It was a normal day in Southern California. The balmy, windy 78 degree weather was absolutely gorgeous. Too bad I was on my way to a doctor’s appointment.
Being a mom of two, I was late as usual. My appointment was at 3:00 o’clock and it was already 2:30… and, of course, I was not even close to getting there and I was driving as fast as I could possibly get away with… within reason... of course.
I managed to inch my way up as fast as possible so I didn’t find myself stuck in a string of red lights for the next eight miles; this making my 38 minute commute end up closer to an hour. Already late, I did everything I could to make there as close to 3 as possible! I pushed through lanes, merging in and out, trying to get passed every damn Poke-E-Poo (my son’s made up name for slow drivers) on the road. At rush hour... you know, in traffic!
Woohoo, we made it there only five minutes late. That wasn’t too bad… but I found out that it really didn’t make much of a difference what time I got there since there were about five other people ahead of me. Oh and check this out...I found out once we got there, that my appointment was really for 3:30! (I just wrote 3 o’clock in my appointment book so I wouldn’t be late… since I was habitually late!) Now, I was very, very early, which was nice change!
Even tho I managed to trick myself to get there on time, half of the people there also wanted to be seen earlier so everyone who had an appointment between 2:30 and 5 was waiting there … before me. And even many of them were also waaay too early for their appointments, they’ll get to go in first, simply because they signed themselves in before I did. It’s the law! Or some nurse code or rule, or something…
So now the, drive like a maniac and weave thru traffic challenge shifted to the ‘HOW TO KEEP THE TWO YEAR OLD OCCUPIED IN THE WAITING ROOM FOR AN HOUR Challenge. Bravo for me though. I had a secret weapon… I dressed my daughter in her tap shoes… just in case!
They should really make a reality show about the People in the doctor’s waiting rooms!! Especially when the doctor is running behind and there are a lot of OLD people hanging out in the waiting room. First of all, old people don’t like to wait. Maybe they figure they have done enough waiting by now. Now it’s all about cherishing every moment and all. Blah, blah, blah…
Everyone starts to look around, sizing up the situation. Then conversations start, slowly at first. The early topics begin with traffic then move onto the weather, or some other current event. Oh Lawdy don’t get a Pube and a Dem together! If there is an election happening, you can bet you are gonna to hear a thing or two about the candidates and their latest scandals!
But then it happens like clockwork …at the fifteen minute mark they come to some realization that they are still waiting. NOW they start bitching! That’s when the poker game of woundology starts. Illnesses are flying as they anti up with cases of gout and blood pressure, moving on up the scale to the heart attacks, cancer, and strokes, not forgetting the braggers who have done it all and have all of the answers to everything, because their own son was an intern. Or better, a mal-practice attorney.
Well there I go backsliding …slippery slope. Sorry, back to the story.
My secret weapon... is my two-year-old. I got her all dressed up, so she looked adorable with one finishing touch… her tap shoes, clack-clack-clacking on the wood floor. So the next challenge was to how keep her occupied for the next 45 minutes and not go crazy in the meantime!
We packed diapers and juices, and lots and lots of snacks, just to make sure we have all the weaponry we needed for the wait. To play with, I brought her very loud toy computer that had two volumes, loud and slightly less loud… yet still annoying. I started out on the loud button just to show people how courteous I was when I turned it down…of course, not wanting to bother anyone. We killed another fifteen minutes doing the ABC’s and picking out colors and numbers. FINALLY, after twenty minutes, instead of forty-five, we were quickly ushered in to our room. Gotta love those tap shoes!!
I swear we were done and right back out into the waiting room in 7 minutes… FLAT. Which was good because now I had to rush all the way back home to get my son from his Young Scholars after-school program. They had a very strict 6pm and NO later or else we turn you in for ‘child neglect and abuse’ pick up time.
Luckily, being the expert driver I am, I was very knowledgeable of all of the roads in the county. I knew every back street to take in order to avoid traffic... cuz even more than I hate driving all over the place, I despise sitting on a street or freeway and not getting anywhere… cuz we all know that with traffic, comes drivers, and with drivers comes stupidity.
