Tuesday, April 17, 2007

You ate what, again?

Today was Erendira's, one of my best friends, birthday -she turned 15- so to celebrate we brought some cake (well, Nancy brought the cake. The rest of us brough plates and milk and the like) to school.
When somebody brings tasty stuff specifically for sharing with others to school, it is not uncommon for people who are not really your friends but just casual acquaintances to drop by for some food. This is not good, because you might count the whole class as casual acquaintances. We're 48.
To avoid this, we waited until recess, and then went to a secluded area where people seldom hang around, and it worked well, seeing as only one o two people tracked us down. That was at the doctor's office.
We were in the middle of singing Happy Birthday when the doctor popped out. Then he went away, and a few moments later reappeared with a stack of paper napkins and a knife to cut the cake (which we had forgotten).

"Aaah!" we exclaim gratefully.
"You can use my office, too."
"Would that be okay?"
"Sure! ...just don't let the school counselor see, ok?"
"Thanks!"

We all pile into his office, and cut the cake (it was really yummy, by the way). By the end of recess we were finished, so we hastily cleaned up and left a piece of cake and a little carton of milk on the doctor's desk as a thank-you. No fork, though, because we forgot to bring any.

The whole office thing sort of redeemed the school doctor in my eyes.

Redeemed, you say?
Well, yes. I'm not really the right person to say if he's good or bad at the job, but there is one habit of his which is... well, I'll give you some examples.

Once, my cousin hurt her finger (I think it got caught in a little accident involving a door) and it was quite bad. When she went with the doctor, he peered at her through his glasses and asked,
"What did you have for breakfast?"

Another time, my cousin was in Math class. The teacher asked her to "go to the doctor's office and get me some eye drops". When she returned, it was not with eye drops, but with a message:
"Uh... he says, 'What did you have for breakfast?'"

One of my friends was ill (she had the flu or something) and I accompanied her to the doctor, because of the school's rule that if you're feeling woozy, you can't go alone, in case you fall over dead on the way and there's nobody there to sream and faint (or run for help, it depends). The doctor determined that she should go home, so while the call was being made, he turned to me.
"So," he says conversationally, a smile on his face, "what did you have for breakfast?"

It isn't really endearing.

No comments: