Waiting Room

I have decided to chalk up our dermatologist experience to "how to keep an open mind". The dermatologist that my son was referred to has a bright pink exteriored office. The waiting room walls are bright yellow which does not lean toward the recommended warm orange tones. On these lemon walls, professional, beautifully framed portraits of newly enhanced cleavage suddenly jump out at you. We have been going there once a month for over a year now and we used to bring books, but now we've just trained our eyes to not look or to not care. The portraits are also in all the treatment rooms. Some of them are also of beautiful older women's face lifts, but one has an upper middle aged woman's tummy tuck evident by a cropped shirt meant for girls a few generations younger than she. But her six-pack looks great. So does Ben's face. The improvement is miraculous, so we keep going.

The waiting room also has pictures of how you can change your lips to look like candy orange slices, or any other color including rainbow, complete with sugar sprinkles, sequins, and rhinestones. All stuck on your super-slippery lips that I don't think could stick together long enough to say the letter "p", much less hold on all the glitter. Another miracle I guess.

But the receptionist is a saint in my estimation. She is very personable, interested in the patients' lives, and loves everyone enough to call them Sweetie, but she really believes they are. Today she got the tenth call from this person who kept trying to get around the necessary screening from an eye doctor. She started to get frustrated with her as she kept repeating herself, but when the caller finally said she'd do it, the receptionist told the person paying their bill that she and the caller were having a good time talking to each other all day, and that she was a sweetie. And she meant it. And when she says have a great day, she means that too. I believe her.