Misery

my absent-minded professor (sam) forgot a math sheet on the dining room table so, i ran to school at his lunch hour to drop it off.  he was also really complaining about his throat and ears hurting, so i grabbed the motrin too and headed out the door.  when i got to the front desk of the school, a woman from a back office saw me through the interior window of her office and came out to great me.  she was probably about 55 or so, with a cute denim fishing hat covering her obviously bald head.  she was wearing a breast cancer pin and her office was filled with cards of well wishes.  a large banner hung above the window to her office that said "2008 Employee of the Year!"  i had to believe that surely that award was not only for the wonderful dedication to her job, but her tenacity in the face of this disease as well.

i explained to her that i had given birth to an absent-minded professor with bad allergies, as she laughed looking at the papers and motrin in my hands.  she grabbed his schedule from a file to locate him and made a quick call to have him sent down to the office.  while i was waiting for sam, another mom came in to pick her daughter up.  she was dressed to the 9's in that colorado casual-but-costs-a-fortune look with overhighlighted short hair and flashy sunglasses.  the girl was sitting in the office, waiting to go to an ortho appt. i figured out. the lady from the office asked the mom for an i.d., a customary security process in a school of 900 middle schoolers.  to which the overdone mom replied "you know,  this is getting to be ridiculous."  

okay.  i do understand her notion that the security stuff is a bit much.  but you know darn well, that if something happened at that school, she'd be the first one to complain.  just follow the rules lady, i thought.  office lady walked over to another file cabinet to check the girl's file and mom's i.d. against each other.  meanwhile, overdone mom says loud enough for everyone to hear "she's just doing this to be obnoxious.  they don't check i.d.'s here."  then she turns to me to receive some kind of sympathetic look or affirmation to which i stared straight ahead of me.  no way.  i'm not signing on to your assinine behavior.  find another chump.  while office lady was checking her i.d. the mom explained (again loudly) to her daughter she was late because she was on the phone laughing with her girlfriend and no big deal if they don't make the appt. they'll just reschedule and spend the rest of the day shopping.  now who's trying to be obnoxious?

so, office lady comes back and says thank you to overdone mom.  it doesn't end there folks.  overdone mom says "you know, " (the last sentence she started this way wasn't a good one) "i'm in a hurry and this was totally unnecessary and you just did this to hold me up.  my plate is very full."  i freaked.  i totally freaked out and yelled at the woman, "she's battling breast cancer.  her plate is way more full than yours."  she whipped hear head around shocked, closed up her purse, office lady and i exchange looks that bonded us forever, and overdone mom stormed out saying things like "all of our plates are full, we're late for an ortho appt....." trailing off into the parking lot.

the easily rescheduled appt. wasn't all that important.  the phone conversation was just too fun and worth being late for.  she clearly has the time and funds to shop with her daughter for the afternoon footloose and carefree.  does she even realize that she could be going to a chemo appt.?  she could be waiting for test results, wearing a paper gown and sitting in a cold doctor's office.  guess what overdone mom?  no matter how inconvenienced you were today, office lady's day sucks more.  it just gets to.

the thing that bothers me the most is that i don't think she knows.  i don't think she'll lay awake in bed tonight thinking about how she shouldn't have been so hard on office lady.  she just doesn't seem to have that kind of heart and that's what i'll pray for.  not that she gets cancer or anything, but that in some way, somehow, she'll be touched by another person's troubles enough to pull her up and out of her r.e.i. flip flops to see.  to see that sometimes getting up and sitting in a middle school office checking i.d.'s is a real triumph for some people.  that it would have been easier to lay in bed and not live today for today.  i said "i'm so sorry you had to deal with that" to office lady and she said "oh, you wouldn't believe what i have to deal with."  oh-i have an idea.  and something tells me you can take it lady.