2014-06-12 - 2:45 p.m.
The Insiders
When I find myself in dentist�s chair or at salon with dreaded amateur cutting my hair, I�ve always found it useful to be acquainted with a few code words central to the action of the particular profession just to send a quick message: �He may be an insider, so I better be on my best behavior!�
I mean, what difference is there really b/w a gang member and a teacher? It�s all a mater of signs, coded language and attempt to intimidate. At root, it�s an attempt to separate the insiders from the outsiders, the wheat from the chaff.
�Did he just say �we must scaffold all backward planned activities in order to meet the zone of proximate development?�
�He understands my world! He can empathize with my day to day struggs.�
In soothe, I prefer to learn enough coded occupation languages from magazines, eavesdropping, etc, just enough to pass. But once the deception is detailed enough to be swallowed, I am free to wonder back outside the almost hermetically sealed bubbles of insiders and I go back out into the wild outside, the place of unexpected scents on fresh winds.
In sooth, learning the insider patois is always a superficial charm act. In any situ, I�m lucky if I can pass for approx three mins. tops. After I wear thin, it becomes clear to interlocution agent that I am some sort of cunning bird dropping off my own eggs to be sat on and hatched into fledglings. All the glory with none of the work. The flyers usually set out all apeck and talons. Usually I emerge a few feathers lighter, but I have learned from experience, when it is time to take my eggs and find new nest.
Now what brings me to dray you�my dearest reader�into the four paragraph tidewater of this tale before giving you a taste for the salinity and full ocean view, is that you must understand what befell me last Wednesday afternoon on what began the greatest (and most confusing) week of my life.
I had made an appointment to get a toe fungus looked at by a physician at....(blank, lo siento, I am forced at this time due to legal proceedings to leave out the place of occupation in order not to compromise the ox�s within the organization). As I�m sitting in the room, waiting for the physician to make her grand appearance on the central stage, I plan out my offensive of insider argot. Now the best way, insofar as I see, to make a loud staccato announcement of my earnest expertise is by parroting whatever I have read recently on Wikipedia. As a trained poet, with a love of symbol and subtext, I easily get excited by the hyperlinks of the internet or as I call it, the Infinite Garage Sale, where all hyperlinks lead to Oprah. I could harp on forever about The Infinite Garage Sale and how it is a beautiful poem, every little word takes on associations, so that it becomes a matter of curtailed time, so many garages apuff with the good stuffs. In any event, as I go into my own garage, searching for a memory of medical expertise, I decide that I will ask the physician an open-ended question about the Affordable Care Act. This will announce that the Allies have stormed the beaches of Normandy.
As the young�maybe too young�physician enters the room, I lose all sense of time and memory. She enters slowly and I see sparks like inertia of an MDMA roll. I catch sight of her eyes, rich brown ox-like eyes with hints of yellow and I am instantly transported back to the knolls of youth under umbrage of tree with a strong sensation of ruby-tang grapefruit trombone chords.
�How are you?�
I cannot reply, my tongue is dry and the words don�t come out, like somebody has placed marbles wrapped in peanut butter in my mouth.
�Good.�
Good, that�s all you�ve got? Good! Now I search through the files to find my open ended question and I find it and ask �What do you think about the Affordable Care Act?�
She seems like she was not expecting this, she looks at her watch and suddenly I can tell she is annoyed. Perhaps extremely annoyed. I am proud of my question because, through the sterile bath of calling a thing by acronym form, I got rid of all the connotation germs. If I would have called the ACA by an emotional name like Obama Care that is always when the emotions get involved and the prairie dog either starts to look for the closest burrow or alerts the others and they all go into attack mode together.
�Well, I think it is covering people who have long been neglected in our society, while it is not single-payer, it is a step in the right direction.�
Her reply was short, to the point, and although it did make me wonder if she was a fellow traveler, I decided with her skin tone, politics should not enter into this hunt. After all, when you are going after a graceful dear, you don�t ask it what it�s opinions are on the Republican Party. My attitude toward this professional had downshifted from the civil back to the primal. Competence, ineptitude, none of this no longer mattered. For this flower was in peak bloom. The fruit was ripe. My foraging eye told me approximately 27 years had treaded lightly upon her face. Her skin appeared highly elastic with, supple musculature. It was her diagnostic skills against my foraging experiences. As I felt my attraction grow, I wondered if I would catch one of my love manics. I felt an elevating, a riding high on probably no drugs whatsoever but endogenous oxytocin.
Now I had expected some old stooge to walk in and look at my fungal toe. Now that I was in the room with this beautiful fresh peach, I felt morally obligated not to spread my mold to her. So the next dilemma was apace, how to not let her know my despicable reason for appearing on the grand stage today? The question came before my Pentium Processor had time to do its magic: �So what brings you here today?�
�Liver Pain�
Liver pain? That�s the best you can do? Is the liver even enervated? What kind of unflattering thing is a pickled liver? It says you�re old. It says you drink. You�re liver, hypertrophying like some oxygen deprived star, going into supergiant mode in final, desperate mode to stay alive, with no idea of how to stay alive, except to just keep getting bigger and crawl into your rib cage.
�Well Mr. Staley, it says right here that you have a fungal infection on your big toe?�
�And that too.�
�Would you like to address the liver pain or the fungal infection on your big toe today? We�ll only have time for one, you can make an appointment to come back and we can discuss the other.�
�I guess, the fungal infection on the big toe is more of a problem.� He had meant to avoid saying the unfavorable phrase and the stratagem had backfired and instead he just said it more.
�When did you first notice the fungus on your toe?�
�One month ago. I�ve been just trying to deal with it, because it�s embarrassing. I rubbed some saut�ed garlic on it for a few weeks and it seemed to get better, but then it came back.�
�What made you want to rub sauteed garlic on your toe?�
�Well, it�s got a phytochemical in it called allicin, and back in WWI, before penicillin, it was used to treat infection, in fact, it was garlic was called �Russian penicillin.�
TBCYogurt
