Any job you do not love
Is a job that never ends
The way to make it better
Is to share it with a friend
Tag: writing
A Visit to the Doctor
The lobby of the Mountain View Family Healthcare was clean and well lit. There was music playing in the background and a vase of brightly colored flowers sat on a small wood table just to the left of the entryway. The room was warm, inviting, and smelled a little like Magnolias; it reminded me more of a boutique than a doctor’s office. I smiled and thought what a nice touch. But I bet it cost them a pretty penny to keep fresh flowers here in the dead of winter in the middle of Montana.
At the counter, the receptionist, a very cute little blond of about twenty with a very large smile and a name tag that read Nancy asked, “How may I help you today?” Her voice was pleasant and it at least seemed to me that she genuinely cared about my welfare. I immediately decided that I liked her and I would make a point of telling Dr. Johansen so.
“Brotherton,” I replied. “10:00”
She quickly flashed her fingers across the keyboard in front of her and looked up to make eye contact with me, that huge smile still spread across her face. “Why yes, Jerry. It looks like we have all the information we need. Please have a seat and someone will be out in a moment.”
Everybody is so friendly here. I thought.
After a bit of small talk with her, bordering on flirting, I turned and stepped through the archway and into the waiting room. Holy crap what the…, it looks like every sick person in town is in here. More than a dozen people nearly filled all the chairs along one wall. They stared into space, with oozing red eyes half closed from God knows what kind of diseases. They looked like some kind of zombies from a sci-fi channel horror movie. They had their hands stuffed with wadded up tissues and I could almost see the millions of germs flying around the room from all the coughing, sneezing, and hacking going on. A middle aged redheaded woman with too much makeup was struggling to keep a child on her lap. The kid was screaming and she looked like she was just too worn out to even care. In the corner under the television, several toddlers were playing with a small plastic box filled with toys. Small bubbles of mucus puffed from their noses as they breathed. They wiped their green slime onto everything in sight.
I was limited as to the seating arrangements but I managed to squeeze into a seat between an elderly man with an oxygen tank and a teenage boy with his left arm in a cast. It was as far away from the zombies as I could get and I figured these two were the least likely to be spreading influenza, or cholera, or the black plague. I sat there staring at my shoes and making a conscious effort not to breathe too deeply.
What a giant waste of time, they could’ve just sent me an email with my results. I guess that would be too easy though. If they did that, they wouldn’t be able to bill the insurance for another office visit.
After what seemed like an eternity of reading ‘Field and Stream’, ‘National Geographic’, and ‘Clifford, The Big Red Dog’, all the while a constant exposure to a myriad of life threatening diseases that have no cure and could turn my mind into mush; a short, black haired nurse finally stuck her head through the doorway of the waiting room.
“Jerry,” she said in a lifeless tone not even bothering to look up from her clipboard.
About freakin’ time.
“Here!” I said, so relieved to be rid of my germ-infested neighbors I nearly knocked over a table as I all but ran toward the door.
“Follow me please,” She said, still staring at the chart in her hands. She walked briskly down the brightly lit hallway and nodded her head toward an open door. “Please remove your shoes and step onto the scale.”
I sure hope my feet don’t stink too bad.
“Okeydokey, are you having a good day?” I asked, trying to engage her in some friendly banter.
What a real sour puss. Would it hurt you to smile once in a while?
She still hadn’t looked up from her clipboard and made no indication she’d heard me or was even willing to give a reply if she had.
I could have three eyes and a horn coming out of the top of my head and I bet she wouldn’t even notice.
She quickly flipped the blocks across the scale and jotted a few notes on that precious chart of hers.
265 pounds! What the hell… man this thing isn’t even close.
She moved the slide up and took a quick measurement of my height. “Five feet, nine inches,” she mumbled to her all-knowing clipboard.
Well, at least she got that one right.
She led the way to another room farther down the hallway. Her white shoes made no noise on the brightly polished floor. My shoes however seemed to echo through the building like a tap dancing elephant on steroids, playing with a squeaky toy.
I have to remember next time to wear tennis shoes.
She motioned with that damn clipboard of hers for me to have a seat on the edge of the examination table. She checked my heartbeat with a stethoscope that she’d obviously stored in the freezer. She proceeded to take my blood pressure, nearly squeezing my arm in half and jotted some more notes in that damn top-secret chart.
“Can you supply a urine sample?” she asked.
Actually, I had to piss like a racehorse.
“I guess so,” I said, “but I just gave one last week. I’m only here for the results of my physical.” By now I’d given up all hope of trying to engage her in any type of friendly conversation.
“It’s just routine…nothing to worry about,” she said, finally looking up from her precious clipboard. “Please come this way.”
Something smells a little fishy in the steak house, if you know what I mean.
“No problem.” I said.
Sure, let’s just bleed me for some more money. Maybe they should put in one of those rides like at the carnival, you know, one of those that turn you upside down to shake the coins from your pockets. At least I could have a little fun while going broke. Maybe that way, they could afford to get a scale that actually worked.
I followed her down another hallway to a bathroom where she pulled a cup from the cabinet and opened a sliding door in the wall. “When you’re finished just place the cup in here and shut the door. Return to your room and the doctor will be there shortly.” She opened the door to leave but suddenly turned. “And you have a nice day, Mr. Brotherton.”
Hey, maybe she’s not so bad after all.
I made my way back down the hallway and I heard a familiar voice drift out from a half opened doorway, “Please remove your shoes and step onto the scale.”
I laughed.
I wonder how many more of those poor, three-horned creatures are going to be squeezed, prodded, and herded into their little stalls, with their information hidden from them on other little secret charts.
