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mrissaI was so very, very wrong.
Specifically, when I said, "Any medical appointment where they don't put anything metal inside your body is a good medical appointment"? Oh, was I wrong.
They put things in my ears.
Maybe I should have made this a voice post, because I'm not sure you can properly hear the creeping disgust here: things. In my ears. At one point the audiologist-or-other-professional said, "We're going to put a wick in your ear. Let me know when it hits your eardrum." And I? Being a mature and reasonable person? Did not call her any nasty names, did not attempt to knock her down and flee down the hallway, did not fling myself on the floor and howl. I didn't even squirm. I sat and let her put the thing on my eardrum and the other thing over it and then make it sound like a woodpecker had moved into my eardrum. And then she came in to take it out and said, "How are we doing?" I did not say, "You're doing fine; no one has put anything on your eardrum." I did not say, "Bloody awful, thanks for asking." I did not say, "We're just barely halfway done with this one test and God knows what you will think to do after the left side is done and I was trying to distract myself with that one Diane Ackerman poem from Planets, but the woodpecker tapping was too fast for anything but Edna St. Vincent Millay or maybemaybe e. e. cummings, and I ran out of clean e. e. cummings, and I don't even like the dirty e. e. cummings, and we're only halfway done with this one test so how do you think I'm doing?" I said, "Fine."
Mature and reasonable is so overrated.
(Happily, the medical personnel in question were from here, so they could hear the difference between "fine" and "fine." (And Zathros.) Also the way I was clutching the arm of the chair and clenching my jaw may have tipped them off.)
And they flung my head and upper body about and made me watch funny lights and blew air in my ears -- cold in the right, then cold in the left, then warm in the right, then warm in the left -- and asked me to name presidents and cars and flowers. And I did not say, "Lady, I do not know you nearly well enough to let you do that, even with mechanical assistance." No. Because I am a mature and reasonable person, even when they tangle my hair in electrodes, even when they leave goop on my face without wiping it off, even when they touch the hair that grows right above my ears that is the part of my body most likely to make me irrationally violent when touched by any but a handful of people in any but an extremely small handful of circumstances.
And the worst part of being a mature and reasonable person is that you know you don't get to take a break from it and be a bratty beast for awhile, and you know you have to go back again tomorrow, and you know they may say, "Sorry, we see nothing; too bad for you."
I get ice cream, is what I have to say about all that.
Specifically, when I said, "Any medical appointment where they don't put anything metal inside your body is a good medical appointment"? Oh, was I wrong.
They put things in my ears.
Maybe I should have made this a voice post, because I'm not sure you can properly hear the creeping disgust here: things. In my ears. At one point the audiologist-or-other-professional said, "We're going to put a wick in your ear. Let me know when it hits your eardrum." And I? Being a mature and reasonable person? Did not call her any nasty names, did not attempt to knock her down and flee down the hallway, did not fling myself on the floor and howl. I didn't even squirm. I sat and let her put the thing on my eardrum and the other thing over it and then make it sound like a woodpecker had moved into my eardrum. And then she came in to take it out and said, "How are we doing?" I did not say, "You're doing fine; no one has put anything on your eardrum." I did not say, "Bloody awful, thanks for asking." I did not say, "We're just barely halfway done with this one test and God knows what you will think to do after the left side is done and I was trying to distract myself with that one Diane Ackerman poem from Planets, but the woodpecker tapping was too fast for anything but Edna St. Vincent Millay or maybemaybe e. e. cummings, and I ran out of clean e. e. cummings, and I don't even like the dirty e. e. cummings, and we're only halfway done with this one test so how do you think I'm doing?" I said, "Fine."
Mature and reasonable is so overrated.
(Happily, the medical personnel in question were from here, so they could hear the difference between "fine" and "fine." (And Zathros.) Also the way I was clutching the arm of the chair and clenching my jaw may have tipped them off.)
And they flung my head and upper body about and made me watch funny lights and blew air in my ears -- cold in the right, then cold in the left, then warm in the right, then warm in the left -- and asked me to name presidents and cars and flowers. And I did not say, "Lady, I do not know you nearly well enough to let you do that, even with mechanical assistance." No. Because I am a mature and reasonable person, even when they tangle my hair in electrodes, even when they leave goop on my face without wiping it off, even when they touch the hair that grows right above my ears that is the part of my body most likely to make me irrationally violent when touched by any but a handful of people in any but an extremely small handful of circumstances.
And the worst part of being a mature and reasonable person is that you know you don't get to take a break from it and be a bratty beast for awhile, and you know you have to go back again tomorrow, and you know they may say, "Sorry, we see nothing; too bad for you."
I get ice cream, is what I have to say about all that.
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Re: Hug (and Poem?)
Date: 2006-07-17 03:10 am (UTC)"When You Take Me From This Good Rich Soil"
by Diane Ackerman
When you take me from this good rich soil
to slaughter in your heavenly shambles,
rattle my bone-house until the spirit breaks;
no heart of mine will scurry at your call
to lie blank as a slug in the ground where
my hips once rocked and my long legs willowed.
No heaven could please me as my lover
does, nor match the bonfire his incendiary eyes
spark from the dead-coal through my body's cabin.
When, deep in the catehdral of my ribs,
love rings like a chant, I need no heaven.
Though you take me from this good rich soil,
where I grew like a spore in your wily heat,
rattle my bone-house until the spirit breaks;
my banquet senses are rowdy guests to keep,
and will not retire meekly with the host.
When, midwinter at the gorge, I saw
pigeons huddling like Cro-Magnon families,
no seraphic vision could have thrilled me more.
When you take me from this good rich soil,
and my heart tumbles like the chambers
of a gun to leave life's royal sweat
for your numb peace, I'll be dragging at Earth
with each cell's tiny ache, so you must
rattle my bone-house until the spirit breaks.