Two weeks ago, I ran a sum of twelve blocks in rubber and nylon strapped sandals, six blocks to the bank and six blocks back. This run was critical as my debit card was declined at a restaurant and, luckily, three blocks north, then three blocks west existed my bank.

Apparently this run caused my sandals to chisel from my ankle a small mass of skin. I only realized this when I looked at the wounded yesterday morning, puzzled about why my ankle been hurting for the past week and a half. The area was clearly infected. I looked at my sandal and saw that a meager lump of skin and blood caked onto one of the straps. I decided it best to call the doctor.

This morning I arrived at the waiting room of my doctor's office at 0846 hrs, a minute tardy for my 0845 appointment. I figured this extra minute couldn't be harmful to me, as it bought a minute from the time I would have to wait in the waiting room. Thankfully this was the case as I had to wait in the waiting room for only twenty-nine minutes as opposed to the half of an hour I would have had to wait had I arrived on time.

I sat and read an issue of Time Magazine I found sitting on a chair next to what turned out to be a charismatic, wisecracking old man. The cover highlighted a picture of a fetus and the headline had something to do with new scientific breakthroughs pertaining to pregnancy and prenatal development. The magazine dated back six months.

Six months of contact with infectious hands belonging to impatient people anxious to see the doctor.

I flipped past the cover story and found a short article highlighting a comeback in eighties toy culture. Cabbage Patch Kids, He-Man and Care Bares are coming back. It appears after the bubble of the 90s Internet economy burst, the generation a few years older than mine gave up all ambitions of retaining creativity. Generation Xers need to get a life as much as I need to stop fiending for episodes of The Adventures of Pete and Pete and other pop culture hang-ups from my past.

After surveying the waiting room, I realized that old or dying people get priority over young people who have minor infections. "Damn," I thought. "I wish I had shingles. I wish I were old so I could be in and out of this goddamned place."

While in the middle of this thought, a woman in her eighties came into the office. Her breathing was shallow and heavy. While she stood at the receptionist window, her breathing became heavier and she began to repeat, "Oh my god." Some people walked toward her and others stared. Peripherally, I caught most of what was going on and this is how I liked it but I never acknowledged the phenomenon directly. I had finally gotten to the article about the scientific breakthroughs in prenatal development and became rather interested in a) times coverage of said prenatal scientific breakthroughs and b) not becoming another drone in the swarm of this poor woman's interrogators. Instead of coherently answering, "are you OK?", which the woman might have been asked seventy times, the woman replaced her manic "Oh my god" to a mantra similarly disturbing.

"What am I going to do? What am I going to do? What am I going to do? Oh my god, what am I going to do?"

At this point, I reconsidered my wish. The old woman who had since decided to sit next to me, was called into the office. They called for me soon afterward.

As the nurse walked me into the office, I recalled, "This is the first time I have been to the doctor for anything other than a sore throat... oh." I reconsidered the statement upon realizing the invalidity of the statement.

"Excuse me?" asked the nurse.

"I was going to say that this is the first time I have been to the doctor for anything other than a sore throat, but I'd just remembered the time I got that shot in my ass."

Slightly over a year and a half ago, I went to my doctor to have what I thought was a tumor on a testicle examined. My doctor diagnosed me with a condition, I cant recall the name, that results from having sex with women infected with clamydia. After an ultrasound, I was relieved to discover that I didn't have cancer or an STD. I had epididimitus, an infection of the epiditimus so common, forty percent of American males are infected with it. The condition is not contagious.

Come to think of it, I once went to my doctor to have half of my big toenail removed. A year prior to the makeshift surgery, I accidentally broke the toenail in half. After it grew back, it had a tendency to grow in askew. The doctor numbed the area, sliced the nail down the middle with a razor, slid a long needle between the nail and the toe and popped it off.

The nurse stepped out to retrieve the doctor, who would return just shy of a half hour later. In this time, I looked at everything in the small room twenty times or so. The clock's face read Prozac and on the second hand was a round, flat plastic silhouette of a Prozac pill, pointing at every second that ticked away. On the wall behind me, a picture hung showing two little girls in the middle of an embrace. It read:

"A faithful friend is a sure shelter

whoever finds one

has found a rare treasure"

I figure when one realizes "a faithful friend is a rare treasure", and deduces that friends are less than faithful, it is assuring to turn around, look at the wall and think, "well, I might not have any faithful friends, but at least I have Prozac."