrologists, endocrinologists, and just about every other ologist you can think of, and the thing that binds them all together is the waiting room. Some are nicer, some are bigger, but they are all more or less the same.

When I’m in a waiting room, I always go for the fat people’s chair. You know the one I mean, even if you never called it that. You got this room full of vinyl butt crunchers and then one or two fat people’s chairs. They look like someone took two of the vinyl butt squeezers, nailed them together, and took out the middle armrests. If the room doesn’t have one of those, the next best thing is just a chair without arms at all. I know my limitations, and I’ve never been able to fit in one of those regular waiting room chairs. If forced, I’ll just teeter on the edge of the seat, never leaning back far enough for my side fat to hook the chair and permanently lock the thing to the backside.

In the waiting room, you always have the same people. The old lady with the tissues, the restless kid, the guy who keeps looking around, the young person on their phone, you’ve seen them. And there is always the guy that looks absolutely fine, peak health, but he’ll get called back first. More than not, he even came in after you too. I don’t care if you were rushed in on horseback with a sucking chest wound, blood pooling in your eyes, and a harpoon in your back somehow that guy will get called before you.

My father is the sleeper in the waiting room. This character is usually an old guy, like my father, who sits in his chair, stretches out his legs, crosses them at the ankles, and starts to fall asleep. We have been at appointments for him, waiting for my father to be called, and he’ll be leaned back in his chair with his hat pulled down over his eyes.

It also never fails that you run into someone you know. When I was in middle school, I was absent one day to go to an appointment hours away. We get there, we are waiting, and who do I see? My math teacher.

The variables change, but the waiting rooms don’t. There is always some sort of art piece on the wall. This will inevitably be from one of two categories: A. It will be uplifting nonsense along the lines of live, laugh, love. B. It will be nature. A field, a flower, some otters drifting past a river’s edge. Whatever it is, it’s usually something you haven’t seen before, but think you have. And if the place is big enough to have a television, it’s either on The Young and The Restless, some slide show about what will get you healthy this week, or it’s just off.

Sadly, my indecision has found a way to perfectly affect my waiting room visits. If I know it’s going to be a long day, I have to bring a book, so I grab a novel. But then I think, I may want something cheery, so I have to grab a Mad Magazine or a Far Side collection. Then I think I may want to doodle, so I have to grab a sketchbook. It used to be that I’d bring a whole bag of stuff to the waiting room. Now, I just have it narrowed down to two or three books in my pockets. And let me tell you, you get some odd looks when you’re in a waiting room, and you’re reading a book, then you put it away and take out a separate book.

My favorite waiting room currently is at the neurologist. The place is on the second floor, and in the hallway, there is a large window overlooking the back end of a mechanics shop. They have a large dumpster in their back parking lot; that I don’t believe has ever been emptied. Last time I was there, for some reason, there was a headboard on the top of the pile.

Another one of my top ten waiting rooms was for a podiatrist if I remember right. It looked like he just took his living room and transformed it into a waiting room. That was an odd one.