Filterless

Well crap. As if this week couldn't be more, um, interesting (and by interesting I mean fucked up and interesting), now I have to break up with cute Dr. Jason.

Oh, my friends of the internets, it seems I have lost my filter. You know that thing that goes between my squirrel-powered-with-Mountain Dew-and-crack brain and my mouth? It's missing. I have been a raging, not so adorable, filterless knucklehead. A verbal bull in a china shop. My loose cannon has gone off. My mouse has ROARED.

And I blame Fox News. What? Yes. Well, that and my birthday.

See, the trouble started on Saturday when we took Sophia to have her face looked at. It's a pretty face, to be sure, but she appeared to have developed cat's whiskers. Now Halloween is coming up and it's a cute look and all, but since she's decided that she wants to be a colonial peasant zombie princess or something for Halloween, whiskers are a bit over the top.

Thank goodness for Nate, the King of Poison Ivy. He took one look at her face and made the diagnosis for us so we dragged Sophia to the family practice on Saturday for a walk-in appointment to confirm Nate's diagnosis.

Because MathMan can't stand the embarrassment of watching me hump cute Dr. Jason's leg on a Saturday morning (he knew I was getting ready for it when he saw me shaving my legs in the shower, but the ankle bracelet I put on right before we left the house was the dead giveaway), he volunteered to take Sophia back to see the Good Doctor who just happened to be on call.

That meant Nate and I were left to our own devices in the Dreaded Waiting Room. I slumped down in my chair next to Nate. Foiled again. Damn that MathMan and his puritanical notions!

Nate and I sat alone in the cavernous, darkened waiting room. A receptionist with a quick smile, and nervous eyes, sat behind the glass and glanced at us occasionally. Thinking about it now, she must have been able to see into the next few minutes and didn't like what she saw.

From two televisions bolted to the wall, grown ups screamed at each other on Fox News.

I tried to distract myself with my book. Nate talked to me. We fidgeted and squirmed with our backs to the television, but we couldn't tune out the inane harping and hating coming from the Boob Tube.

I stood and sauntered casually over to the receptionist and smiled at her through the glass. "Any chance you can turn that down or off or change the channel?"

She simply smiled and shook her head. "Nope. The doctors won't let us."

I blinked at her. Once, twice, three times. My smile started to fade. "You're kidding, right?"

She shook her head again and pushed back a little from her desk to give herself some space from the Crazy Lady. The racket from the yahoos on the telly increased. "Seriously? You can't turn it down? You can't turn it off? It's just me and my son. It's deafening, not to mention annoying for a Saturday morning. I'd hate to have to listen to that crap if I were sick!"

The smile froze on her face. My filter - that thing between the brain and the mouth - disintegrated. I demanded to know to whom I should issue a complaint. This was nonsense. It was clear that the television was not there to educate the patients about their health. Obviously, it was not there to entertain us.

To be perfectly honest with you, of course it was particularly irritating to have to sit and listen to the howling and shrieking from Fox, but any news channel is a turn off in that setting. We are bombarded with news enough, thank you very much. How about some music? Discovery Health? I wouldn't even mind Lifetime, HGTV or The NASA Channel. Staring at the stars while some scientist drones on would be more relaxing, at least.. Jon and Kate and the Screaming Children wouldn't be as bad as having to listen to faux intelligentsia trying to shout each other down. I'd be cool with silence punctuated by the raspy breaths and coughs that are part and parcel to a visit to the doctor's office.

The point is (don't you love when I sledgehammer you with that?) is that the television in that waiting room, tuned to that channel full time and providing no lee-way to adjust it in any way is something I find quite insidious. And you know what - it has no place in a doctors' office. It's nothing more than a political statement.

And to that I say - bullshit. I come for your medical opinion, not your political one. Turn the damn news/opinion channel off or I'll find another doctor to whom to give my money.

It breaks my heart to say it, but I don't care how cute you are. I don't want to stare up at the ceiling while you make me feel oh so good and have my fantasies interrupted with newflashes that we are politically incompatible.

See - it's like I turned forty-four years old and decided that I no longer care what anyone thinks. I've been working so hard for so long to hold it in - you're laughing at me, aren't you? - you're thinking 'lord, woman, that's what you call holding it in?' but it's true. I haven't told someone off but good since the day I called MathMan's grandmother "old woman" right before I unleashed a stream of obscenities and bottled up anger at her. That was what? 1993? I guess I was due.

MathMan suggests I blame PMS. More like DNA, but oh well. As soon as I've written this post, I'll go in and have my filter re-installed. Or not.