For lack of anything better to do, I was just remembering some of life's stupid moments. I've tried to forget them, but they just resurface to humiliate me when I'm trying to sleep. It would be very beneficial for me if I could just lie down and go to sleep, but my brain doesn't have an automatic shut off.
I have more stupid moments than I'm willing to write about, but this one is a doosey. This one still shames me when I think of the degree of stupidness it entails. I would like to say that it happened because I was young, naive, nervous, (terrified), whatever. In reality, I was just stupid. I had a doctors appointment with a type of doctor that all women learn to dread seeing, but are resigned to the yearly visit. At my young age of 16ish, I surely was dreading it, but had not yet learned to be resigned about it.
Mom was with me, so that was a small comfort. When my name was called, or as most often happens, mispronounced, I slowly got to my feet and started that nigh unto death and humiliation in my immediate future walk. I was consoling myself with the fact that at least I knew how to pronounce my name. The nurse might have a higher education than me, but she sure didn't know squat about name pronunciation.
We arrived at the exam room, and the already minuscule room shrunk in diameter by at least five feet. There was room for me, the nurse, the exam table, a rolling stool, a sink and cabinet combo, and last, but certainly not least, the SCALES. The scales alone will cause a room to shrink, add fear and humiliation to the factor, and mega shrinkage occurs. The nurse then hands me the designer gown with instructions to change into the lovely garment, to be tied in the front, and she exited the room. What she failed to acknowledge was the fact that the gown is known as a designer gown, due to the fact that it was designed to be worn by a anorexic midget on Prozac. The only thing I can identify with in that sentence is Prozac. An anorexic midget I'm not, and never will be. After this visit I would need Prozac. It hadn't been invented yet, or I would have overdosed on it.
The nurse returned to the room and mentioned that she would need to get my weight. She wouldn't take my word for it, so I had to prove to her that I'm reverse anorexic. Let the humiliation begin. I stood on the scales and took it like the woman that I was to become. Very sober faced the nurse moved the weights around, back and forth, upside down and backwards, just to be sure that the humiliation was complete, (little did she, nor did I, that this was only the beginning). Then she said she would need to get my height.
I know that this should have been the easy part, and the least humiliating part. Let's remember who we're talking about here. It's me! Nothing is ever easy with me. Remember what I said about the shrinkage in the size of the room. It's a very small room. The scale was situated between the exam table and the wall. I don't really remember how much space there was between the scales and the wall, but it wasn't very much. I do know however, that there was enough room for me to stand wedged between the wall and the scale. It took some work, but I managed to get myself, looking so pretty in the "tie in the front" designer gown, wedged between the wall and the scale.
While I am working so diligently at this task, the nurse is standing there watching me with the most bewildered look on her face. I'm thinking she is a nut case, and surely she has seen people get into position to have their height measured. Finally she said, 'What are you doing?" Well DUH!!! I'm stacking B B's in a corner, what does it look like I'm doing?" I didn't say that, but I thought it. I said, 'I'm standing up against the wall so you can get my height." How stupid can this nurse be? Pretty dumb. She can't even pronounce my name. She then very seriously said, "I need you to stand back up on the scales so I can use the measuring device." I knew that! I was 5' 6" when I arrived for my appointment, but by the time I got up on the scales to be measured, humility had caused me to shrink an inch. I was now 5' 5".
Now the room had become so small there was barely any room for me to stand on the scales. The temperature in the room had risen to the point of boiling hot. Made so from the heat of embarrassment. The room was not only small, but boiling hot. The nurse hurriedly measured me, wrote my height in the chart and fled the room. The designer gown got tighter, didn't close quite as well in the front, and I was burning up almost to the point of having a heat stroke.
All of this and the exam was yet to happen. Some twenty to thirty minutes later the nurse and doctor came into the room. Needless to say, a tense and dreadful experience (without stupidity added into the equation), was dreadful, tense and beyond humiliating. I was then instructed to get dressed, leave the idiotic, stupid designer gown in the laundry basket, and come to the front desk. The neat and lovely bows that I had tied on the gown, became double knotted scraps of designer threads. May they be overtaken by moths!
Surprisingly enough I managed to get my clothes on without them being wrong side out. I fleetingly thought of kicking the scales just for good measure (no pun intended) and fled to the front desk. I hoped and prayed that the story of the stupid teenager in the exam room hadn't been spread throughout the office. No such luck. The receptionist, who before had been friendly, would now barely talk to me. The nurse and doctor were nowhere to be seen. Mom wondered at the change of behavior from the staff, but I knew the answer. The soberness and the unfriendliness was a front. The entire office staff was making an effort to contain the laughter that was threatening to burst forth the minute I stepped out of the office. Once I told mom what had happened, I thought I would have to carry her to the car. She was laughing so hard she could barely walk. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Needless to say, I never again stepped foot into that doctor's office. I would rot from any female disorder known to womankind before I would be weighed, measured, and fitted with a designer gown in that shrinking, stifling office again.
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