Marriage is Like a Football Team (Part 3)
A Man’s Guide to Relationships
My Five Rules of
Football and Marriage – Rule 3
Let’s start off by saying that I am not a licensed therapist or a professional counselor. My observations of my mother and father, who were married for over fifty years before my mother’s death and my own very happy marriage to the same woman for forty five plus years is my only source of expertise. I believe that I have learned some very valuable lesson in that time and feel it is my duty as a fellow man to pass these things on to whoever might benefit from it.
You’ve spent years preparing yourself for the day. You’ve trained, tried out for the team and have been selected. Now what? It turns out that when you were in school and your coach was teaching you the fundamentals of football, he wasn’t just teaching you football but was teaching you the things you needed for creating a lasting relationship. Who knew that coach ‘Earl the Squirrel’ was so damn smart?
Rule #3 – Stay Positive:
Constant negative press can hurt a team and a negative attitude toward a relationship can destroy it.
The problem with men in a lasting relationship is that we think that one of the greatest mysteries of the universe is what a woman really wants from it. There have been thousands of books and movies on the subject over the years. We believe that women are so complex and complicated that the only thing that will appease them is beyond our ability to give. We have been so brainwashed by the negative that we know that no matter what we try to do, it will be totally wrong.
It’s not really such a “great-unknown” mystery… women like change. Just like the offensive coordinator needs a variety of plays in his play book in order to keep the other team surprised, you need to give them variety. They crave it as badly as we desire consistency.
So the question is…if men hate change and women crave change…how will we ever get along?
Marriage is Like a Football Team (Part 1)
A Man’s Guide to Relationships
My Five Rules of
Football and Marriage – Rule 1
Let’s start off by saying that I am not a licensed therapist or a professional counselor. My observations of my mother and father, who were married for over fifty years before my mother’s death and my own very happy marriage to the same woman for forty plus years is my only source of expertise. I believe that I have learned some very valuable lesson in that time and feel it is my duty as a fellow man to pass these things on to whoever might benefit from it.
You spent years preparing yourself for the day. You trained, tried out for the team and was selected. Now what? It turns out that when you were in school and your coach was teaching you the fundamentals of football, he wasn’t just teaching you football but was teaching you the things you needed for creating a lasting relationship. Who knew that coach ‘Earl the Squirrel’ was so damn smart?
Rule #1
com·mit·ment: Responsibility, obligation, loyalty, devotion, dedication, allegiance, oath, pledge, or guarantee.
The first practice on that very first day you gave a promise to your coach, to your team, and to yourself, binding you to a course of action. Now here it is…how many years later and you would still lay down whatever you were doing and run to their aid if they needed you.
That same promise is what you gave to your partner. I know you’ve heard the speech a thousand times. You must be willing to give 110%…100% of the time, but it’s true. There are no free rides. It requires hard work and commitment.
Sure in the beginning everything was fresh, new, and exciting. You had brand new uniforms, new teammates, and new coaches. With so much to learn and so much to do, the anticipation of the unknown was enough to keep you stimulated.
It’s the same with a relationship. Exploring the wonderland of each other’s feelings, emotions and learning their reactions in the beginning was enough to keep the relationship moving forward. As my old coach was so fond of saying, “if you ain’t moving forward, you ain’t moving.”
Eventually though will come the dreaded ‘end of the honeymoon’. That’s the point when you know your partner so well that you can finish their sentences. Things begin to get tense and soon you’re feeling like you’re trapped in a rut and it will take something drastic to end the cycle. You wonder what went wrong. I mean, you react to your partner the same way today as you did when you first met them. Things worked well then so why not now. You were very happy and life was great. You haven’t changed a thing over the years so why is your relationship falling apart now?
Now is when you have to dig deep and draw on that commitment that you made to your partner. Live up to the promise that you would always do your best to not let them down. The same as if you were halfway through the season and had not won a game. You wouldn’t just give up. You’d buckle down, stick your nose to the grind stone, and try harder than ever. Doesn’t your relationship deserve the same effort?
The thing to remember is that anyone can have relationship problems whether it is with your spouse, lover, parent, or child. When asked about it, usually there are very few people that can explain what’s wrong with their relationship. They can, however, explain in great detail what has happened and who has done what to whom.
If you find yourself in a relationship that is less than satisfactory you need to be able to answer a few questions.
A: How did we get to where we are now?
A losing team or a bad relationship doesn’t just happen. They are born, fed, and nurtured into becoming what they are. To turn the season around or to fix a bad relationship you must first look at what role your performance has contributed to the problem. You must be prepared to accept the responsibility for your actions even those that were brought on unintentionally.
B: Do you want to put in the effort to repair your relationship?
No one wants to be, nor should they ever need to be, on a bad team. By no means am I trying to tell you that you should be chained to an unfulfilling, unsatisfactory, or outgrown relationship. That choice and that responsibility belong to you. But what I’m saying is that no season should be let go without giving it the best of your abilities to live up to your commitment. No relationship should be abandoned without putting forth your best effort. It’s not fair to assume it’s always the other person that’s at fault. But sometimes, even the best football team can fall apart if all the players just aren’t compatible. When that happens, someone usually ends up on the free agent list.
C: I’ve decided I really want this relationship to work. Where do I begin?
All relationships, like winning teams, grow through change; they are transformed from losers to winners through change. You can’t keep blaming the quarterback because he can’t complete a pass while being sacked. You can’t throw the pass for him. So you must do a better job of protecting him. You can’t keep blaming everyone else for your relationship problems. You must begin by changing yourself. You must practice, practice, practice…with the same level of commitment that you had on that very first day so many years ago.
To Be Continued…..
Jerry Brotherton 