Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#5)

"I can't get sick," he said. "Not now, at least." He stood at the desk, chatted with me and Mary, the roving nurse. He wrote in the notebook he always carried. Then he went back to the waiting room, and he and the other man watched fish swim around the tank. "Fish can have a calming effect," he said aloud, but I knew he didn't need a response. He always seemed calm enough; we liked him because he paid his bill on time and brought us cookies at Christmas. He'd been our patient for years, just as his wife had.

---

I'm not calm when I visit my doctor because, given my family history, we both know that eventually he'll find something wrong. The man beside me had yellowish skin. He commented on the fish. He went in first, then I was taken to an examination room. "Is Doc telling him today?" the woman at the desk said to someone as Mary closed the door and weighed me. Then Mary said the doctor might be later than usual because he had to give someone some bad news. When Mary left, I looked out the window. The rain was soft and gentle.

The Woman in Black

With the Muse apparently on vacation once again, I've been searching in corners and closets for things to write about. It seems, though, that the only things in those places are flecks of dust and old shoes. This usually means that a change in both place and pace is in order--different corners and closets, and such.

After class tonight, as I stood at a campus kiosk and searched a map for a building in which a guitar course is supposed to be taking place. I wanted to speak to the instructor about the course itself and whether I'd be a good fit for it next semester. Or, if the course would be a good fit to me. As I stood there, I watched as a young woman walked toward me: black hair, black clothes, smoking a cigarette. Tattoos. "You looking for a particular building?" she hollered. (Yep--hollered.)

I told her I was, but that I couldn't find it on the map. "The music building," I said. "Like, the chorus?" she asked. "My cousin sings in the chorus." I told her that, in fact, I was looking for whatever building I could find where guitar classes are taught.  She pointed this way and that. "How about if I just walk you over there?" she said when we both realized I had no idea of to where she was directing me.

So, we walked. "I've been on this campus a long time," she said. "Well, not a long time, but three years." She told me she had a test tonight, a final, but it was on report writing and the test shouldn't be too hard. I guessed correctly that her major is criminal justice. I asked if she was going on to get her B.A., and she said she'd already been accepted at the local university. That's good, I said. She said this is her last semester, that she didn't declare a major until after her first year in school. Then she said this: "I was kind of distracted that year because my brother was murdered."

Well, of course he was.

She went on: "There's so much stuff you have to deal with: lawyers and police and the trial. When someone in your family is murdered, everything gets harder."

I told her that, yes, all of that stuff is much more important than school, at least at some level.

"And then you have to look at the body," she said, "and that's not easy."

We reached the building I was looking for, and she gave me a high-five. We parted ways. I looked through the building and found the classroom I was looking for, but the doors were locked and nobody was there. Tough luck, I guess. 

In the end, I'm not sure if the Muse will be happy with this, but the encounter itself was interesting. Sometimes things simply have to start somewhere.