People are just plain idiots when they drive a car. I am not talking about those people who are inconsiderate of others when they drive. I can bitch for hours about things like blinkers and tailgating because people are just plain rude, but no… I am talking about people who do the most stupid things, like play, Can I pass the truck and fit into that six-foot space… Or OH SHIT, STOP! While asking yourself, did I remember to get new brake lights? OMG, do you realize that you are driving around several tons of steel…? When your metal slams into my metal… trust me, I am not gonna be too HAPPY!!!!
People are just plain idiots when they drive a car. I am not talking about those people who are inconsiderate of others when they drive. I can bitch for hours about things like blinkers and tailgating because people are just plain rude, but no… I am talking about people who do the most stupid things, like play, Can I pass the truck and fit into that six-foot space… Or OH SHIT, STOP! While asking yourself, did I remember to get new brake lights? OMG, do you realize that you are driving around several tons of steel…? When your metal slams into my metal… trust me, I am not gonna be too HAPPY!!!!
I am almost there now, so close I can taste it. I am literally six minutes away from hitting my 6pm late notice, fine, and subsequent walk-of-shame tomorrow because of my tardiness… so I make a right turn through the 7-11 parking lot, passing the Panaderia. Now at Main Street, I am just a couple of blocks away as I hit the alley, about to make my final turn. As I am just about to make it, a car turns right in front of me.
There is a sign on the back of the car that says, “STUDENT DRIVER.” Oh My God are you fucking kidding me?! Great!!
The light changes green. Nothing happens. OK… I feel like I want to bitch slap this lady through my horn because she is still not moving. Instead, I politely tap my horn. She moves, finally … slowly…? Five miles per hour at first… then we start going ten. We are advancing but really, r e a l l y slow. OK, we are now at fifteen. Twenty. Then it stops. WHAT!!! The speed limit is 45 and the flow is 60 and I can see the school’s parking lot from here.
Come on… (insert the curse words HERE that are in my brain and have to stay there because my very impressionable, learning to speak two-year-old is in the back seat and SIT already sounds like SHIT so I have to behave…)
I try to get around her and I can’t. After letting (no joke here) eight cars pass as those behind me began to dart over to the left lane because of course… now I am in THEIR way!) So I am boxed in waiting for every car that was behind me to now pass. (enter even more bad words HERE!))
Finally, I could finally move over to the left lane… only to see one of the funniest things I have ever seen. As I changed lanes, I was able to take a look over to see who was driving. Exactly who was this student driver that is gonna cost me a dollar a minute, for every minute past 6? Besides I want to be able to give him, or her, something I imagine they are gonna learn very early in their driving career… They were getting… the bird.
And as I looked over, there was a little (by this I mean hunched, over old, little) Vietnamese man, maybe 70-ish at least, teaching this little (by this I mean teeny, tiny, little) girl, who was MAYBE in her early twenties but more than likely in her teens… rocking out to show tunes while she is learning to drive. Are you fucking kidding me…?
Yes, folks, I live in Southern California, the state of diversity, and home to the many patches of communities of other people migrating from other countries come to live. HERE… in the U.S… they come only to create little mini home-country-like-communities, communities known as Little Saigon or China Town, HERE… in the U.S.
Generally, you really want to avoid driving in these pockets of communities because for some reason, they just think that no one else is driving on the road…or that maybe the rules don’t apply to them cuz they’re Asian… or maybe they are too little to see over the dashboards. (altho most of them are driving Toyota’s… (I’m just saying…))
In this case, the car that’s barely accelerating, to me was the equivalent of the blind teaching the blind… and probably… literally, he may just have been the blind teacher, teaching the just as blind and possibly scared, student… to drive… The tought was just as frightening to me as it was hilarious.
You know, I hate being so judgmental about Asian drivers but I went through so many emotions at the hand of this student driver learning to drive, and at the hands of this meek little (we have now determined to be little, right?) man.
In the end I guess, we all got some lessons out of the deal. We all are blind in some way or another. And little do we know that every day we ALL become like the little Vietnamese man in the car, the man who was leading. The teacher.
So folks, the moral of this story is that I went home and drank. The End.
