The Sainted Son

"Phillip," the elderly lady named Margaret whispered in a hoarse, coarse, needy, weepy voice, "is she gonna look at my eyes?"

"She is going to look at the skin around your eyes. We're here for the scalp, not the eyes. We've been to eye doctors, now we're at the dermatologist. We're trying something else."

It's 6:12pm. My wife and I have been in the dermatologist's office for just over forty-five minutes. My wife is trying to pretend she's reading "Glamour." There's a man in a black Porsche sweatshirt leaning his head up against the wall. There's a twenty-ish young man iPoding and texting. I stare over and over again at the cover of some magazine with a cartoon of Sarah Palin at a swearing-in ceremony with her hand on a bible with the caption "Is This Possible?"

I don't want to be here.

Neither, apparently, does Margaret. She says so approximately every seven minutes. Margaret is probably around eighty, maybe ninety, and her two sons who have accompanied her to this doctor's appointment are easily in their sixties. One of them, Donald, pretends to be asleep, leaving his brother, Phillip, to reply to their mother's incessant complaints, questions, fears, and repetitions.

"I wish Ernie were here."

"Mother," replies Phillip with a finely-tuned mixture of deft compassion, palpable exhaustion, and factual stoicism, "Ernie has been dead for twenty-four years. He's been gone a long, long time."

"Phillip, is she gonna look at my eyes?"

Margaret is like a Chatty Cathy doll from the 1980s. She has approximately eight or nine phrases that she recites when there is a silence lasting longer than thirty-two seconds. This is Margaret's repertoire:

"I'm scared-- I don't wanna be sick. Let's go home."

"Phillip-- I'm suffering. I've got so many things wrong with me."

"Is she gonna look at my eyes?"

"Is Donald sleeping?"

"I want to die."

"I wish Ernie were here."

"Where's Roseanne? Where's Brendan? Nobody comes to see me. Nobody cares."

"Why should other people be okay and happy and I'm so miserable?

"Does she know what's wrong with me?"

Phillip could have chosen to ignore his mother. He could have gotten frustrated and shut down. He could have woken up Donald and said, "Hey-- your turn" and walked out of the waiting room. He could have suffocated her with a throw pillow. Instead, he deftly, calmly, rationally responded every single one of her redundant observations or comments. It didn't really matter what he said-- nothing changed her outlook or altered the manner in which she expressed herself, and nothing changed the content of her utterances. at 5:46, he could have answered "Does she know what's wrong with me?" with "Yes." and, at 6:04, he could have answered the exact same question with "No." and it wouldn't have mattered, but he was consistent, and factual and he was doing the best he could.

If I had the power, and the sword, I would knight him tomorrow. Forget W. S. Gilbert, Paul McCartney, and Elton John. Loudly let the trumpets bay and make way, please, for Sir Phillip, the Sainted Son.

There are Sir Phillips all over the world, performing homespun eldercare services for their parents who are in advanced stages of mental and physical decline. Our modern, American society espouses the philosophy that, when you're old and used up, the nursing home is good enough for you. I hear people moan and cry about "how hard" the decision was to put mom or dad away in a home, and I'm not trying to judge, for Christ only knows what the hell I'm going to do when/if the time comes-- but I'll bet it's a damn sight harder to do what Phillip does.

"You're always so busy," Margaret says to him.

"Busy? What am I busy with, Mother?" Phillip asks, not confrontationally, just really asking.

"Busy with me."

"You're right," he says, "I am busy with you. That is what I do."

"Is Donald sleeping?" she asks, because it's 6:14.

"Yes, Mother-- he's probably tired. We were up all night with you, do you remember?"

She looks at him.

"And you were hungry at 4:15am, and we brought you up the toast and the cantaloupe and you ate in bed-- do you remember that?"

She looks at him.

"No."

"Okay, Mother," Phillip says, putting her dry, trembling, gnarled hand in his. "Your left hand is cold, from the surgery."

And Margaret says, "I'm scared."

The Dickhead

So, I was sitting in the waiting room of my allergist's office, and this dickhead looks at me and goes, "I like your mustache, man."

The dickhead had a mop of wild, dark curls and couldn't have been more than a junior in high school.

