Signs of Getting Older #9: Doctors

My hero and man of the most misattributed quotes

I guess I should narrow this down a bit. As you get older you find out for every part of your body there is a doctor ready to prod, poke or remove it. For everything under (and including) your skin, there is a specialty and a white coat who opted to spend several years of their lives studying the here-to-fore unknown intricacies therein.

But there is something even more universal about doctors and aging than learning there’s a doctor who can show you something you’ve had all your life but never saw before–usually by means of an optic device being threaded up, down or through an orifice you never thought had more than one purpose.

Nope, I’m talking about the Doogie Howser effect.  It starts when you first notice the doctor at the walk-in clinic looks like she may be recommending you stop drinking because she isn’t old enough to join you in the pub.

The other day at work a bubbly poppet announced herself to me, with a giggle and eye-bobbling gesture, “Hi, I’m new in the area and introducing myself….I’m a (more giggles) doctor…” Brief shake like a cocker spaniel after a dip in the back yard kiddie pool.

Okay, she wasn’t vertically challenged, so I should amend my description to include that she was well over 5’8″, wearing a distinctly un-doctorly tailored brown skirt with matching brown jacket over a ruffled blouse that buttoned somewhere below the tropic of cancer. It was just this side of the border of a style of working ensemble favoured by the practitioner of a profession slightly older than that of doctor…

Considering my place of employment is smack dab in the middle of the industrial section of town, it seems likely she will probably have no shortage patients.  Her office will be within spitting distance of a tree and landscape service, a metal plating shop, a compressed gas plant, a lumber milling plant and, just down the road, one of the larger craft breweries on the island.

So we chatted for a bit and it turns out she’s fresh out of Chiropractic college. I refrained from saying “oh, honey, no, that’s not a doctor…not really” We had another discussion which ended with her saying, in that tone reserved for the elderly and puppies who missed the paper, “now you’re not one of those people who are afraid of chiropractors, are you?”

I didn’t trot out the various horror stories I’ve been through in the past with bone crackers but instead said simply that I’m quite happy with massage therapy and left out I’m not keen on subjecting the crumbling vertebrae in my neck to a treatment that has resulted in paralysis and, every so often, death.

She left some of her cards and pamphlets, waved a cheery good bye and skipped out the door before I could give her a lollipop from the dish we keep behind the counter.

I refrained from going to the door to see what kind of a car her mother drives; this little Doogie didn’t look old enough to be taking the bus by herself.

Who's your Doctor?

image credit: http://www.coloring-pages-kids.com