Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Did I Do That?



When I was a kid, I was over at a friend's home and he told me that his mom had told him to tell me to "Stop touching everything in the house". It seems that my curiosity had gone a little too far. I couldn't help it, his mom had a lot of tchotchkes, knick knacks, and various other crap sitting around on every available space. I mean, what was it there for if not for me to examine?
Yesterday was eye doctor day. Once again I had to go in for my bi-annual torture session and day killer. One of the things I hate is being left alone in an examining room for more than a couple of minutes. It's like I've been put away in a little store house until the doctor is ready. The fact that I could hear the doctor going down the line of examining rooms one at a time, and saying hello to each patient before closing the door behind him didn't help. Every time I heard him greet a patient and close that exam room door meant another fifteen minutes of waiting. For some reason the child in me emerged yesterday. As I sat there waiting, I kept staring at the contraption that the doctor uses to look at my eyes. Finally, after waiting thirty minutes, I touched the complex assembly in front of me. I moved it around, I looked through the part that the doctor uses, and I watched as the little gears and levers did their jobs. When I heard the doctor finally approaching the door to the examining room that I was in, I pushed the equipment away and sat back in the exam chair.
"Hi Alan, how is everything today?"
"Nothing new doc."
"Any change in vision?" He asked as he sat down in front of me and moved his examining apparatus towards my face.
 "No change doc."
When he had it all lined up, I put my chin in the little chin holder and the doctor put his eye up against the part that he looks through.
"Hmm.. something's wrong." The doctor said as he fiddled with the instrument, "This thing isn't working."
"Oh, really?" I replied as I sat back in the chair.

2 comments:

  1. Great cautionary tale, because I've always wanted to play with that machine. Thanks also for telling your readers how to spell "tchotchkes".

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  2. for a minute there I thought your story was going to be related to all of Mark collection of tchotchkes.

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