I stared at him with a look that I hoped would turn him into a pillar of salt, or at least a stick of margarine.

To fill the awkward silence he added, "It's cool."

I continued staring at him until he gave up whatever it was he was trying to accomplish with me and walked to the opposite end of the waiting room and sat down next to some taught woman who, I presume, was his mom. I resumed pretending to watch "Bee Movie" which was playing at impossible decibels on the 40-inch, wall-mounted flat-screen in front of me.

(I still, at 29, go to my pediatric allergist's office, but some of you already know that.)

As "Bee Movie" played, the teen proceeded to make comments about the film in an extremely loud manner, since I was the only other person in the waiting room other than his mom, I can only assume, for my "benefit," usually to the effect of, "WHAT EXACTLY IS THE POINT OF THIS MOVIE?" "YEAH, LIKE WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE THAT BEES HAVE THAT KIND OF ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY?" and "WHY WAS THIS MOVIE MADE?"

While I admired his intellectual curiousity, I was bothered by his running rhetorical commentary. I'm curious, too. I could very well have asked, loudly, "WHY WERE YOU BORN?" (and, since his mummy was there, I might have actually gotten an answer, too) but I didn't. Because I have dignity, restraint, and a modicum of motherfucking class.

This dickhead reminded me of what I was like in high school-- acerbic, brash, accustomed to sharing my point of view with people who most likely didn't give a shit (uh-oh, is that what I'm doing right now?) and I shuddered at the similarities that existed between him and the high school version of me.

The only thing that made high school me different from this dickhead were his boldness in approaching someone in a public place to make a comment about their facial hair and his propensity to speak very loudly in a public place.

I didn't, and don't, speak loudly pretty much anywhere, and I have never and would never approach a random person and make a flip comment to them about any aspect of their appearance for fear that they would produce a Glock and promptly shoot me in the face.

I was, however, in high school, pretty fucking annoying. The adjectives "sarcastic," "disingenuous," "sophomoric," "scatalogical," "apathetic," and "unattractive" could all be easily applied to a photograph of me, circa 1997. I didn't have a lot of pleasant things to say, and I kept most of those myself. A bit of it managed to slip out in my senior year yearbook quote. Quoting comedian George Gobel, I wrote:

"Did you ever get the feeling that the world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes? That's kind of how I feel about high school."

For most of my life up to that point, and unfortunately beyond, I have vacillated about my self-opinion, and my thoughts on the matter have spanned the extremes, ranging from an intense, burning self-loathing to feeling that I was the only person my age with a brain at all-- that I was somehow special, and this quote selection is a good example of both sentiments. A high school student in 1998 knowing who George Gobel was: definitely unique. A high school student in any era feeling out-of-place: definitely not.

As I sat in the doctor's office waiting room, no doubt Swine Flu seeping through my trousers and up my ass, I stared at this curly-haired dickhead and wondered if he knew who George Gobel was, and if he ever felt like he was the ill-matched Florsheims to the universe's immaculate tux. Then I realized that I didn't care.

I wanted to say, "It's for a play" in reference to my mustache after he'd made the comment about it, but I didn't because I realized that he didn't care. I wouldn't have benefited in any way from explaining the facial hair's origins or purpose-- like having a gay mustache is made somehow less gay by the knowledge that it is being grown for a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. I also wanted to say, "Go fuck yourself, you smarmy, smug shitsack," but I don't think his mother or the receptionist would have appreciated such language in front of an animated black and yellow Jerry Seinfeld with wings.

Ironically, I didn't have a negative reaction when my nurse called me in and made a comment about my mustache, nor did I have fleeting, vulgar thoughts when my allergist walked through the door and did a comic double-take upon seeing me. I did tell him it was for a play, and then I tried to sell him tickets. He politely declined.

"My wife, frankly, enjoys the theatre more than I do."

I wanted to tell him that I didn't enjoy "Bee Movie" or the kid in the waiting room either, but that I obediently sat through both, but I didn't. I did perk up when he asked me a funny question while he was examining my ears.

"Do people make comments?" he asked, I guess meaning people other than him.

"Yes," I said, "in fact, some schmuck kid just did in the waiting room."