Farmer H Held The Key

I am still recovering from my exhausting day of being poked and prodded by medical professionals yesterday. I swear, I took off and put on my clothes more times than a two-dollar hooker on half price night.

The doctor's office that we finally found nowhere near the professional building beside the hospital was, perhaps, hard to find on purpose. The security there would have put Fort Knox to shame. I didn't notice what a fortress it was at first. After all, we walked right on in unmolested. That part came later, and only for me.

Well. We walked right on in after I climbed out of T-Hoe and onto a giant pile of mulch, then tried to walk along its surface that curved like the side of a whale, until I got to the end by the pavement. Farmer H was SO helpful. He had, after all, parked in the spot closest to the door. Then he stood at the butt-end of T-Hoe, telling me how to walk on the side of that wood-chip whale. "Step down beside it, on the blacktop." Easy for him to say. He does not grasp the concept of center of gravity. I, on the other hand, being a teacher of physics, know that the center of gravity must be over the base of support. If I had stepped down and tried to walk in that narrow space, I would have wiped T-Hoe's side clean of all country dust with my black pants. No way could I tilt my body to the side, over the mulch, while stepping my feet on the pavement. There was about six inches of pavement between the mulch curb and T-Hoe. Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is not six-inches slim.

Nor did Farmer H offer to hold my purse while I put a hand on T-Hoe to steady myself, or offer me his hand for balance. He just stood and watched. Thank the Gummi Mary, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is as surefooted as an Alaskan mountain goat.

We walked through a glass door into a glass vestibule, then through another glass door into the waiting room. I handed over my pre-completed eight pages of new patient info, then had a seat on one of four chairs near the vestibule. Farmer H was already sitting. A potted tree separated us, and we each had an empty chair on our far sides.

The thing with driving halfway across the country to get to your doctor is that your blood pressure medicine starts to take effect as soon as you arrive. Farmer H asked the receptionist if there was a restroom he could use. Let the record show that this physician might be referred to most folks in Hillmomba as a lady-doctor. So the restroom was in the inner sanctum, not out in the waiting area. The receptionist pointed Farmer H to a solid wooden door with a keypad near the handle. "Just push in 1-2-3-4, then STAR." Let the record also show that is not the actual code, because we can't have readers of this anonymous blog driving to lady-doctors all over the bi-state area, punching in security codes to use their toilet.

Farmer H returned and sat on his side of the potted tree. An older lady pulling an oxygen tank came through both glass doors and sat next to him. She apparently had a standing appointment for treatment behind the solid wooden door with a keypad that was between her and the reception desk. The main part of the waiting room was fairly full, with a TV going, and several patients and their accompaniers in various stages of coming and going.

A young lady came through the outer glass door, into the vestibule, and grabbed the handle to the inner glass door. That's when I found out that building was locked up tighter than my best old ex-teaching buddy Mabel's cabinets full of rulers, scissors, and giant yellow glue sticks. The young lady almost yanked her arm out of the socket trying to get in. We sat, the three of us near the vestibule, unable to help, yet watching in horror. Young Lady tried to get through a solid wooden door that went from the vestibule back into the inner sanctum. Nope. LOCKED UP! She tried the glass door again. Just in case it had unlocked itself. We looked nervously toward the receptionist. She was on the phone. The old lady yelled, "Push 1-2-3-4, then STAR! Push the first four numbers, then STAR!" Of course Young Lady could not quite hear through all that glass. She peered in. Old Lady yelled louder. Young Lady went back to try that at the keypad on the wooden door. Nope. Must have been a special code for that one.

Old Lady turned to the receptionist. "Will you please let her in?"

"Oh. Sorry. I was on the phone." She must have hit a buzzer. But Young Lady was still trying to break into the inner sanctum by yanking on the lever handle of the wooden door. Farmer H jumped up and pushed open the glass door.

"Here. You can get in now."

He must have won over that Young Lady, because after I came out of my poking and prodding session, Farmer H reported that Young Lady had asked for his help again. Seems that Old Lady, who happened to be there with Young Lady, who must have dropped her off at the door and not made her pull that oxygen tank over a whale-shaped hump of mulch, had been called back into the treatment room. Young Lady started playing a game on her phone. She stopped.

"I'm stuck. I don't know this one. Can you help me?"

Farmer H is not a gamer, but he IS helpful to strangers. "I looked at her phone. There was a man's face, then the plus sign, then a book. I told her, 'It's Facebook. Face. Book.' And she said, 'Oh, I NEVER would have gotten that one.'" Let the record show that Farmer H is perhaps the last person on Earth you would ever want to be on your team to play a game like that.

Let the record show that Farmer H is now the NEXT-TO-LAST person on Earth you would want on your team.