Waiting

I’ve spent quite a bit of time lately sitting in waiting rooms. Doctor’s waiting rooms…dentist’s waiting rooms…orthodontist’s waiting rooms. If there’s a profession that requires that you wait in a special room, designed for no other purpose than to make you sit there and wait, then my butt-print is invariably on one of the cushions there.

Having just upgraded to a new Blackberry, I’ve had plenty of time to discover, download, misplace and ultimately play with many, many, many new apps.

The first thing I wanted to check out was the MP3 player. I’d downloaded all my music from my iTunes (honestly, the phone downloaded all my tunes…I just pressed the button that said “okay”) and had thrown the earphones that came with the phone into my bag weeks ago. I eagerly broke into the bitty plastic bag, removed the earbuds and then spent the next 15 minutes trying to figure out how to open the super-itty-bitty, teeny-tiny little baggie containing the little stretchy black “condoms” I now needed to place over the earbuds.

Only it’s not working…because each time I hook one end over, the other side pops off. All the while I’m wondering, “Why? WHY? Why can’t they have done this for me? Why do I have to do this? Stupid f&*%ing people….too f&*%ing lazy to put these f&*%ing things on before they leave the manufacturer. What possible f&*#ing reason could there be for not having these ready to use straight out of the package?”

Around this time, I notice the little tag on the wire with the teeny-tiny illustration of God-knows-what:

…but it looks suspiciously like the trash can I’ve just this morning rolled out to the curb from my garage…complete with the lid on top, the side handles and the wheels on the bottom.

The large “X” running through it suggests….what?? Is this a message from a higher authority?

“Dear Kathryn: Do not take the trash out today. Something terrible will happen. Love ya, GOD.”

Or, is it saying “Do not throw this tag into said trash can”? And what’s with the dark line underneath the depiction of the can? Kinda reminds me of the line under a 6 or a 9 on a playing card, clarifying in no uncertain terms which end is UP. Does this have any life-threatening significance??

Of course, all this goes through my head in a matter of 0.0000025 seconds, so it’s actually moot. I locate the receptacle for the plug on my phone and hit the play button. The first song is “One Week” by Barenaked Ladies. The song BLASTS out of my phone, startling me and everyone else in the waiting room. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off…I kept hitting the red button (to end a call), whilst holding my thumb over what I presumed was the speaker, whilst pushing on every side button I could find, whilst apologizing profusely to everyone around me. I wound up powering the phone OFF to make it STOP. Turns out the snazzy, rubbery cover I’d bought to protect the phone prevented the plug from fully connecting with the device.

Thank Gawd I wasn’t in the room where the actual root canal was taking place. Could you imagine the carnage?

My bad.